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MANILA, Philippines -- Less than a month after former Philippine Ambassador to the United Nations Lauro Baja was charged with human trafficking and 14 violations of laws in the United States, the US Government Accountability Office has come out with a report on the abuse of the system that has allowed foreign diplomats to bring household helpers with them.
The GAO-08-892 report, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08892.pdf, dated July 29 and submitted to the US Senate, found and confirmed a total of 42 cases from 2000 to 2008, but said that the number could be higher.
It said that of the foreign diplomats named in the 42 cases of alleged abuse, 32.5 percent came from Africa, 30 percent were from the Near East, 20 percent were from the Western Hemisphere, 15 percent from Asia, and 2.5 percent were from Europe.
Aside from trafficking, the GAO also said some diplomats violated US laws on wages and hours, and involuntary servitude.
The report did not mention any names.
But the Baja case could most likely be among the 42 confirmed cases of abuse as the Philippines, which has the highest number of visas issued to diplomats' household workers at 1,775, was among the countries investigated.
The other countries that were also asked about possible abuse of household workers by diplomats were Peru, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, and maintenance of persons for labor and services through force, fraud, and coercion for slavery, servitude, and peonage.
The case against Baja was filed this July by Marichu Suarez Baoanan, a nurse, who alleged that she paid Baja's wife Norma, owner of a travel agency, P250,000 so that she could work in the United States.
But when she got to the New York, Suarez claimed that she was employed as a domestic helper at the Bajas, working 120 hours a week, and paid $100 a month before she escaped and sought refuge with a non-government organization.
The US GAO said the total number of trafficking cases through diplomatic channels was "likely higher" although the victims' fear of contacting law enforcement, the NGOs' rule of confidentiality to protect the victim, limited information, among others, could have prevented the actual documentation of such incidents.
"For example, [the Department of] State has several offices that receive allegations of abuse by foreign diplomats, but no single office maintains information on all allegations," it said.
The report said investigations into such cases were usually complicated by the vulnerable situation of the victims, usually poor, uneducated, and whose lives and their families' lives back home might be threatened by their employers' wealth, political connections, and prominent positions.
Another complication is the immunity and inviolability enjoyed by diplomats, a major constraint in the collection of evidence, the report said.
The report, which is addressed mainly to the US government on how to help stop the abuse, recommended the collection of records on such allegations, the establishment of an alert system for such violations, and a spot-checking of visas issued to diplomats' household staff.
