View previous stories
	Human traffic: exposing the brutal organ trade by Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, Nancy Scheper-Hughes New Internationalist & agencies   June 2014   Trafficking for the removal of organs is a real issue, but little is known about it – UN Special Rapporteur.   Available information on trafficking in persons for the removal of organs is inadequate and often unverified, the outgoing United Nations Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, said during the presentation of her latest report* to the UN Human Rights Council.   “However, emerging forms of trafficking in persons such as trafficking for the removal of organs do in fact occur in many parts of the world and are not rare,” Ms. Ezeilo emphasized as she urged States and the international community to address the problem with determination.   “This lack of information mainly results from the clandestine nature of the trafficking and from the fact that victims have little opportunity and incentives to denounce such violations,” she said.   The human rights expert stressed that “trafficking in persons for the removal of organs is, first and foremost, a violation of human rights which needs urgent attention from the international community.”   All States have an international legal obligation to prevent this violation, prosecute offenders and protect and assist victims, Ms. Ezeilo noted. “This obligation arises through the application of specialized trafficking in persons laws and through international human rights law,” she said.   “The nature and scope of trafficking in persons have significantly expanded in the past decades,” the Special Rapporteur states in her report. “It is now widely accepted that women, men, boys and girls are trafficked and that the forms of trafficking are as varied as the potential for profit or other personal gain.”   More than US$ 51 billion are generated by human trafficking caused by forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture and other economic activities, according to the International Labour Organization.   “While women and girls remain the most vulnerable to this plague, men and boys are also victims of these grave human rights violations and their situation need due attention,” the human rights expert said, while urging Governments worldwide to broaden their perception of the problem, including through a more gender balanced and human rights focused approach.   The Special Rapporteur also called on States to focus actively on addressing other emerging and less well-known forms of trafficking, such as illicit recruitment practices, trafficking in men for forced and exploitative labour, trafficking for forced begging and criminal activities, trafficking for forced or servile marriage, as well as safe return and the risk of retrafficking.   In her report to the UN Human Rights Council, which reviews the 10 years of anti-trafficking work of the mandate, the expert highlights the contribution of the mandate to key conceptual and legal gains, especially with regards to the rights of victims of trafficking to effective remedies.   Ms. Ezeilo also identifies remaining challenges such as the need to clarify the international legal definition of trafficking in persons, strengthening the accountability of non-State actors, and involving civil society, victims and vulnerable groups. She offered concrete recommendations to Member States and her successor.   * Special Rapporteur’s report: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Trafficking/Pages/annual.aspx http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2814%2960835-7/fulltext   May 2014   Human traffic: exposing the brutal organ trade, by Nancy Scheper-Hughes.   Secretive and ruthless, the traffickers controlling the kidney trade thrive on the desperation of the poor and the sick. Nancy Scheper-Hughes lays bare the ‘collateral damage’.   The slide on the screen showed several skinny, dark Filipino men lined up, displaying their sacred wound, the kidney scar, long as a sabre slice across their convex torsos. More than 150 representatives of scientific and medical bodies from 78 countries stared solemnly at the photo during the Istanbul Summit of 2008, the defining moment in the global recognition of human trafficking for ‘fresh’ kidneys. ‘Is this why we began as transplant surgeons?’ one of the convenors, US surgeon Francis Delmonico, asked. ‘Are we comfortable with this? Is this fair? Do we want to participate in this?’   The man sitting next to me, a Hindu surgeon in white robes, reminiscent of Hippocrates, was moved. When I asked what he was thinking, he replied: ‘This is too late. Kidney selling is no longer a strange or exotic act. It is normal, everyday, and entrenched. We in the South can agree that it is a tragic turn of events, but the demand comes from outside.’   