ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has acknowledged that human trafficking is a problem within its borders and taken important steps towards combatting the crime, but trust in the system that is supposed to protect the victim is weak. True safety for the foreign workers, displaced persons, refugees, and women caught in these trafficking networks will not be realized until the perpetrators are brought to justice, say experts, who warn there are flaws in the justice system.
“The victims generally believe that many of the perpetrators are powerful and would still be able to harm them,” Wahbiya Zrar, a lawyer with more than a decade of experience working in human rights law stated via email on December 5.
Authorities have been known to return foreign workers to their recruitment agency or employer, even while a criminal investigation is ongoing. Others have moved to temporary locations but were unable to escape their abuser.
Rachel* had years of experience working overseas - Japan, Qatar, Oman, Dubai, Saudi Arabia. It was in China that she applied for a domestic worker job in the Kurdistan Region, was interviewed, and accepted. All went well until she was asked to pay a placement fee. When she said she didn’t have the money for that, she was told they would take the fee out of her salary - the entire first seven months of her prospective wages. Rejecting the absurdity of that deal, she tried to back out of the job. But it was too late. The agent had her passport and so controlled Rachel’s destiny.
She was trafficked into the Kurdistan Region in late 2018 and was sent to work in a home with another domestic worker, Patty*, cleaning house for a woman and her two adult sons. The home was known to be unsafe. Rachel said she was warned on her arrival that one of the sons, Dilar*, “likes a massage.”
Rachel worked in the home for three months, suffering in silence as Dilar sexually harassed her. Trafficking victims often put up with harassment as long as they are making money. But one day, Dilar violently raped Patty. Rachel contacted her embassy in Baghdad who referred her to the SEED Foundation, which got the KRG's Directorate to Combat Violence against Women involved. Under the authorities’ eyes, the employer brought Patty to do a rape test and then took her back to the agency that had trafficked the two women into the country. Rachel, left behind in the house and frightened, asked SEED to get her out of there as well.
“At first, I’m very scared because in my whole life, this is the first time [something like this] happened to me, but I stand by my word and what I know,” said Rachel.
SEED helped Rachel and Patty file a case with the police and put them up in a hotel while their legal case progressed. But they still weren’t safe. Dilar found Patty walking near the hotel and brutally raped her again. Patty and Rachel went to the police station to file a second charge of rape, but there they were told their former employer had accused them of theft.
Instead of being given the care and help the frightened and violated women needed, the police arrested Rachel and Patty and put them in jail. Bail was set at more than $12,000. It later emerged that a member of the police was related to Dilar.
The case was closed when the family agreed to drop the theft charge if Patty and Rachel dropped the rape and trafficking charges. The Ministry of the Interior said the reputation of Dilar’s family had to be considered. Though she had to abandon seeking justice and is now out of the country, Rachel stands by her story: “Everybody knows what happened because I told them… we told them.”
Settlements like these are how many trafficking cases are resolved. Foreign worker victims like Rachel and Patty often choose to negotiate a quick exit from the country. Going to court is a lengthy process and victims don’t want to hang around in a place where they don’t have their support system, frequently face retaliatory charges if they try to press their case, and do not feel safe.
At least 38 employment agencies have been blacklisted after investigations into trafficking, “but nobody has been fully prosecuted,” said Zrar. Agencies are able to simply reopen under a new name.
The few cases that do make it to the court are frequently prosecuted under other laws. “Under the TIP [trafficking in persons] law, even in the case of negotiation the perpetrators would still have to be punished, but today cases during the investigation stage are put under different laws and when closed, the perpetrators go unpunished,” said Zrar.
Judge Mohammed Rekany is a public prosecutor in Erbil’s criminal court. The lower courts have handled the bulk of the trafficking cases that have made it to that stage, he explained in an interview on December 18, and many cases have gone through the courts under other laws like violations of residency, begging, or stealing, rather than trafficking. But this is because investigators concluded the crimes did not constitute human trafficking, Rekany argued.
Zrar, however, thinks everyone, from prosecutors and judicial investigators up to judges, needs more specialized training and guidelines need to be developed. “The courts are not set up yet to implement the law and protect the rights of victims of trafficking,” she said.
So what options do victims have?
“Because there is little or no access to justice for victims, and all the power is in the hands of the employer or trafficker, the safest thing to do is to send the victim home as quickly as possible,” said Zrar.
As flawed a solution as that is for foreign workers, it’s a lot more than what is available to Kurds and Iraqis caught in the trafficking nets. Helping local survivors is “considerably more challenging,” said SEED’s President Sherri Kraham Talabany.
Local victims are often unable to return to their families and communities where they may be subjected to honour-based violence, especially if they were trafficked into the sex trade. They may be criminalized or victimized by the justice system that is supposed to protect them. And they have difficulties re-integrating into society, finding safe work and housing in a culture where the victims may be branded with shame.
“Our society today is afraid, is afraid to say that I am beaten, that I have been subject to violence,” said Member of Parliament Ashna Abdulla Qadir, a temporary member of the parliament’s newly established Women’s Affairs committee. “We are not an open-minded society, but we feel bit by bit, year after year, that things develop.”
Trafficking is one part of a broader, institutional problem in the Kurdistan Region, according to Qadir, a member of the Change Movement (Gorran).
“There’s no rule of law and the judiciary is not independent,” she said, sitting in her white-furnished office at the parliament on December 9. “The reason why the judiciary in Kurdistan is not independent is because their members are from political parties and if the political parties do not give the green light to their members, they cannot do anything.”
“If you are someone lodging a complaint and going to the court, and the person who is being accused has some political backing, then of course you lose,” she said.
The Kurdistan Region Judicial Council did not respond to request for comment.
Prosecutor Rekany echoes Qadir’s concerns that the shadows of powerful people hang over the heads of the judiciary, hampering their efforts to secure justice for the victims.
“This crime [of human trafficking] is normally committed by people who have power and authority, because it’s an organized crime and it’s also trans-national,” he said, noting that people involved often have influence and connections within institutions, including the police. The involvement of a lot of money in the trafficking business adds another layer of vested interests. “Therefore combating this crime sometimes becomes difficult, because it’s not a normal crime like a crime where somebody kills somebody and you catch him.”
“It needs a strong political will as well to support these procedures and to combat this crime because it’s an international crime. For those reasons, sometimes we see that it’s very difficult to get the perpetrators,” Rekany said.
MP Qadir’s Gorran party joined the government following negotiations last spring, hoping to push a reform agenda after sitting in opposition in the last legislature. She says fixing these problems is “a very difficult task,” but she carries hope that change will come. “The more Kurdistan becomes democratic, the better the rule of law will be,” she said.
The government Qadir is part of marked its first 100 days in office in December. In a speech to mark on the occasion, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said his government is guided by the commitment to “create a strong Kurdistan with a government that serves the people, not the other way around.”
Talabany asks this government to continue the work of the previous one, which passed the anti-trafficking law. “Hopefully this new government will remain with a high level of commitment to combat human trafficking. And that means providing appropriate authorities to the people across government charged with protecting victims and investigating victims, resourcing them properly, and making sure that we work on providing protection and immediate response, but also justice for victims,” said Talabany.
But for now, the reality is that traffickers often walk free while their victims struggle to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the victims
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