1. society
2. crime
3. personal offense
4. human trafficking

Development
The 169 commandments
The proposed sustainable development goals would be worse than useless
Mar 28th 2015 | From the print edition
MOSES brought ten
commandments
down from Mount
Sinai. If only the
UN’s proposed list of
Sustainable
Development Goals
(SDGs) were as
concise. The SDGs
are supposed to set
out how to improve
the lives of the poor
in emerging
countries, and how to
steer money and
government policy
towards areas where
they can do the most good. But the efforts of the SDG drafting committees are so sprawling
and misconceived that the entire enterprise is being set up to fail. That would be not just a
wasted opportunity, but also a betrayal of the world’s poorest people.
The SDGs are the successors to the development targets that governments around the world
signed up to in 2000 and promised to reach by 2015. There are eight of these so­called
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with 21 sub­targets, from educating girls to cutting
maternal mortality. Overall, the MDGs have a decent record. Some (such as reducing
maternal and child mortality) will be missed by miles. But others, such as cutting by half the
share of people who live in abject poverty, have been reached. The MDGs themselves do not
always deserve the credit: the plunge in the global poverty rate has far more to do with
growth in China than anything agreed on at the UN. But in other cases, such as boosting
access to clean water, the prospect of missing an international target shamed countries into
acting better than they might have otherwise.
The developing countries and Western aid agencies drawing up the SDGs, which would set
targets for 2030 (see article (http://www.economist.com/news/international/21647307­
2015­will­be­big­year­global­governance­perhaps­too­big­unsustainable­goals) ), seem to
think that you cannot have too much of a good thing. They love the MDGs and want more—
148 more. At the moment there are 169 proposed targets, grouped into 17 goals. These are
ambitions on a Biblical scale, and not in a good way.
Their supporters justify the proliferation by saying the SDGs are more ambitious than their
predecessors: they extend to things such as urbanisation, infrastructure and climate change.
The argument is that cutting poverty is not a simple matter. It is rooted in a whole system of
inequality and injustice, meaning that you need lots of targets to improve governance,
encourage transparency, reduce inequality and so on.
There is truth in that argument, but the SDGs are still a mess. Every lobby group has pitched
in for its own special interest. The targets include calls for sustainable tourism and a “global
partnership for sustainable development complemented by multi­stakeholder partnerships”,
whatever that means.
Developing countries seem to think that the more goals there are, the more aid money they
will receive. They are wrong. The SDGs are unfeasibly expensive. Meeting them would cost $2
trillion­3 trillion a year of public and private money over 15 years. That is roughly 15% of
annual global savings, or 4% of world GDP. At the moment, Western governments promise to
provide 0.7% of GDP in aid, and in fact stump up only about a third of that. Planning to
spend many times the amount that countries fail to give today is pure fantasy.
The backers of the SDGs concede from the outset that not all countries will meet all the
targets—an admission that robs the goals of the power to shame. The MDGs at least
identified priorities and chivvied along countries that failed to live up to their promises; a set
of 169 commandments means, in practice, no priorities at all.
By establishing myriad of top­down targets, the SDG drafters also flout one of the most
important lessons of development: that everywhere is different. Local context is vital; policies
that work in one place may not work in another. The MDGs were broad enough to allow
local variation. The SDGs are narrow. They will lead to cookie­cutter development policies,
which will almost certainly work less well.
Stupid development goals
Worst of all, the SDGs are a distraction. Over the next 15 years, the world has a chance to
eliminate extreme poverty—that is, to end the misery of almost 1 billion people who live on no
more than $1.25 a day. This goal will not be achieved automatically; in many places the
trends today point in the wrong direction. But it could be reached at reasonable cost. Basic
transfer programmes to lift everyone above the bare­minimum poverty line would ask for
about $65 billion a year, a modest amount compared with $3 trillion. This aim is SDG One. It
would have a much better chance of being achieved if it stood at the head of a very short list.
That could still be done. Governments are to approve the SDGs in September. By then the list
should honour Moses and be pruned to ten goals aimed squarely at reducing poverty,
boosting education (for example, extending girls’ schooling by two years) and improving
health (say by halving the rate of malaria infection). Today’s SDGs are full of good intentions,
but everyone knows where good intentions lead.