In the early 1980s a new form of human trafficking, a global trade in kidneys from living persons to supply the needs and demands of ‘transplant tourists’, emerged in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The first scientific report on the phenomenon, published in The Lancet in 1990, documented the transplant odysseys of 131 renal patients from three dialysis units in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. They travelled with their private doctors to Bombay (now Mumbai), India, where they were transplanted with kidneys from living ‘suppliers’ organized by local brokers trolling slums and shantytowns. The sellers were paid between $2,000 and $3,000 for a ‘spare’ organ.   On return, these transplant tourists suffered an alarming rate of post-operative complications and mortalities resulting from mismatched organs, and infections including HIV and Hepatitis C. There was no data on, or discussion of, the possible adverse effects on the kidney sellers, who were still an invisible population of anonymous supplier bodies, similar to deceased donors.   In 1997, I co-founded Organs Watch, specifically to draw attention to the then invisible population of kidney ‘suppliers’. Today human trafficking for organs is a vibrant and extremely lucrative business that involves some 50 nations..   Over the course of more than 17 years of dogged field research, my Organs Watch colleagues and I had realized that we were not dealing with a question of medical ethics. Rather, we had gained entry into the world of international organized crime. Following fieldwork in Turkey, Moldova, the US, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines and South Africa, it became apparent that organ brokers were human traffickers involved in cut-throat deals that were enforced with violence, if needed. Many of the ‘kidney hunters’ who seek out new candidates in poor localities are former sellers, recruited by crime bosses.   The transplant and organ procurement traffic is far-flung, sophisticated and extremely lucrative. Although trafficking in human organs is illegal in almost every nation, the specifics of the laws differ, making prosecutions that can involve three or more nations a judicial nightmare. In some countries it is illegal to sell a kidney but not to purchase one. In others it is illegal to buy and sell within the country but not to buy and/or sell abroad.   Organ trafficking made its début as a much-contested add-on to the 2000 United Nations Palermo Protocol on Human Trafficking, which recognizes that even willing participants in underworld illicit kidney schemes can be counted as victims. Indeed, most are coerced by need, not physical threats or force. Some even pay significant amounts of money to be trafficked.   As it is covert behaviour, it is difficult to know with any degree of certainty how many people are actually trafficked for their kidneys, but a conservative estimate, based on original research by Organs Watch, is that at least 10,000 kidneys are sold each year. Human trafficking for organs is a relatively small and contained problem, one that could be dealt with efficiently with the political will to do so.   Unlike other forms of trafficking that unite people from shady backgrounds, the organ trade involves those at the highest – or at least middle-class – levels of society: surgeons, doctors, laboratory technicians, travel agents, as well as criminals and outcasts from the lowest.   Transplant professionals are reluctant to ‘name and shame’ those of their colleagues involved in the trade, thereby creating a screen that conceals and even protects the human traffickers who supply the surgeons. And because trafficking living donors for organs is a traffic in ‘goods’ (life-saving ‘fresh kidneys’) not traffic in ‘bads’ (drugs or guns) there is reluctance, even on the part of the justice system, to recognize the ‘collateral damage’ it inflicts on vulnerable bodies – and the harm to society and the profession of medicine itself.   Organ brokers are the linchpins of these criminal networks, which handle an onerous feat of logistics. They co-ordinate three key populations: (1) kidney patients willing to travel great distances and face considerable risk and insecurity; (2) kidney sellers recruited and trafficked from the urban slums and collapsed villages of the poor world; (3) outlaw surgeons willing to break the law and violate professional codes of ethics. Well-connected brokers have access to the necessary infrastructure such as hospitals, transplant centres and medical insurance companies, as well as to local kidney hunters, and brutal enforcers who make sure that ‘willing’ sellers actually get up on the operating table once they realize what the operation actually entails. They can count on both government indifference and police protection.   The complicit medical professionals perform expert teamwork – technicians in the blood and tissue laboratories, dual surgical teams working in tandem, nephrologists and post-operative nurses.   There are ‘transplant tour agencies’ that can organize travel, passports and visas.   In the Middle East and in the US, religious organizations, charitable trusts and patient advocacy groups are often fronts for such international networks.   