CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC -- 2009 TIP REPORT:

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 STATE 060544

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KTIP ELAB KCRM KPAO KWMN PGOV PHUM PREL SMIG CT
SUBJECT: CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC -- 2009 TIP REPORT:
PRESS GUIDANCE AND DEMARCHE

REF: A. (A) STATE 59732

B. (B) STATE 005577


1. This is an action cable; see paras 5 through 7 and 10.


2. On June 16, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. EDT, the Secretary will
release the 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report at a
press conference in the Department's press briefing room.
This release will receive substantial coverage in domestic
and foreign news outlets. Until the time of the Secretary's
June 16 press conference, any public release of the Report or
country narratives contained therein is prohibited.


3. The Department is hereby providing Post with advance press
guidance to be used on June 16 or thereafter. Also provided
is demarche language to be used in informing the Government
of the Central African Republic (CAR) of its tier ranking and
the TIP Report's imminent release. The text of the TIP
Report country narrative is provided, both for use in
informing the Government of the CAR, and in any local media
release by Post's public affairs section on June 16 or
thereafter. Drawing on information provided below in paras 8
and 9, Post may provide the host government with the text of
the TIP Report narrative no earlier than 1200 noon local time
Monday June 15 for WHA, AF, EUR, and NEA countries and OOB
local time Tuesday June 16 for SCA and EAP posts. Please
note, however, that any public release of the Report's
information should not/not precede the Secretary's release at
10:00 am EDT on June 16.


4. The entire TIP Report will be available on-line at
www.state.gov/g/tip shortly after the Secretary's June 16
release. Hard copies of the Report will be pouched to posts
in all countries appearing on the Report. The Secretary's
statement at the June 16 press event, and the statement of
and fielding of media questions by G/TIP,s Director and
Senior Advisor to the Secretary, Ambassador-at-Large Luis
CdeBaca, will be available on the Department's website
shortly after the June 16 event. Ambassador de Baca will
also hold a general briefing for officials of foreign
embassies in Washington DC on June 17 at 3:30 pm EDT.


5. Action Request: No earlier than 12 noon local time on
Monday June 15 for WHA, AF, EUR, and NEA posts and OOB local
time on Tuesday June 16 for SCA and EAP posts, please inform
the appropriate official in the Government of the CAR of the
June 16 release of the 2009 TIP Report, drawing on the points
in para 9 (at Post's discretion) and including the text of
the country narrative provided in para 8. For countries
where the State Department has lowered the tier ranking, it
is particularly important to advise governments prior to the
Report being released in Washington on June 16.


6. Action Request continued: Please note that, for those
countries which will not receive an "action plan" with
specific recommendations for improvement, posts should draw
host governments' attention to the areas for improvement
identified in the 2009 Report, especially highlighted in the
"Recommendations" section of the second paragraph of the
narrative text. This engagement is important to establishing
the framework in which the government's performance will be
judged for the 2010 Report. If posts have questions about
which governments will receive an action plan, or how they
may follow up on the recommendations in the 2009 Report,
please contact G/TIP and the appropriate regional bureau.


7. Action Request continued: On June 16, please be prepared
to answer media inquiries on the Report's release using the
press guidance provided in para 11. If Post wishes, a local
press statement may be released on or after 10:30 am EDT June
16, drawing on the press guidance and the text of the TIP
Report's country narrative provided in para 8.


8. Begin Final Text of the CAR,s country narrative in the
2009 TIP Report:

--------------

Central African Republic (TIER 2 Watch List)
-------------- -
The Central African Republic (CAR) is a source, transit, and
destination country for men, women, and children trafficked
for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation.
The majority of victims are children trafficked within the
country for sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, forced
ambulant vending, and forced agricultural, mine, market, and
restaurant labor. To a lesser extent, children are
trafficked from the CAR to Cameroon, Nigeria, and the

STATE 00060544 002 OF 005


Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),for the same purposes
listed above. Children may also be trafficked from Rwanda to
the CAR. In addition, rebels conscript children into armed
forces in the northwestern and northeastern regions of the
country. Unable to survive as hunters and gatherers because
of depleted forests, Pygmies are subjected to forced
agricultural labor by Central African villagers. Authorities
in the CAR have a limited awareness of trafficking, and none
of the nation,s young, but developing, civil society
organizations has an anti-trafficking focus. No
comprehensive trafficking analysis has been conducted and
little concrete data exists. A study released in 2008 by
UNICEF and the Government of the CAR on violence linked to
child labor, however, reveals that forced child labor is
widespread. In addition, a 2005 UNICEF study on child sexual
exploitation found over 40 sex trafficking cases in Bangui
and four of the country,s provinces. UN reports in the last
year indicate that self-defense militias, some of which are
supported by the government, recruited child soldiers.

