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Plan Togo: Human Trafficking Dilemmas

Asbjorn Osland

Asbjorn Osland is a Professor of Business at San Jose State University.

I. Introduction

A. Case Synopsis: This case study highlights a strategic ethical dilemma facing the

director of Plan Togo, a non-governmental organization serving the community in varied ways

including anti-trafficking advocacy in Togo, Africa. It presents the extent and causes of slavery

and illegal human trafficking in the world. Efforts to eliminate trafficking by the United Nations,

the United States, and Plan International are summarized. The case concludes with a focus on

human trafficking in one nation, Togo, and some strategic problems faced by Plan Togo.

Stefanie Conrad, then Country Director of Plan International in Togo, considered the

dilemmas associated with human trafficking in West Africa and the role Plan Togo could play.

Plan Togo has to work closely with community leaders, children and others to prevent

trafficking. She and her staff have to build trusting relationships with the communities while at

the same time continually denouncing trafficking. She had two questions – one policy oriented

and the other specific to the lives of individuals:

1. Plan Togo, the local branch office of Plan International, had long supported a law against

child trafficking. When it became a reality the Togolese authorities were so aggressive in

their communication regarding enforcement of the law that trafficking became more

clandestine. The communities Plan Togo worked with became less willing and open to

admit that trafficking was still ongoing. Sensitization work at the community level

became more difficult, including access to key people such as community leaders. Young

people likely to follow traffickers in hope for easy money or youth recruiting children

into trafficking became more clandestine. Should Plan Togo tone down its denunciation

of trafficking activity in the hopes of being better able to work closely with community

leaders, children and others to prevent trafficking?

2. Plan Togo agreed to support the Ministry of Social Affairs to reunite children intercepted

in trafficking with their families but encountered awkward situations from time to time;

Stefanie knew that not all cases were the same. Some children did not want to be reunited

with their families. Plan Togo could not create independent living situations for returned

victims. What should Stefanie and her staff do in the following situations?

A girl nearly 18-years old had been intercepted but she vehemently refused to

return to her family as she voluntarily left home and followed traffickers, trying to

escape a forced marriage.

A 13-year old intercepted girl refused to return to her family as she was forced

into trafficking by her stepmother, with the father’s consent.

B. Case Objectives:

To analyze how to better collaborate with local government in a complex problem like

trafficking

To recommend how Plan Togo could deal with its specific dilemmas of supporting the

government while maintaining the trust of the communities and also tailoring solutions to

the individuals’ situations

To better understand modern trafficking

II. Classroom Management

In a 1-hour class period, the instructor could do the following:

A. The instructor has asked students to prepare brief summaries of the different kinds of

trafficking that exist. Each student or team presents on one of the five forms of

trafficking: sex trafficking, bonded labor, involuntary domestic servitude, forced child

labor, and child soldiers (4 minutes each=20 minutes). Each presentation should

include an estimation of the numbers of people involved, if possible, typical settings

or locations where it is found, and, if possible, examples of such trafficking.

B. Ask a student to facilitate the case by using the following structure: situation analysis,

problem definition, solution identification and implementation plan. The central idea

in case teaching is to teach problem solving and this is one method. The instructor sits

down and observes the process after having instructed the facilitator to pose questions

and listen for responses. Facilitators need to learn to be silent rather than fill voids

with their chatter. (20 minutes)

C. Instructor summarizes key issues. (10 minutes)

D. In the remaining ten minutes, the instructor leads discussion of the Facilitating

Questions and Answers listed at the end of the case. The instructor will have to

distribute the remaining time since answering and discussing all the questions may be

impossible.

Situation analysis: Plan Togo, a non-governmental organization (NGO), serves the

community in varied ways including anti-trafficking advocacy in Togo, Africa. The case presents

the extent and causes of slavery and illegal human trafficking in the world. Efforts to eliminate

trafficking by the United Nations, the United States, and Plan International are summarized. The

case concludes with a focus on human trafficking in one nation, Togo, and some strategic

problems faced by Plan Togo.

Free the Slaves, a nonprofit organization devoted to ending slavery, estimates 27 million

people live in slavery worldwide, more than at any time in history. In its 2010 annual Trafficking

in Persons Report, the United States State Department estimated that 12.3 million adults and

children were victims of forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution around the world.

