Complaints Of Forced Labor Linger While Private Firms Continue To Win U.S. Contracts
October 31, 2022—In an irony of ironies, the U.S. government opposes to human trafficking and forced labor at the same time that its Defense Department hires private contractors that routinely conducting those practices.
Migrant civilians working on U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf are subject to trafficking and abusive labor practices, according to a groundbreaking investigation conducted by a team of international journalists. The team included investigative reporters from the Washington Post, NBC News, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalists to uncover the story.
Their findings came to light late last week in a series of articles. What they found sheds light on the murky world of Defense contracting. Moreover, it shows that private contractors routinely exploit some of the world’s most vulnerable population.
U.S. Contractors Exploit Migrant Workers
Foreign workers at U.S. military bases in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other countries are forced to stay in their jobs against their will, saddled with debt, and subject to other abuses. They come from countries like Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and the Philippines. When they arrive at their jobs, they are forced to relinquish their passports, receive less in pay than they had been promised, and work longer hours than expected.
The complaints of forced labor at U.S. military bases may not be as clear cut as the Russian government’s use forced laborers from North Korea or China’s use of labor camps, called “reeducation centers,” in Xinjiang. However, the complaints reflect long-standing problems with U.S. government oversight of its private contractors.
Corruption Among Defense Contractors
In the last five years alone, the U.S. Defense Department dealt with 176 reports of labor trafficking on its military bases, the Washington Post‘s Katie McQue reported. Furthermore, in Fiscal Year 2020, the military substantiated violations that involved over 900 workers.
The U.S. Defense Department relies on private contractors to carry out functions such as serving food, cleaning and conducting other services. The department has experienced long-standing problems in overseeing its private contractors. (See GAO 2006) Despite actions taken by the department to correct corruption, including setting up offices to monitor private contractors, the government allowed trafficking of migrant workers at its bases to continue.
Investigations Kept Hidden
In fact, NBC News reported that the Defense Department kept its trafficking investigations hidden from the public and other government agencies and awarded new contracts to companies with past problems. Specifically, NBC reported that the government awarded billions of dollars in contracts to at least 10 contractors with “substantiated trafficking violations since 2007.”
In 2021, the U.S. Government and Accountability Office called on the Defense Department to improve weakness in its oversight of contractors and to report complaints of human trafficking. A year later, the government watchdog again complained about the government’s limited oversight of contractors.
The “DOD did not consistently report trafficking violations and investigations of overseas contractors as required by guidance,” the GAO said in September.
The reporting shows that the United States has work to do to uphold its zero-tolerance policy on trafficking and ensure migrant workers at its military bases have rights.
See also the work by reporters at the ICIJ and the ARIJ.
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