The Government of the Central African Republic does not fully
comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do
so, despite extremely limited resources, internal conflict,
and instability caused by unrest in neighboring Sudan, Chad,
and the DRC. The government demonstrated its nascent
commitment to combating trafficking through law enforcement
means by securing the convictions of three men for
trafficking a three-year-old girl. In collaboration with
UNICEF, the government collected data on violence linked to
child labor and released a study in 2008 indicating a
significant incidence of forced child labor in the country.
Despite these overall significant efforts, the government did
not show evidence of progress in enacting its 2006 draft law
against trafficking ) which has yet to be presented to the
National Assembly ) or in protecting victims of trafficking;
therefore, the CAR is placed on Tier 2 Watch List.

Recommendations for the CAR: Pass and enact the 2006
anti-trafficking law; develop procedures through which police
and social workers may identify trafficking victims among
vulnerable populations -- such as females in prostitution,
abandoned and street children, and Pygmies -- and train
police and social workers to implement these procedures; end
the practice of jailing children who are victims of sex
trafficking; provide care to children in commercial sexual
exploitation and forced labor, in collaboration with NGOs and
the international community as appropriate; and increase
overall efforts to educate the public about the dangers of
trafficking.

Prosecution
--------------
The Government of the CAR demonstrated some increased law
enforcement efforts to combat trafficking during the last
year. Central African law does not prohibit all forms of
trafficking in persons. A 2006 draft comprehensive
anti-trafficking law awaits Cabinet approval before being
sent to the National Assembly for vote. In January 2009, the
government enacted Labor Code Articles seven and eight which
prohibit forced labor and bonded labor, prescribing a
sufficiently stringent penalty of five to 10 years,
imprisonment. The Central African Penal Code criminalizes
the procurement of individuals less than 15 years old for
prostitution, prescribing penalties of one to five years,
imprisonment and/or a fine. These penalties are sufficiently
stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for rape,
although a fine alone would not be. In 2008, using
kidnapping laws, the government convicted a Nigerian man to
two years, imprisonment for attempting to sell a three-year
old Guinean girl in 2007. The perpetrator,s two accomplices
were sentenced to one year and six months, imprisonment
respectively. Due to budget limitations, the government does
not provide specialized anti-trafficking training to
government officials on how to investigate and prosecute
trafficking cases. Labor inspectors and other law
enforcement officials report that they lack the resources to
address trafficking crimes.
Protection
--------------
The Central African government continued weak efforts to
protect trafficking victims over the last year. Government
officials continued to travel with UNICEF into the interior
of the country to identify, rescue, and demobilize child
soldiers conscripted by rebels. Due to a paucity of
resources, the government does not operate a trafficking
victim shelter. The government refers destitute children
older than four to local NGOs for care; some of these
children could be trafficking victims. Otherwise, the
government did not report referring any trafficking victims
to NGOs for care. Two NGOs reported that the Ministry of
Social Affairs sometimes provided training on general youth
issues, but could not confirm that this included trafficking.

STATE 00060544 003 OF 005


In December 2008, the Minister of Defense assisted UNICEF,s
efforts to release children from a self-defense militia
conscripting child soldiers. The Ministry put UNICEF in
contact with the militia leader, who agreed to cooperate with
UNICEF to release children. The Central African government
did not provide legal alternatives to the removal of foreign
victims to countries where they face hardship or retribution.
The government does not implement formal procedures to
identify trafficking victims among vulnerable populations
such as abandoned children, street children, or females in
prostitution. In some cases, police jail children found in
prostitution for up to a month and then released them, rather
than providing them with rehabilitation and reintegration
care. The government does not encourage victims to assist
in trafficking investigations or prosecutions.