In the 1970s, Plan International, Plan Togo’s parent organization, changed its focus from

a charitable approach to development assistance with a focus on child welfare and launched its

first programs in Africa. Plan International has been working in Togo since 1988, currently

benefitting 26,320 Togolese children in 242 communities. Plan Togo, the national branch, also

participates in the collective fight against trafficking in terms of prevention and victim

protection, with criminal prosecution left to the state. Plan’s Strategic Framework for Africa

includes investing in human capital, encouraging learning, and collaborating with government

and other agencies in projects such as birth registration.

Problem analysis: Students identify the problems, which are explicitly stated in the case.

1. Should Plan Togo tone down its denunciation of trafficking activity in the hopes of being

better able to work closely with community leaders, children and others to prevent trafficking?

2. What should Stefanie and her staff do in the following situations?

• A girl nearly 18-years old had been intercepted but she vehemently refused to return to

her family as she voluntarily left home and followed traffickers, trying to escape a forced

marriage.

• A 13-year old intercepted girl refused to return to her family as she was forced into

trafficking by her stepmother, with the father’s consent.

Students might focus on the discussion questions listed at the end of the case, which could be

another written assignment. However, the problem solving process is essential to learn so these

additional questions should not be answered in lieu of the two questions Stefanie faces.

Solutions:

1. Plan Togo needs to both work with the government and maintain the trust of the

community. Denunciation of trafficking is certainly appropriate in cases of serious abuse

but in these instances enforcement is required, which is a state function. The police are

alerted and they investigate and arrest perpetrators. Plan Togo needs to focus on

to setting. I took a few examples from the Kiva web site (www.kiva.org ) for Togo just so

they would be real cases:

This 34 year-old woman began retailing generic products in 2000. She gets her

supplies at Accra, so she makes a greater profit on her sales. She runs her business

plus Amoxicillin and Analgin injection. She is married and the mother of two

children.

This 49 year old man is very dynamic. He is security agent with a company

Though these two are older than normal trafficked people, the examples of small retail

and motorbike taxi could apply to young adults as well.

Young people can be trained in trades appropriate to the environment and also provided

with micro-loans to develop small businesses that flow from the training. For example, some

On the program level the birth registration effort is critical so that children and youth

have ID documents and don’t vanish undetected into trafficking networks. Appropriate

Plan Togo’s website didn’t focus on vocational training or microfinance so it could be

that those resources need to be developed or villagers would have to look to other agencies.

According to the website, it focuses on immunization for children under five years of age and

… develop their capacity to advocate, to take action for child protection and

participate at family, community and national levels. With Plan’s support,

Togolese children host live radio programmes on 2 community radio stations on a

(http://plan-international.org/where-we-work/africa/togo/what-we-do ).

2. Victim protection is both a state function and one for which the state needs NGO support.

Plan Togo needs to embrace victims that return and route them into programs that serve

their needs. It also needs to respect their legitimate autonomy as decision makers and not

simply place them with their biological abusive families, in the event the family was part

home but are not yet ready to work. Foster care or group homes may not be common

practice in the community but Plan Togo has to work with the government to avoid

sending children back to abusive families.

If Plan Togo shows people that it is working aggressively, mindfully and effectively at the

Implementation analysis: All of these activities could entail collaboration with other NGOs

and governmental offices that provide training, education support, extension services,

micro-finance, support for cooperatives and other socio-economic development assistance

E. Application Questions and Answers

1. Collaborating with African governments is not easy. The authorities often see

foreign assistance providers as sources of vast resources. Stealing from foreigners is

not the same as taking from a relative, in the eyes of many officials, just like

Americans will steal from employers or cheat the IRS but not steal from family.

Governmental authorities can also be very slow and unresponsive. Suppose that you

are the NGO representative – how can you gain the trust and cooperation of a

corrupt1 government official in order to be effective?

Expatriates and the organizations they represent vary greatly in their tolerance of abuse and

ways of collaborating. Large official international organizations sometimes fund projects where

corruption is tolerated. Though smaller NGOs have to collaborate to gain permission to operate

I worked with developing country governments as an NGO manager for Plan International

for ten years prior to getting my doctorate. When asked to give large amounts to the government

I simply stated that our donors trusted us to spend their money and we had to pass the annual

audit or I would be fired; I tried to personalize the consequences. On the other hand when strange

1 Corruption here means both the auditing definition of material theft and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

definition where facilitation payments are okay but bribery is not. Material means important. Facilitation payments

are those made to get something normally done faster than if actively delayed by the corrupt official and such

payments are not illegal under American law. Bribery is payment made to get something done that would not

otherwise be done. The distinction can be torturous and may require a lawyer, as I found out while listening to a

group of American CPAs question the tax lawyer of the large multinational I worked for in Panama. While I worked

for them I literally had to sign a statement every three months that I hadn’t seen, heard or done anything illegal,

which was part of the enforcement imposed by the U.S. government as a reflection of the company’s infamous

tendency to cut corners through bribery.

repairs and he looked to the sky and said, “God is great.” The vehicle was never repaired but I

overlooked the theft since he thought the money was a divine intervention to resolve his crisis.

