Human Goods

Dr. Mark Rodgers knows about human trafficking. From Latvia to Ecuador, he has worked directly in the field, helping law enforcement, social workers, government, educators, prosecutors, media and others unite and collaborate in the fight against slavery. Listen to the first installment of an interview I conducted with Dr. Rodgers, who is Dean of the School of Social Work at Dominican University (River Forest, IL), as he discuses what drives the economy of trafficking, what has worked in fighting it, and what it will take to end slavery at home and abroad.

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Interview transcript:

Human Goods: Maybe to start, can you talk a little bit about what your experience with trafficking has been, and how you got involved?

Mark Rodgers: Sure. I was involved in 2002 through 2004 with a U.S. State Department grant to assist the country of Latvia in developing social work programs. And we went to Washington and met with the State Department and while there, they said, “Hey, what do you know about human trafficking, overall, and more specifically in Latvia?” And in December 2004 we were in Riga and we had approximately a hundred people at a training, starting conversations between media and judges and supreme court judges and prosecutors and social workers.

And so it was a very powerful conference that what I began to see was the development of a model that I’ve used since then. The group that grew the most from the public awareness conference were the judges. They said, “You know, we have these girls and their traffickers sitting in front of us. In the next few weeks when we go back to our courtrooms, we have a whole different view of these girls now. We understand this in a whole different way.”

So, that’s been the model that I’ve found has been most successful, to move through public awareness, to then targeted training of people who own this for their country or region.

HG: Has that model been exported to other Tier 2 Watch List countries?

(see Trafficking in Persons Report released annually by the U.S. State Department)

MR: Yes, we started to do the same thing in Ecuador. What happened in this case is that the ABA did a lot of good training with what they call the Ecuadorian Judicial Police, which is really their FBI, but because of their focus, they never thought about social service. So they said, “We’re starting to find victims here, but we don’t have a witness protection program, we don’t have social workers on the ground, we don’t have shelters, we don’t have job training.

And that’s when they discovered us, and we assessed social services. They were using, which many countries do initially, a lot of domestic violence shelters when they found these girls. That is effective, at least initially, but there’s a difference between trafficking victims and domestic violence victims. There needs to be some different training, different outreach, etc.

HG: OK, so can you talk about why so many former Eastern Bloc and Soviet countries find themselves on the Tier 2 Watch List, or Tier 3, and what was it about this post-Communist time period that puts people in an economically vulnerable position?

MR: Sure, sure. I like to use the expression both in Latvia and Ecuador that desperate times make for desperate people. I mean, with the fall of the Soviet Union, a lot of the so-called “givens” were gone. Apartments were privatized, industry fell apart, people now had to hunt for jobs rather than being guaranteed a job, and there was also—what I’d begin to say—outward migration, where people were leaving the country in droves. So you’ve got endemic world poverty, you’ve got people always shopping for a cheaper bargain. I mean, you know, who in America wants to pay fair trade coffee prices, unfortunately. So you’ve got this kind of globalized economy that really has some people at quite the wrong end and quite high at risk. Put that factor in to the fact that perhaps these gals for years have been rather calorie malnourished to begin with (average dress size 2 or 3), and— they’re on the market. I mean, people are seeking this out, and as a consequence they’re in an international market around the sex trade.

HG: What is the situation, as far as you know, for someone, you know, imagine you’re explaining this to someone who has barely heard of human trafficking and can’t imagine that it happens in Chicago. How would you briefly describe the situation to them?

MR: They’ll grab this very quickly: They’ll go, “Oh, it’s the international people.” And I’ll say, “Yeah that’s part of it.” But quite frankly I have documentation on girls from the South Side of Chicago being trafficked to the West Side of Chicago. Domestically trafficked. And they’re getting younger and younger, they’re down like 14, 13 years old.

HG: I mean I like your point about paying extra for fair trade coffee. Because a lot of people ask, well what can I do about it besides being aware, or besides making a donation to an NGO. You can protest something or support a kind of issue of social justice, but there is a kind of personal sacrifice that comes with making something a priority. What would you tell people that they can do?

MR: I think you’ve said it very well. They have to be willing to reach into their pocketbook, but not in a one-time effort. It has to mean that people around the world deserve a fair wage for the product that they produce. We have to do something with our country about the issue of us being a demand country. You know, this much I know about illegal activity: If there isn’t a demand for a product, then that group shifts somewhere else.

Watch Human Goods for more from Dr. Mark Rodgers…

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