Prevention
--------------
The Government of the CAR continued modest efforts to prevent
trafficking during the reporting period. The government
released the results of a joint government-UNICEF study on
violence associated with child labor in the CAR. The
Ministry of Statistics assisted in analyzing the data
collected. The government established an Inter-Ministerial
Committee to Combat Child Exploitation during the last year.
In June 2008, as part of its African Children,s Day
celebration, the government conducted awareness-raising
activities about trafficking through television and radio
broadcasts. In October 2008, the CAR government participated
in a three-day seminar hosted by with the Central African
Human Rights Observatory and a foreign donor entitled
&Raising Awareness of the New Forms of Slavery in the CAR.8
The event produced the &Bangui Declaration8 of
recommendations to the government and other stakeholders for
the eradicating of trafficking in the country. The
government lacked funding to implement a national action plan
to prevent child sexual abuse, including trafficking, that it
had adopted in 2006. A second anti-trafficking action plan
adopted in 2007 also remains unimplemented. The government
did not take any measures to reduce the demand for commercial
sex acts.



9. Post may wish to deliver the following points, which offer
technical and legal background on the TIP Report process, to
the host government as a non-paper with the above TIP Report
country narrative:

(begin non-paper)

-- The U.S. Congress, through its passage of the 2000
Trafficking Victims Protection Act, as amended (TVPA),
requires the Secretary of State to submit an annual Report to
Congress. The goal of this Report is to stimulate action and
create partnerships around the world in the fight against
modern-day slavery. The USG approach to combating human
trafficking follows the TVPA and the standards set forth in
the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the
United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime (commonly known as the "Palermo Protocol"). The TVPA
and the Palermo Protocol recognize that this is a crime in
which the victims, labor or services (including in the "sex
industry") are obtained or maintained through force, fraud,
or coercion, whether overt or through psychological
manipulation. While much attention has focused on
international flows, both the TVPA and the Palermo Protocol
focus on the exploitation of the victim, and do not require a
showing that the victim was moved.

-- Recent amendments to the TVPA removed the requirement that
only countries with a "significant number" of trafficking
victims be included in the Report. Beginning with the 2009
TIP Report, countries determined to be a country of origin,
transit, or destination for victims of severe forms of
trafficking are included in the Report and assigned to one of
three tiers. Countries assessed as meeting the "minimum
standards for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking"
set forth in the TVPA are classified as Tier 1. Countries
assessed as not fully complying with the minimum standards,
but making significant efforts to meet those minimum
standards are classified as Tier 2. Countries assessed as
neither complying with the minimum standards nor making
significant efforts to do so are classified as Tier 3.

-- The TVPA also requires the Secretary of State to provide a
"Special Watch List" to Congress later in the year.
Anti-trafficking efforts of the countries on this list are to
be evaluated again in an Interim Assessment that the
Secretary of State must provide to Congress by February 1 of
each year. Countries are included on the "Special Watch
List" if they move up in "tier" rankings in the annual TIP
Report -- from 3 to 2 or from 2 to 1 ) or if they have been

STATE 00060544 004 OF 005


placed on the Tier 2 Watch List.

-- Tier 2 Watch List consists of Tier 2 countries determined:
(1) not to have made "increasing efforts" to combat human
trafficking over the past year; (2) to be making significant
efforts based on commitments of anti-trafficking reforms over
the next year, or (3) to have a very significant number of
trafficking victims or a significantly increasing victim
population. As indicated in reftel B, the TVPRA of 2008
contains a provision requiring that a country that has been
included on Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years after
the date of enactment of the TVPRA of 2008 be ranked as Tier

3. Thus, any automatic downgrade to Tier 3 pursuant to this
provision would take place, at the earliest, in the 2011 TIP
Report (i.e., a country would have to be ranked Tier 2 Watch
List in the 2009 and 2010 Reports before being subject to
Tier 3 in the 2011 Report). The new law allows for a waiver
of this provision for up to two additional years upon a
determination by the President that the country has developed
and devoted sufficient resources to a written plan to make
significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the
minimum standards.

