Source: US State Department (click on image to view larger)
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland in 2010 retained its poor “tier 2″ ranking in the annual US Trafficking in Persons Report 2011, one of the most broad-ranging global studies of the extent of the problem.
Tier 1 countries comply fully with the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act, while tier 2 countries are defined as those “whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards”.
Tier 2 watch countries and Tier 3 countries, those not in compliance, risk being penalized by the US.
Estimates for the number of people trafficked are notoriously unreliable but tend to hover around 30 million globally. The US Department of State, which publishes the annual trafficking report this year added 7 countries, bringing the total reviewed to 184. It lists as the main categories: forced labour, sex trafficking, bonded labour, debt bondage among migrant workers, involuntary domestic servitude, forced child labour, child soldiers and child sex trafficking.
The UN Global Compact in 2008 issued a report noting that 2.1 million people are in forced labour, but for even the mostly closely involved NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) note that a key problem for all areas of trafficking is that the people registered and reflected in statistics under-represent the extent of the problem.
A February 2011 report issued by the Geneva-based IOM (International Organization for Migration) reported that re-trafficking complicates efforts to arrive at valid estimates.
Switzerland should prohibit all prostitution under age 18, report suggests
Chocolate hedgehogs joined the party at the US Mission to celebrate the newly planted indigenous prairie
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The US Mission in Geneva 29 April is celebrating its second-place honour for a new award given by the US State Department, the first annual Greening Diplomacy Initiative (GDI) award, “which recognizes leadership and innovation in sustainability projects at State Department buildings around the world”, according to the Geneva office.
The award was announced a week after a ceremony in Geneva to mark the planting of an indigenous meadow, with a seed mix developed by canton Geneva’s conservation office, to replace the tidy lawn that has long decorated the borders of the Mission buildings.
Mongolia won top prize
The US Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia took first place in the State Department contest that had 130 entries from diplomatic operations around the world. It was the first US diplomatic mission to comprehensively calculate its carbon footprint, tallying all carbon emissions of its embassy’s activities.
US Ambassador Betty E King inaugurates indigenous Geneva meadow at US Mission in Geneva
“The State Department has emphasized the importance of carbon emissions measurements because of the important benchmark they set and is encouraging other embassies to follow Ulaanbaatar’s lead,” the Geneva office says.
US Mission completes carbon footprint study
The US Mission in Geneva this week completed a carbon footprint study, working with Swiss Climate AG, an ISO certified auditor for carbon emissions. The results show that the Mission’s footprint per employee is half that of comparable organizations in Geneva, according to the US office.
Switzerland is one of the few western European countries to have a poor tier 2 ranking for human trafficking
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A new UN report indicates, for the first time, the extent of the problem of re-trafficking of humans, in particular women and children. It closely studied 79 cases of re-trafficking, out of a database of 14,000.
“Not a single one of the 79 people on the IOM database that form the backbone of this research, had been granted either temporary or permanent residency after the first time they were trafficked,” says Sarah Craggs, IOM trafficking research coordinator. “If they had, it would have given them a layer of protection they could never have at home and would probably have prevented their re-trafficking.”
Victims are often re-trafficked within two years of being rescued and are usually trafficked to different destinations or for a different kind of exploitation, according to the report. It is not uncommon for victims trafficked internationally to then be re-trafficked within their own country.
“The Causes and Consequences of Re-Trafficking: Evidence from the IOM Human Trafficking Database”, was published 18 February by the International Organization for Migration. It was funded by the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Estimates for the number of people trafficked are notoriously unreliable but tend to hover around 30 million globally. The US Department of State, which publishes an annual report on trafficking in 177 countries, lists as the main categories: forced labour, sex trafficking, bonded labour, debt bondage among migrant workers, involuntary domestic servitude, forced child labour, child soldiers and child sex trafficking.
The UN Global Compact in 2008 issued a report noting that 2.1 million people are in forced labour, but for even the mostly closely involved NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) note that a key problem for all areas of trafficking is that the people registered and reflected in statistics under-represent the extent of the problem.
The new report from the IOM “recommends that as a first instance, alternatives are needed to simply returning victims of international trafficking back to their home countries and invariably to the same situation and dangers that led to their trafficking in the first place.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ordered a halt to proposed changes to a passport application form that were announced 22 December, according to AP 8 January.
The US State Department’s Consular Report of a Birth Abroad, which is required for first-time passport applications and by foreign-born minors, would no longer have referred to “Mother” and “Father” in a nod to the increasing numbers of same-sex parents. The form was to refer to Parent 1 and Parent 2 in changes that would take effect 1 February.
Gay rights advocates had hailed the move, saying that it recognized that “hundreds of thousands of kids are being raised in this country by same-sex parents”, according to Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign in remarks to the Washington Post. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council lambasted the move 7 January, saying it reflected the “topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness”.
Veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke remains in critical condition at a Washington DC hospital after surgery to repair a tear in his aorta Saturday 11 December. He underwent a further procedure 12 December to improve his circulation, the State Department said.