Some brokers in Moldova used underhand tactics that had already been honed in recruiting naïve Moldovan women into sex work. They offered the opportunity of work abroad to unemployed youth, or household heads in debt or in need of cash to support sick spouses or children.   On arrival, the young men were kept in safe houses, had their passports confiscated, and were reduced to total dependency on the brokers (women were exceptions, see ‘My heart weeps inside me’). A few days later, the brokers would break the news that it was not painting or ironing trousers that was needed from the illegal ‘guest workers’ but their kidneys. Those who refused outright were threatened or beaten. One young man, Vladimir*, explained the stark ‘choice’ that faced him in Istanbul: ‘If I hadn’t given up my kidney to that dog of a surgeon, my body would be floating somewhere in the Bosphorus Strait.’   * Access the full story via the link below. Visit the related web page
	Major Powers and the Contested Evolution of a ‘Responsibility to Protect’ by Global Public Policy Institute, agencies   25 September 2014   “Regulating the UN Security Council veto in the event of mass atrocities”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein.   I would like to thank the organisers of this meeting, France and Mexico, for leading this important discussion on "whether" the UN Security Council’s permanent members should refrain from using the veto in situations of mass atrocities.   The privileges granted by the UN Charter to the Council’s Permanent Members come with responsibilities of course. For the proper functioning and the legitimacy of the UN collective security system, it is crucial the Council acts – and is seen to be acting – in ways that further the objective of securing global peace and security, in conformity with justice and international law. The short-term political, economic or commercial interests of one State, should not trump this or, at the very least, should provide no shelter to those who perpetrate gross human rights violations, crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocide – the world’s worst criminals.   All Member States, including the Council’s permanent members, have legal obligations regarding protection of the lives and dignity of human beings. These include peremptory norms, or jus cogens obligations, that are incumbent on all States; and other obligations arising from States’ accession to specific treaties. States must respect the objects and purposes of the relevant norms and treaties, and must at the very least refrain from undermining them.   Thus, Member States should refrain from decisions which would undermine or obstruct action that seeks to further these norms. Surely a State-Party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which has undertaken to prevent and punish genocide, should not, according to this logic, impede collective action of the Security Council that is intended to prevent genocide?   And in the case of grave breaches of international humanitarian law or war crimes, then surely States-party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions – as are all five permanent Council Members – which have committed not only to respect those Conventions but also to ensure their respect – should not block action by the Council that would uphold these Conventions?   It is a moral and a legal obligation to save lives. In recent years, the Council’s inability to take decisive action regarding a number of appalling crises has led to enormous, avoidable, human suffering. It has shaken confidence in our own institutions. It has granted time and space to the perpetrators to commit more violations, and made them far less likely to provide access to UN officials or to respond to their concerns.   Therefore, from the human rights perspective, the adoption of a code of conduct on use of the veto, in very specific circumstances where well-founded facts demonstrate that international crimes are occurring or about to occur, would demonstrate on the part of the permanent members of the Council that quality of leadership and responsibility which our world so badly needs.   The status quo is ultimately harmful for all, primarily for the victims of course, but also for the Council’s standing and legitimacy, and therefore for the capacity of the UN to deliver peace and stability where they are needed most desperately, on the ground.   Members of the Council have been mandated to act collectively in the pursuit of peace and security. They have a clear and urgent responsibility towards the women, men and children who are threatened by war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The power to use the veto is, like all powers, a power to be exercised responsibly.   A commitment not to use the veto when quick and decisive action is needed to avert or halt gross human rights violations, war crimes and other international crimes would have a powerful preventive effect: would-be perpetrators may, in many instances, refrain from engaging in such crimes if they expect the Council to act promptly and decisively.