Another time the same individual went to Dakar with our Senegalese controller, 250

kilometers south from our offices in northern Senegal to purchase program materials and

supplies. I noted that the prices paid by Saidou were higher than what I had customarily paid and

To get Saidou’s boss to visit with one of our board members during a short visit in Dakar I

In another instance I was threatened by the work inspector with an audit of our office on a

given day. He said that he preferred to go to Dakar that day but he was short gasoline. I gave him

coupons for gasoline and avoided the audit. He could have simply requested the gasoline straight

Though it didn’t involve an official, the following example of local control proved creative. I

had advanced a carpenter too much money to buy a saw to make desks and he wasn’t delivering

them on schedule. He was enjoying himself with the advance. I couldn’t report him to the

What I found was I got along well with officials in relatively stable countries if I did the

following:

I couldn’t show self righteous indignation when small abnormalities occurred.

I used local officials seconded to Plan and community leaders to guide programming. I

didn’t dictate what we did but I vigorously controlled how we implemented projects in

terms of resource allocation.

I used relationships to get things done rather than getting proposals signed. One had to

get the initial agreement signed but after that relationships were central to day-to-day

operations. Trying to get written approval from local officials for all projects would have

paralyzed operations. I of course had written approval from Plan, which was very flexible

in reallocating funds to things that were working well.

Sometimes chaos, corruption, war and the like preclude collaboration and one simply has to

await a better government. Plan’s first attempt in Africa in 1974 resulted in my colleague being

jailed in Ethiopia for several months; he had taken photographs and the authorities in Lalibela

accused him incorrectly of spying for the CIA. When I visited Liberia to sign an agreement for

The instructor could ask students to call local NGO headquarters to see if any of their

2. What examples have you observed that did not as yet constitute trafficking but

could conceivably become problematic? What would exacerbate the situation so that

it passed from legal exploitation to trafficking? For example, exotic dancing is

something students will sometimes do to earn money yet criminal elements in such

clubs also can facilitate the transition of exotic dancers to prostitution through drug

dependency.

First let’s briefly discuss exotic dancing. Many dancers see themselves as entertainers rather than

sex workers. Sexual entertainment in terms of dancing and massage has become common in

American cities even where street walkers are never seen. A visit to Craig’s List Adult Services

or perusal of the last few pages of free local weekly papers in most cities show a host of

situations where adults offer services that could be construed as sexual. Some libertarians view

Agustin, Laura M. (2005). The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex. Sexualities, 8: 5:

618-631.

Barton, Bernadette& Hardesty, Constance L. (Spring 2010). Spirituality and Stripping:

Exotic Dancers Narrate the Body Ekstasis. Symbolic Interaction, 33 (2): 280-296.

Bernard, C. (2003). Exotic Dancers: Gender Differences in Societal Reaction, Subcultural

Ties, and Conventional Support. The Journal of criminal justice and popular culture, 10 (1):

1-11.

Borda, Jennifer L. (April 2009). Negotiating Feminist Politics in the Third Wave: Labor

Struggle and Solidarity in Live Nude Girls Unite! Communication Quarterly, 57 (2): 117-135.

Philaretou, Andreas G. (January 2006). Female Exotic Dancers: Intrapersonal and

Interpersonal Perspectives. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 13 (1): 41-52.

Wesley, Jennifer K. (2006). Negotiating Myself The Impact of Studying Female Exotic

Dancers on a Feminist Researcher. Qualitative inquiry, 12 (1):146 -162.

Prostitution can also be perceived as legal employment in some contexts but it readily

crosses the line to trafficking from poor countries to wealthy. Students can search the Internet for

sites that discuss prostitution, countries of origin, trafficking and so forth. Sites disappear but the

following were ones located on July 9, 2010:

http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/netherl.htm

http://gvnet.com/childprostitution/Moldova.htm

http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/archive/2010/01/most-eu-sex-workers-from

-romania

http://qorreo.com/2010/04/the-industrialisation-of-prostitution/856

Using Academic Search Premier, a database, on July 9, 2010, I found 136 refereed

articles on Sex tourism. Students can readily find articles discussing various contexts. Wealthy

customers seek poor prostitutes in developing countries while on holiday, which is exploitive.