From the print edition: Leaders
Modern slavery
Everywhere in (supply) chains
How to reduce bonded labour and human trafficking
Mar 14th 2015 | NEW YORK | From the print edition
“THE time that I went into the camp and I
looked, I was shocked. Where all my
expectations and my happiness all got
destroyed, that was the minute that it
happened.” So testified Sony Sulekha, one of
the plaintiffs in the largest human­trafficking
case ever brought in America. He and around
500 other Indians had been recruited in 2005
to work in the Signal International shipyard in Mississippi. Each had paid at least $10,000 to
a local recruiter working for Signal, expecting a well­paid job and help in getting a green
card. Instead they laboured in inhumane conditions, lived in a crowded camp under armed
guard and were given highly restricted work permits. Last month a jury awarded Mr Sulekha
and four others $14m in damages against Signal and its recruiters. Verdicts in other cases are
expected soon. Signal says it will appeal.
A few days earlier Apple said that if it found that a supplier was using recruiters who
charged potential employees fees, it would insist that they were repaid. Workers typically
raise the cash by taking on debts that tie them to employers—a modern­day version of the
ancient practice of bonded labour. The firm has now made suppliers reimburse around $4m
collected in 2014 from some 4,500 workers, and has brought in checks to make the policy
stick.
Estimates of the number of workers trapped in modern slavery are, inevitably, sketchy. The
International Labour Organisation (ILO), an arm of the UN, puts the global total at around
21m, with 5m in the sex trade and 9m having migrated for work, either within their own
countries or across borders. Around half are thought to be in India, many working in brick
kilns, quarries or the clothing trade. Bonded labour is also common in parts of China,
Pakistan, Russia and Uzbekistan—and rife in Thailand’s seafood industry (see article
(http://www.economist.com/news/international/21646200­thailands­fishing­industry­rife­
trafficking­and­abuse­here­be­monsters) ). A recent investigation by Verité, an NGO, found
that a quarter of all workers in Malaysia’s electronics industry were in forced labour.
Until recently campaigners paid most attention to victims who had been trafficked across
borders to work in the sex industry. An unlikely alliance of right­wing Christians and left­
wing feminists argued that prosecuting sex workers’ customers would be the best remedy.
But the focus is now widening to the greater number of people in other forms of bonded
labour—and the proposed solutions are changing. Campaign groups and light­touch laws,
backed up by the occasional high­profile prosecution, aim to shame multinationals into
policing their own supply chains.
In December Pope Francis and the grand imam of Egypt’s al­Azhar mosque, together with
several other religious leaders, launched the Global Freedom Network, a coalition that tries
to press governments and businesses to take the issue seriously. The ILO has launched a fair­
recruitment protocol, intended to cut out agents, which it hopes will be ratified by national
governments. A pilot project will soon start in Jordan’s clothing industry. Last month the
British Retail Consortium, a trade group, published guidelines for supply chains, including
recommendations on working conditions.
Two new philanthropic funds are also being established. The Global Fund to End Slavery,
which is reported to have substantial seed money from Andrew Forrest, an Australian mining
magnate, will seek grants from donor governments and part­fund national strategies
developed by public­private partnerships in countries in which bonded labour is common.
The Freedom Fund, launched in 2013 by Mr Forrest (again), Pierre Omidyar (the founder of
eBay) and the Legatum Foundation (the charity of Christopher Chandler, a billionaire from
New Zealand), finances research into ways to reduce bonded labour.
The Freedom Fund’s first schemes include assessments of efforts to free bonded labour in the
Thai seafood industry, the clothing industry in southern India and—a harder problem, since
the customers are rarely multinationals—in brick kilns in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar. Arguably, the lack of evidence about what works is the main obstacle to reducing
the prevalence of modern slavery.
America made human trafficking illegal in 2000, after which it started to publish annual
assessments of other countries’ efforts to tackle it. But it has only slowly turned up the heat
on offenders within its borders. Australia and Britain have recently passed light­touch laws
along the lines of a law requiring transparency in supply chains that was adopted by
California in 2010. This requires manufacturers and retailers that do business in the state
and have global revenues of at least $100m to list the efforts they are taking to eradicate
modern slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains. A firm can comply by
simply reporting that it is doing nothing. But it seems few are willing to admit this, lest it
upset customers or staff, meaning that the issue is forcing its way on to managers’ to­do lists.
Ending bonded labour will require economic as well as legal measures, says Beate Andrees of
the ILO. Those desperate enough to get into debt for the chance of a job need better options,
and long­standing recruitment practices must change. But she also hopes to see some
“strategic litigation”. Nick Grono of the Freedom Fund thinks one of the multinational
construction firms preparing Qatar to host the 2022 football World Cup could be a
candidate. There is evidence of “wilful blindness” to the terms on which migrant construction
workers are being recruited, he says. A successful prosecution could be salutary.