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15103&LangID=E   Major Powers and the Contested Evolution of a ‘Responsibility to Protect’. (Global Public Policy Institute)   The debate about a responsibility to protect people from mass atrocities goes to the heart of current changes in the world. Coinciding with the shift of power and influence away from the West, its nascent and contested evolution as a norm has become a crucial arena in which fundamental conflicts about the future global order play out – far beyond simplistic dichotomies between ‘North’ and ‘South’ or ‘West’ and ‘Rest’.   This special issue analyses how Brazil, China, Europe, India, Russia, South Africa and the United States engaged with these struggles over sovereignty and responsibility, universalism and exceptionalism, hypocrisy and selectivity. The papers pursue three goals: to study major powers’ normative foreign policies in their historical, institutional and cultural background, to bring the role of major powers back into the analysis of norm development and to expand on the standard narrative about the evolution of ‘R2P’ by embedding it in a more global, less-Western centric context.   Introduction: Major powers and the contested evolution of a responsibility to protect - Philipp Rotmann, Gerrit Kurtz, Sarah Brockmeier. GPPi, Berlin   Regulating Intervention: Brazil and the Responsibility to Protect - Oliver Stuenkel, Marcos Tourinho. Fundação Getulio Varga, São Paolo   In the last decade, Brazil has engaged with the idea of an international Responsibility to Protect in a notable fashion. As a frequent member of the Security Council in the post-Cold War era, the country resisted suggestions of a responsibility to intervene in humanitarian crises, fearing it would serve to justify military action outside of the scope of the UN Charter and international law. Following the adoption of R2P in the 2005 World Summit, Brazil engaged with the concept more closely. This culminated in the ‘Responsibility while Protecting’, a proposed addendum that would ensure clearer criteria and greater accountability of UN-authorised military interventions. This paper describes Brazilian foreign policy perspectives through this period and analyses their contribution to the political and normative development of R2P. It argues that while Brazil has become more vocal and proactive in relation to the norm in recent years, its positions remained driven by some of its most traditional foreign policy arguments: the strengthening of the authority of the UN Security Council and the establishment of a multilateral order in which all states are treated equally.   Debates in China about the Responsibility to Protect as a Developing International Norm: A General Assessment - Liu Tiewa, Zhang Haibin, Peking University, China   Over the past several decades, international debates over intervention have usually focused on the primacy of state sovereignty or the protection of human rights. The emergence of the Responsibility to Protect stimulates more profound debates by providing different perspectives and terminologies. In this vein, an important voice of dissent, or at least skepticism, comes from China. This article pays special attention to the domestic debates concerning the R2P concept in China. Based on a review of most of the academic studies on R2P in China, together with in-depth interviews with senior diplomats and practitioners, this article illustrates the different views of Chinese officials and scholars on the concept of R2P, offering insight into how to construct the new norm of R2P in order to shape the concept into an international norm that is more acceptable, legitimate and operational.   Emerging Norm and Rhetorical Tool: Europe and a Responsibility to Protect - Sarah Brockmeier, Gerrit Kurtz, Julian Junk, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt GPPi, Berlin   European governments, parliaments and civil societies belong to the most important supporters of a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). However, despite a shared positive attitude towards R2P and coordinated diplomatic efforts, major European governments and therefore the European Union (EU) have never reached a consensual position on R2P. Based on 47 expert interviews and a review of official government documents, the article analyses the positions of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the common EU institutions across a series of critical junctures of the R2P debate between 2005 and 2013. The authors find that Paris and London agree with Berlin and Brussels that R2P requires longer term multilateral norm building. Yet, while Germany stresses military restraint and civilian crisis prevention, France and the UK continue to view R2P through their pre-existing traditions of a droit d’ingérence and the ‘doctrine of a humanitarian intervention’, respectively. These differences are largely due to diverging strategic cultures based on different historical lessons on the use of force. Brussels’ efforts to coordinate a common EU position have been constrained by these diverging positions.   Singing the Tune of Sovereignty? India and the Responsibility to Protect - J. Madhan Mohan, Gerrit Kurtz. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Dehli. GPPi, Berlin   With an ostensible commitment to sovereignty and non-intervention and a long standing involvement in United Nations peacekeeping operations, India’s position on R2P seems puzzling. Still, despite the rhetoric about India being an ‘emerging power’, it often abstains from diplomatic engagement beyond its region, including in R2P situations. What explains its sceptical interpretation, cautious attitude and limited practice? The paper shows that India’s position has evolved in three phases since 2005, from scepticism via calibrated engagement to renewed suspicions after the fall out of the Libya intervention. The paper argues that mainly domestic factors can account for these changes in India’s R2P policy. Despite these changes, however, India’s main concerns with R2P display remarkable consistency: an insistence on the consent of the state, a narrow definition of its scope involving a high threshold of violence, the exclusive authority of the UN Security Council and a deeply ingrained scepticism towards the utility of the use of force.   Multipolarity as Resistance to Liberal Norms: Russia"s Position on Responsibility to Protect - Xymena Kurowska, Central European University, Budapest   In Western analysis, Russia’s insistence on the supremacy of international law serves as little more than a strategy to sustain parity with the West. The Kremlin’s justification of its use of responsibility to protect is seen as an abuse of humanitarian language and a smokescreen in the pursuit of geopolitical interests. Formulated from within the liberal paradigm, such interpretations underestimate the normative saturation of strategic action. This article examines Russia’s discourse of multipolarity not as being purely strategic—as is widely held—but rather as a form of resistance to the perceived liberal hegemony of the West. The effects of such resistance resemble the outcomes of strategic manoeuvring but they should not be reduced to such. Bolstered by a sense of betrayal by the West, Russia’s evolving discourse of multipolarity provides an alternative vision of the world order that contests the imposition of liberal values and bestows upon the authorities an actual responsibility to contain the West’s dominance. Both Russia’s interpretation of responsibility to protect and its position in the debate arise from this agenda.   "Our Identity is our Currency": South Africa, the Responsibility to Protect and the Logic of African Intervention - Harry Verhoeven, CSR Murthy, Ricardo Soares de Oliveira. University of Oxford, Oxford, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi   Heavyweights of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress claim that the responsibility to protect citizens in case of an unwilling or unable government is an African concept, owned by the continent: rooted in the security-development crisis of the past few decades, Pretoria stresses that there is an intellectual and political history of intervention, separate from Western conceptions of R2P. While the conception of an African responsibility to protect has come to constitute a major pillar of South African foreign policy, this is not without its critics -domestic or abroad- and, as the Libya case exemplifies, often presents decision-makers in Pretoria with tough real world dilemmas. South Africa shares the intense scepticism of China and Russia about Western claims of value-based foreign policies. But much as anti-imperialist ideology and growth-centred relations with other emerging powers inform South African foreign policy, it would be a mistake to see Pretoria’s scepticism about Western interpretations as a sign of profound normative convergence with Russian and Chinese critiques of liberal peace-building: the South African critique of the responsibility to protect is more procedural than substantive.   The Two-Level Politics of Support: US Foreign Policy and the Responsibility to Protect - Julian Junk, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt   This article investigates the US foreign and security policy with regard to the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). Based on the analysis of expert interviews and official documents, it traces the US position on R2P across critical junctures between the principle’s 2005 adoption at the UN World Summit and its latest invocations in the Syrian crises of 2013. It discusses the recent atrocity prevention agenda of the US government as ambitious and still evolving operationalization of R2P. The article reveals several patterns in US attitude and practices towards R2P across recent administrations: The avoidance of new obligations in international law despite a general supportive attitude towards R2P; a deeply-rooted pragmatism that leads to the development of practical tools that follow-up on the principles it commits to, even if R2P language had to be avoided in domestic politics; and a constant balancing act between domestic- and international-level politics. Visit the related web page
	View more stories