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Zero Accountability?: The UN Rapporteur for Trafficking in Persons should not overlook Cuba’s state-run trafficking business
"...the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, jointly with Cuba Archive, submitted an urgent report to the Rapporteur on Cuba’s state-run, large-scale, and diverse trafficking schemes."
 Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, concluded a 4-day official visit to Cuba last Friday April 15th with a press conference in Havana. According to news reports, she commended the Cuban government’s will to fight trafficking in persons and praised Cuba's free healthcare, education, and social security systems for helping reduce "vulnerability factors” for trafficking to “less significant” levels than in other countries. In addition, she dismissed concerns over Cuba’s international medical missions, apparently accepting the government’s explanations of their “voluntary” nature while praising the missions as “a good example to follow.” Ms. Giammarinaro, however, stated that she had identified a few areas of concern in Cuba, such as sexual abuse, particularly of children, and declared that Cuba's legal framework could be improved.
 The Special Rapporteur was reported to have met exclusively with high officials of the Cuban government and members of “civil society” who actually work for or answer to the Cuban state. They discussed Cuba’s promise of “zero tolerance” for trafficking, laid out in a National Action Plan to Prevent and Confront Trafficking in Persons, delivered to her before her visit, that apparently does not address the state-run traffcking businesses. She visited only state-controlled showcase entities, including Cenesex (National Center for Sexual Education), headed by the Cuban dictator’s daughter Mariela Castro, where she praised its work on LGBT rights. There were no known encounters with independent members of civil society or human rights defenders, including labor or LGBT activists.
A truly independent fact-finding visit, we understand, would have never been allowed by Cuba. Prominent foreigners may only go on carefully choreographed tours courtesy of Cuba’s highly-experienced massive intelligence and propaganda apparatus. For this reason, several human rights’ organizations have asked the Special Rapporteur for a comprehensive and independent review of Cuba’s trafficking record.
 On April 14th, as Ms. Giammarinaro concluded her official visit to Cuba, the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, jointly with Cuba Archive, submitted an urgent report to the Rapporteur on Cuba’s state-run, large-scale, and diverse trafficking schemes. Co-authored by U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Combating Trafficking in Persons, Mark Lagon, and Cuba Archive’s Executive Director, Maria Werlau, it details several components of this trafficking business: export services of temporary workers, state-sponsored migration, forced labor, sex trafficking, and export sales of human blood and body parts. The Miami-based Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba and the Madrid-based Cuban Observatory for Human Rights also wrote to the Special Rapporteur urging her to take into account different aspects of trafficking by Cuba [1].
 Cuba’s official statistics show that the vast majority of state revenues are derived from the exploitation of temporary workers sent abroad. Official statistics, however, don’t report the revenues derived from other state-run exploitation: prison labor, uncompensated donors tricked into giving blood and body parts to run a state export business, high school students in compulsory agricultural labor and forced migrants sending massive assistance back home.  The Cuban govern-ment assured the Rapporteur that its export workers --doctors, entertainers, construction workers, teachers, engineers, sports trainers, sailors, scientists, architects, stevadores, and others-- are not trafficked because they serve “voluntarily.” Ms. Giammarinaro, however, knows that the definition for human trafficking is clear on this: “The consent of the victim to the intended exploitation is irrelevant once it is demonstrated that deception, coercion, force or other prohibited means have been used.” Furthermore, the Trafficking in Persons Protocol of 2000 states that abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation constitutes human trafficking. There is abundant testimony in media reports of dozens of countries detailing the conditions tantamount to slavery these workers are subjected to and how the Cuban government retains 75-90% of their wages, all violations of ILO (International Labor Organization) conventions and other human rights accords. The Special Rapporteur could personally interview some of the victims and ask them why they willingly “donate” billions of their wages annually and are so eager to serve overseas under extreme hardship. Finding testimony is not very difficult --around 65,000 of these workers are currently hired out by Cuba to governments and corporations in dozens of countries, plus many thousands who served in the past or deserted their posts now live in free countries. The Special Rapporteur seems to have missed the widespread poverty and destitution that prevail in Cuba outside the well-kept tourist areas and rich enclaves for the ruling nomeklatura, diplomats, and foreign businesspeople. But, if she does just a little digging online, she will find that scarcity and misery are actually rampant all over Cuba [2] and that many children must work, beg, or even turn to prostitution to feed themselves and their families [3]. Several hundred thousand Cubans have emigrated in recent years (and many more over decades) and live all over the world, most live in free countries and especially those who have no family in Cuba to protect from reprisal would be able to give the Special Rapporteur first-hand accounts of their daily struggles back home and their reasons to leave.  Given the Special Rapporteur committed to remaining alert to Cuba's "zero tolerance" for trafficking, we trust she will realize that Cuba is ruled by a totalitarian military dictatorship, that the Constitution and laws do not guarantee fundamental rights, and that the judicial and legislative systems are fully subservient to the Executive branch, i.e. to General Raúl Castro, President of the Council of Ministers and Secretary General of the Communist Party. Thus, she will understand there is “zero accountability” at the national level for the government's commitment of zero tolerance” for trafficking. Cuba Archive hopes Ms. Giammarinaro will examine all the complex realities behind trafficking in persons in and by Cuba and delivers an objective comprehensive report that holds Cuba fully accountable for the exploitation of its people.[1] Idolidia Darias, “Organizaciones de DDHH califican de incompleta visita de relatora de ONU a Cuba,” martinoticias.com, 16 abril 2017.
[3] See, for example, Ernesto Pérez Chang, “El trabajo infantil en Cuba,” CubaNet.org, noviembre 12, 2014; and the documentary “Prostitution in Cuba: Solutions to a Current Reality,” available at:
https://translatingcuba.com/prostitution-in-cuba-solutions-to-a-current-reality-part-1-somos-jose-manuel-presol/ and https://translatingcuba.com/prostitution-in-cuba-solutions-to-todays-reality-part-2-somos/
TAKE ACTION! Write to the UN special rapporteur to request a comprehensive and independent review of the Cuban dictatorship’s human trafficking practices. CONTACT: Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Victims of Human Trafficking, Especially Women and Children, United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland. Email: srtrafficking@ohchr.org. Links to Cuba Archive’s work on trafficking in persons and human exploitation HERE
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