From the print edition: International
Slavery and seafood
Here be monsters
Thailand’s fishing industry is rife with trafficking and abuse
Mar 14th 2015 | SINGAPORE | From the print edition
BEFORE he
escaped, Maung
Toe, an
immigrant from
Myanmar,
laboured unpaid
for six months on
a Thai ship
fishing illegally in
Indonesian
waters. A cargo
boat came by
every ten days to
bring supplies
Enmeshed in the slave trade
and offload the
catch; naval patrols came close, but the crew would evade them. He had been forced aboard
at gunpoint and sold by a broker to the captain for $900. It was the first time he had ever
seen the sea.
Mr Maung’s story is told by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a charity, in a
recent study of trafficking and piracy in Thailand’s seafood industry. The country hosts tens
of thousands of trafficking victims, by conservative estimates, many from Myanmar, as well
as from Cambodia and Bangladesh. Many of them sweat on trawlers or in vast fish­
processing plants. Some were duped by recruitment agents; a few were kidnapped. Others
are migrants who were waylaid by traffickers while travelling through Thailand.
Overfishing is partly to blame. Average catches in Thai waters have fallen by 86% since the
industry’s large expansion in the 1960s. Such meagre pickings have driven local workers out
of the industry and encouraged captains to seek ultra­cheap alternatives. Boats now fish
farther afield and stay at sea for months at a time, making slavery harder to spot.
International pressure is mounting. The American government ranks Thailand among the
least effective of all countries in fighting trafficking, along with Iran, North Korea and Syria.
Food firms in Europe and North America—who together purchase about a third of
Thailand’s fish exports—seem concerned. Last year the prime minister, Prayuth Chan­ocha,
promised tougher enforcement. At a press conference this month, the authorities said they
had identified nearly 600 trafficking victims in 2014.
But cynics worry that the military government in power since a coup last May will turn a
blind eye again once the immediate threat to exports fades. Frank discussion of the business
seems to be discouraged. Two journalists in Phuket—an Australian and a Thai—may face a
defamation trial for republishing sentences from a Reuters article alleging that navy
personnel had helped traffickers. In January campaigners forced the government to drop a
plan to put convicts to work on fishing boats—a policy probably intended to dampen
demand for bonded labour. A broader shift towards respecting human rights seems some
way off.
From the print edition: International
India’s bonded labourers
One brick at a time
Freeing those enslaved in quarries and brick kilns is a slow process
Mar 14th 2015 | From the print edition
MANY of India’s “modern
slaves” labour in appalling
conditions in brick kilns or
breaking stones in quarries.
Typically they are recruited by
agents offering real jobs and
then trapped by accepting an
Slaves, driven
advance on earnings, which
turns out to be a loan at exorbitant interest that no worker can ever hope to repay. The boss
then suggests that the worker bring in his wife and children, and soon the entire family is
enslaved. Unpaid debts can be bequeathed from one generation to the next.
Despite having been illegal in India for several decades, such practices continue. Corrupt
politicians and police, the caste system and an illiterate workforce with few alternative ways
to make a living combine to keep millions in bonded labour. Yet there are examples of
activists successfully intervening to free such slaves and, crucially, to keep them free. Some
are now being studied to find out what works and could be replicated elsewhere.
One notable example is the Society for Human Development and Women’s Empowerment,
an NGO that organises rescues from brick kilns near Varanasi, a city in the northern state of
Uttar Pradesh. It seeks out victims, teaches them their rights, organises them into support
groups and works with government officials both to free bonded labourers and to make sure
they get benefits they are entitled to and school places for their children. It also provides
training, especially to women, so that they can earn money in other ways. Some freed
workers have even been helped to set up their own brick kilns.
The Freedom Fund is now piloting a “hotspot” strategy that seeks to show how bonded
labour can be eradicated from entire districts by helping the most effective NGOs to work
together. Grants of up to $200,000 have been given to 17 NGOs in 27 districts in Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh, where bonded labour is most prevalent. In the first year, which has just
ended, grants of $1.1m freed 2,193 people, of whom 610 can now support themselves without
further help. Nearly 6,000 families were helped to enroll in government benefit programmes,
and 5,000 officials were trained to enforce the law and give aid to victims.
These efforts, although positive, barely scratch the surface of a huge problem. So the
Freedom Fund has recruited the Institute for Development Studies at the University of
Sussex and Harvard University’s FXB Centre for Health and Human Rights to study the
hotspots to discover what is working and whether it can be scaled up fast. This will include
controlled trials comparing districts in which the NGOs work with similar ones where
nothing is being done, and will look at everything from whether freed workers find the
alternative work that they need to stay free to whether they actually feel freer and more in
control of their own lives. The first results are due in a few months.
From the print edition: International