-- Countries classified as Tier 3 may be subject to statutory
restrictions for the subsequent fiscal year on
non-humanitarian and non-trade-related foreign assistance
and, in some circumstances, withholding of funding for
participation by government officials or employees in
educational and cultural exchange programs. In addition,
the President could instruct the U.S. executive directors to
international financial institutions to oppose loans or other
utilization of funds (other than for humanitarian,
trade-related or certain types of development assistance)
with respect to countries on Tier 3. Countries classified as
Tier 3 that take strong action within 90 days of the Report's
release to show significant efforts against trafficking in
persons, and thereby warrant a reassessment of their Tier
classification, would avoid such sanctions. Guidelines for
such actions are in the DOS-crafted action plans to be shared
by Posts with host governments.

-- The 2009 TIP Report, issuing as it does in the midst of
the global financial crisis, highlights high levels of
trafficking for forced labor in many parts of the world and
systemic contributing factors to this phenomenon: fraudulent
recruitment practices and excessive recruiting fees in
workers, home countries; the lack of adequate labor
protections in both sending and receiving countries; and the
flawed design of some destination countries, "sponsorship
systems" that do not give foreign workers adequate legal
recourse when faced with conditions of forced labor. As the
May 2009 ILO Global Report on Forced Labor concluded, forced
labor victims suffer approximately $20 billion in losses, and
traffickers, profits are estimated at $31 billion. The
current global financial crisis threatens to increase the
number of victims of forced labor and increase the associated
"cost of coercion."

-- The text of the TVPA and amendments can be found on
website www.state.gov/g/tip.

-- On June 16, 2009, the Secretary of State will release the
ninth annual TIP Report in a public event at the State
Department. We are providing you an advance copy of your
country's narrative in that report. Please keep this
information embargoed until 10:00 am Washington DC time June

16. The State Department will also hold a general briefing
for officials of foreign embassies in Washington DC on June
17 at 3:30 pm EDT.

(end non-paper)


10. Posts should make sure that the relevant country
narrative is readily available on or though the Mission's web
page in English and appropriate local language(s) as soon as
possible after the TIP Report is released. Funding for
translation costs will be handled as it was for the Human
Rights Report. Posts needing financial assistance for
translation costs should contact their regional bureau,s EX
office.


11. The following is press guidance provided for Post to use
with local media.

Q1: Why does the Central African Republic remain on the Tier
2 Watch List?

A: The Government of the CAR does not fully comply with the
minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking;
however, it is making significant efforts to do so, despite
extremely limited resources, internal conflict, and
instability caused by unrest in neighboring Sudan, Chad, and
the DRC. The government demonstrated its nascent commitment

STATE 00060544 005 OF 005


to combating trafficking through law enforcement means by
securing the convictions of three men for trafficking a
three-year-old girl. In collaboration with UNICEF, the
government collected data on violence linked to child labor
and released a study in 2008 indicating a significant
incidence of forced child labor in the country. Despite
these overall significant efforts, the government did not
show evidence of progress in enacting its 2006 draft law
against trafficking ) which has yet to be presented to the
National Assembly ) or in protecting victims of trafficking;
therefore, the CAR is placed on Tier 2 Watch List.

Q2: What progress has the Central African Republic made in
the last year?
A: In 2008, using kidnapping laws, the government convicted
a Nigerian man to two years, imprisonment for attempting to
sell a three-year old Guinean girl in 2007. The
perpetrator,s two accomplices were sentenced to one year and
six months, imprisonment respectively. In January 2009, the
government enacted Labor Code Articles seven and eight which
prohibit forced labor and bonded labor, prescribing a
sufficiently stringent penalty of five to ten years,
imprisonment. Government officials continued to travel with
UNICEF into the interior of the country to identify, rescue,
and demobilize child soldiers conscripted by rebels. In
December 2008, the Minister of Defense assisted UNICEF,s
efforts to release children from a self-defense militia
conscripting child soldiers. The government released the
results of a joint government-UNICEF study on violence
associated with child labor in the CAR. The government also
established an Inter-Ministerial Committee to Combat Child
Exploitation during the last year.

Q3: What can the Central African Republic do to further the
fight against trafficking in persons?

A: Pass and enact the 2006 anti-trafficking law; develop
procedures through which police and social workers may
identify trafficking victims among vulnerable populations --
such as females in prostitution, abandoned and street
children, and Pygmies -- and train police and social workers
to implement these procedures; end the practice of jailing
children who are victims of sex trafficking; provide care to
children in commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor,
in collaboration with NGOs and the international community as
appropriate; and increase overall efforts to educate the
public about the dangers of trafficking.
CLINTON