This is not necessarily trafficking but can readily degenerate into forced migrations and further

abuse.

Students should be asked to think of personally observed examples of trafficking. One

domestic example I observed of forced labor was in a U.S. institution for the mentally disabled,

then referred to as the retarded. It was the early 70s and a movement was ongoing to get people

out of the institution into the community in group homes or appropriate facilities. There were

older men that had been in the facility since childhood; during the Depression they were

reportedly left there by their indigent parents. These men functioned well enough to be trusted

workers within the institution, which relied on them for labor for decades without payment. It

was my job as a graduate student in social work to help them make the transition into the

community.

Trafficking and slavery are horrible terms and one wonders how people can be so cruel.

Yet, some accepted cultural practices can become harsh and exploitive. I observed situations

when I lived abroad that could have been normal but they could also cross the line to exploitation

and even trafficking:

I lived next to a Koranic school where students in Senegal grew under the tutelage of

their marabou to become seemingly spiritually centered adults. Part of the teaching of

Mauritanian merchants in northern Senegal had strings of small boutiques where distant

relatives would live in squalor and tend to the store 24/7. The merchants periodically

Women crossing the Mauritanian border with Senegal were not even required to show ID

at times, they were chattel.

In Burkina Faso it was common for would be civil servants to spend long periods as

Children would be sent from family member to family member as cheap labor. Again,

I also lived in Latin America for years and it was common for domestic servants to stay

with families for decades, after arrival as children. They were technically free to leave but

Farm and factory workers also had limited opportunities in some Latin American

countries. They could accept a meager existence or risk bodily harm or execution if they

3. On vacations abroad one can readily observe young prostitutes working in red light

district bars. One sometimes doesn’t know their ages or if they are enslaved by a

pimp. What would you do if, in the company of drunken friends, and one of them

decided to enlist the services of such a girl?

The instructor should ask students how they would handle this. Men should be encouraged to

listen to the views of their female classmates. Some young men see it as a commercial exchange

4. One need not go far in the U.S. to observe harsh labor conditions. Farm workers die

from heat stroke and agricultural accidents. Factory workers are exposed to toxic

substances, repetitive motion injuries in meat packing plants, and perilous

conditions. How can society ensure that labor abuses don’t occur with vulnerable

people, such as undocumented workers fearful of informing on the abusers to the

authorities?

The instructor can refer students to OSHA and its state equivalent offices to view the services,

safety training and audits that help protect workers. Students could also contact one of a host of

Students could also explore the “restavec” problem in Haiti and in the U.S. where

G. What did you learn from this case?

Students should be asked to reflect on the case and point out what was significant to

them. Finding out about the horrors of other countries might be motivating and inspirational to

F. Other References and Resources (Recommend Internet Sites or Books/Articles)

Students can google human trafficking and investigate the various resources that are

available. They can also go to google scholar and look for academic articles on human

trafficking.

http://www.childtrafficking.com/ offers a searchable digital library. Its most downloaded

articles follow, with the citations quoted in their entirety from the website:

Dessy, S.E., Pallage, S. (2003). The Economics of Child Trafficking. 16 p. Universities of

http://www.ecn.ulaval.ca/w3/professeurs/Dessy-Pallage3.pdf

International Organization for Migration (IOM). (2004). Revisiting the Human

Trafficking Paradigm: The Bangladesh Experience. Part I: Trafficking of Adults. 88 p. “Human

trafficking should be seen against a wide range of trafficking acts and outcomes that involve

http://www.iom.int//DOCUMENTS/PUBLICATION/EN/Full_BangladeshTrafficking_R

pt.pdf

Asia Regional Cooperation to Prevent People Trafficking (ARCPPT). (2004). Gender,

Human Trafficking, and the Criminal Justice System. 78 p. This study represents the result of

http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/eap/cambodia/resources/pubs/gender_report_ca

mbodia.pdf

Koen, K. (undated). Children on the edge: Strategies towards an integrated approach to

http://www.genderstats.org.za/documents/ChildSexExploit.doc

Bhabha, J. (undated). Gendered Chattels: Imported Child Labour and The Response to

Child Trafficking. 16 p. “Trafficked girls are more likely to be considered victims who need

http://www.childtrafficking.com

Other web sites follow:

http://www.humantrafficking.org/

http://www.endhumantrafficking.org/

http://www.polarisproject.org/

http://www.humantraffickingsearch.net/