Holbrooke has been the Obama administration’s chief envoy for the diplomatic side to the war in Afghanistan. The conflict straddles that country’s border with Pakistan, and Holbrooke’s family received wishes from Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari.
Holbrooke is best known for his key role at the Dayton peace conference that brought an end to the war in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Washington Post
The release of more than 251,000 secret communications between the US State Department in Washington, USA and US embassies and consulates has caused widespread embarrassment in capital cities around the world. The release 28 November by Wikileaks, an online whistleblower, was timed to coincide with the publication by major newspapers around the world of articles on the secret cables.
The New York Times, along with The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País, are publishing the first installments of many documenting US officials’ perceptions of events around the world and their attempts to influence them. Many of the documents date from this decade and represent a “treasure trove” of insight into the workings of the US diplomatic service. Diplomats have been tasked with gathering personal information on their interlocutors, ranging from credit card details to frequent flier card numbers.
The State Department has spent most of the past 10 days contacting allies around the world to warn them about the content of the released cables. The man suspected of providing Wikileaks with the information, Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst, is reported by The Guardian to have downloaded the information onto a CD at work and to have been in solitary confinement for the past eight months awaiting a court-martial. The British newspaper describes how Manning passed along the information.
Links to other sites: Guardian, New York Times
The USA has strongly condemned the “heinous” attack 6 November on Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin, in which two men savagely beat the reporter with an iron bar. Kashin is in hospital in an induced coma suffering from a fractured skull, with jaw and finger injuries; there reports he has had fingers amputated. US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told journalists in Washington, that “journalists around the world must feel free to do their jobs without fear of intimidation or physical violence.” No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, although various theories have been put forward, according to Ria-Novosti.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said hours after the attack that “whoever is responsible for this crime will be punished, regardless of their position”, and he is asking the state prosecutor’s office to take the case under their “special control”.
Kashin was a political reporter for the well-respected Kommersant newspaper and had had run-ins with youth groups tied to the Kremlin. Two other reporters were attacked in Russia over the weekend in separate incidents, according to the Washington Post. Reporters without Borders, a group that monitors press freedom around the world, puts Russia in 140th place out of 178 countries in its press freedom index.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Voice of America
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Sarah Shourd, 32, one of three hikers who were arrested by Iran in July 2009 for spying after they crossed into Iran from Iraq at an unmarked border, has been seen leaving prison, and it’s been confirmed on a web site run by the hikers’ family, that she was headed for the Swiss embassy in Teheran. Shourd was earlier today reported by Iranian public media to have been released. The US State Department told CNN that it could not confirm the information. The Swiss government, which represents American interests in Iran, has maintained its information blackout on the case.
Shourd has a medical condition that was there before her arrest but she has developed a lump in her breast according to her lawyer, and a judge in Teheran told Iranian television that she is being released for medical reasons.
Switzerland reportedly deposited $500,000 in bail for Shourd, according to the Iranian judge handling the case.
Her fiance, Shane Bauer, 28, and Josh Fattal, 28, remain in prison. Iran officials say they have indicted the hikers since investigations were completed recently. US officials say they believe the trio is innocent.
Mark Toner, acting US deputy spokesperson for the State Department, said at a 9 September briefing, when asked about the hikers, “our reaction is that we don’t know, frankly, what Iran is contemplating at this point. We have reached out through the Swiss protecting powers to try to find out more about this. Obviously, if this is—if this turns out to be true, this is terrific news. The hikers’ release is long overdue. And I would just stress that we hope that it’s all three hikers.”
Links to other sites: CNN, hikers’ families site and freethehikers on Facebook
American and Swiss landscape architecture students visit the gardens of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland accompanied by IUCN's Master Gardener Florian Meier. Foreground: JJ Obee from Ohio State looking at a native shrub in IUCN's garden. (photo, US Mission Geneva / Eric Bridiers)
Update 11:55 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – The US Mission to the UN in Geneva has begun a project with a group of nine American and three Swiss university landscape students to help “green” the grounds of the Mission.
The students, selected by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in Washington, DC, which is the Mission’s partner for the project, are spending the first two weeks of August studying the Mission’s grounds. They will then draft a sustainable landscape design that can be phased in, over five years.
More than 130 applications were received by ASLA and screened to select a team with the widest breadth of skills, talents, and experience.
In addition, Craig Verzone, an American landscape architect based in Switzerland, worked with the Mission to identify three Swiss students to be part of the team and to share Swiss expertise in this area.
The project is part of a larger US State Department commitment to sustainable design at its dipomatic facilities.
Geneva site aims to be greenest US diplomatic building in Europe
The prominence of the Mission building in international Geneva and the fact that it is regularly visited by diplomats and political figures from around the world for meetings, such as the recent negotiations on the new Start nuclear treaty, were factors when the State Department selected Geneva as its “”Flagship Post for Energy and Sustainability”.
Solar panels at the US Mission in Geneva are part of a larger US State Department effort to make diplomatic buildings, grounds greener
The building is the site of the installation of the largest solar energy project ever undertaken by the State Department overseas. It is home to an innovative magnetic levitation (MaglevTM) chiller air conditioning system that runs a virtually friction-free compressor.
Conserving the variety of plant and animal life is also a priority, and in 2009 the Mission became the first State Department facility to earn certification by the US National Wildlife Federation as a Certified Wildlife Habitat.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The nuclear arms reduction talks (Start) between the US and Russia will continue in January, the two countries have announced, with both sides saying they believe good progress has been made. “This is a much different environment that we exist in today,” PJ Crowley, US State Department spokesperson said in a briefing Wednesday 22 December in Washington.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The United States heads into the Cartagena Summit, which opens Sunday 29 November in Colombia, now saying that it is continuing to review its policy on signing the international Mine Ban treaty. The US is sending a sizeable official observer team to the summit, with groups from the State Department, Pentagon, US Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Cartagena Summit is the second review of the 1997 Ottawa Convention that bans the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines. More than 1,000 delegates, including several heads of state, will participate in the summit, which will assess progress made in clearing the world of landmines.
Cause of US shift unexplained
The US said in a statement issued Wednesday 25 November that it is still reviewing its position on signing the 10-year-old Mine Ban treaty – the opposite of what it said the previous day, but it was unclear if the statement was a correction of an error, a change in tactics ahead of the Cartagena Summit that opens 29 November in Colombia, or a change of heart following harsh criticism.
correction 11:45 Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government is officially mum on whether or not the event will take place, but the US State Department and the Kremlin in Russia have both announced that they are sending top officials to a ceremony in Zurich Saturday 10 October where Armenia and Turkey will formally establish diplomatic and bilateral relations. The signing of two Protocols will end a standoff that has at times flared into serious tensions, which has existed since Turkey recognized Armenia’s independence in 1991 without then establishing diplomatic relations.
Switzerland has served as mediator in the long process of talks that has finally brought the two together.
A senior US State Department official at a press briefing Thursday 8 October said that while the Swiss have not officially announced the meeting, which is opposed by some groups in both Turkey and Armenia, “They have invited the parties, and the parties have agreed to come, including Secretary [Hillary] Clinton.” The foreign ministers of France and Russia are also expected, he says.
US Charge d’Affaires Mark C. Storella and Ambassador Martin Umohoibhi
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The United States Friday 19 June put in its first day of a three-year term as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the day after the US Senate formally apologized to African Americans for decades of slavery. The US House passed a similar motion in 2008.
The US was elected to the council 13 May, after years of keeping its distance. US Charge d’Affaires Mark Storella told the Geneva-based council Friday “For our part, the United States hopes to reinforce the ability of this Council to speak with one voice about situations that are an affront to human dignity.
US Embassy representatives in Beijing met with Chinese officials from two ministries in Beijing Friday 19 June to discuss China’s tough new restrictions on Internet access and to ask China to engage in dialogue about the issues raised by the curbs on access. In what the Financial Times describes as a “rare direct intervention by the US over internet freedom, which has steadily risen in importance as an issue between the two countries in recent years” the US State Department is saying that the free flow of information but also trade issues are at stake. China will require all new computers sold from 1 July to have Green Dam filtering software. China 18 June ordered Google to prevent access to web sites outside China, citing pornography concerns. The US-based company has recently overtaken Baidu, the main Chinese search engine. Xinhua
Mark Platt, Multistack, left and Michael Christensen, US State Dept, right (click on images to view larger)
Updated 16:30 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Wednesday was the 39th annual Earth Day in the US, which explains much of the flurry of talks, blogs and activities designed to get us thinking along greener, cleaner lines. The Huffington Post carried blogs by filmmaker Robert Redford on taking a stand, and author Michael Pollen, who praises the new vegetable garden at the White House, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt.
Meanwhile, here in Geneva, the US Mission to the United Nations put into operation a piece of new technology that will contribute significantly to Geneva’s reputation as a green city and to the United States government’s efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of its embassies and missions. The State Department sees Geneva as an ideal place to spotlight emerging green technologies because of its reputation as an environmental centre, US staff say, but also because during the past four years the Mission has developed excellent working relations with the canton’s energy department and Geneva’s SIG (industrial services) department. “They’re very forward thinking,” says Michael Christensen, a green engineer from the US State Department, who praises SIG’s efforts “to do everything they can to prevent fossil fuel use.”
Hillary Clinton met with international diplomats in Washington to discuss “Greening Diplomacy” where she mentioned the US Geneva’s Mission and its new air conditioning system.
Geneva’s US Mission goes for maglev air conditioners
The Mission’s new air conditioning system gives the US an opportunity to showcase cutting edge technology, an air cooling chiller system that uses no lubrication oil and a minimal amount of refrigerant in comparison to typical chilling systems. It is a long-awaited commercial application of a solution to a decades-old engineering dilemma of how to maintain a magnetic levitation motor shaft within microscopic tolerances. Magnetic levitation dates back to the 1940s, but nanotechnology was required for this step.
