Traver Riggins stories from The Center for Public Integrity

NOAA nixes listing of Atlantic bluefin as endangered

United States — 2012-01-11T12:59:18-05:00

The U.S. will continue to play a role in satiating a ravenous global appetite for bluefin tuna. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today that “based on careful scientific review” it will not list Atlantic Bluefin tuna under the Endangered Species Act, a decision both lauded and admonished by those in the hot-topic arena.

A listing would have banned all U.S. fishing and trade of the globally popular sushi delicacy. Instead, the administration has placed the fish on a watch list as a species of concern. NOAA says it will revisit its decision in 2013 when more scientific information is available.

The Gulf of Mexico, where the Deepwater Horizon oil spill took place last spring, is the only known spawning ground for Western Atlantic Bluefin tuna. The spill’s potential damage on the bluefin population prompted a petition from the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity to protect the species under the Endangered Species Act.

Larval surveys from 2010 show that the bluefin population is on target with historical averages, said Clay Porch, director of the Sustainable Fisheries Division at the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center. However the samples on which this conclusion is based were taken before the oil spill happened.

By waiting two years for a follow-up assessment, when the agency believes it will have more conclusive information on the spill’s effects, NOAA is “just watching the bluefin tuna go extinct,” said Catherine Kilduff, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

While conservationists lament, fishermen and industry groups are celebrating the avoided loss of an industry they say generates tens of millions of dollars and touches tens of thousands of fishermen.

The American Bluefin Tuna Association, an industry group, called NOAA’s decision “wise.” ABTA boasted in a press release about its role in the assessment saying they had contributed “hundreds of man hours and funds to help NOAA make the correct decision here.” That quote did not appear in a revised version of the release.

U.S. fishermen are responsible for about 5 percent of total bluefin catches Atlantic-wide. These landings are of Western Atlantic Bluefin tuna, but the majority of the world’s bluefin supply comes from the Mediterranean Sea. That stock, the Eastern Atlantic Bluefin, has experienced a 75 percent decrease over the past half-century, largely due to overfishing by European fleets.

An International Consortium of Investigative Journalists report revealed last year that rogue fishing and illegal trade are rampant in the Mediterranean and have created a $4 billion black market in bluefin.

“The future of this species relies on sound international management,” said Larry Robinson, Ph.D., NOAA assistant secretary for conservation and management.

Officials with the international body in charge of regulating Atlantic tuna fishing, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, insisted that management and compliance have improved over the past year. Russell Smith, head delegate of the U.S. to ICCAT, cited individual vessel quotas and third party observers on all large vessels as some of the safeguards that have recently been put in place.

Between 2004 and 2008 the U.S. imported an average of 1.2 million pounds of bluefin each year, according to a NOAA analysis. Imports account for about 80 percent of all the bluefin sold in the U.S.

“We’re economically supporting the overfishing in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean,” Kilduff said.

The rejection of the listing appears to contradict NOAA’s push to ban all international trade of Atlantic bluefin at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species last year. But officials said stronger quota restrictions coupled with more reliable management has changed the environment.

Human trafficking allegations test diplomatic immunity

Qatar — 2012-07-09T12:14:47-04:00

Four women claim in a civil lawsuit that a high-ranking Qatari diplomat in the United States, and his family, forced them to work around the clock for little pay while enduring emotional abuse and -- according to one woman -- sexual assault.

The human trafficking lawsuit was filed March 25 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against Essa Mohamed Al Mannai, Qatar’s second-highest ranking diplomat in the United States. The case has reopened debate over a problem that has vexed U.S. government agencies charged with making sure foreign officials, who enjoy the cover of diplomatic immunity, still obey U.S. laws and labor standards.

The lawsuit has also renewed criticism of the U.S. State Department, accused by human rights activists of not doing enough to address persistent complaints of abuse by visiting foreign officials.

Each year, about 3,500 visas are issued to domestic workers employed by diplomats and officials at international organizations like the World Bank. Between 2000 and 2008, 42 cases of alleged abuse of these laborers were discovered by the federal Government Accountability Office,which surveyed several agencies and non-governmental organizations. The 2008 report, titled “U.S. Government’s Efforts to Address Alleged Abuse of Household Workers by Foreign Diplomats with Immunity Could Be Strengthened,” outlined factors that complicate investigations of abuse allegations — with diplomatic immunity at the forefront. Recommendations in the report to were directed to the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security.

The State Department “is ultimately stuck in a situation where they have to support diplomatic immunity because they want reciprocity” for U.S. diplomats in other countries, said Janie Chuang, a professor at the Washington College of Law at American University.

In response to the GAO findings, Congress beefed up the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, giving the State Department improved tools against trafficking while avoiding the dilemma of diplomatic immunity. That act allows the State Department to block visas to domestic workers seeking employment by diplomats from countries or international organizations with histories of abuse. A State Department spokesperson said the agency has taken some steps to address the problem, but refused to elaborate.

“The State Department could be doing more,” Chuang said in an interview with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In 2010 Chuang published a law review article, “Achieving Accountability for Migrant Domestic Worker Abuse,” which questioned the State Department’s handling of accusations of human trafficking against diplomats.

“In addition to its failure to provide remedies, the State Department inexplicably has refused to utilize even the powers it already possesses to hold diplomats accountable for trafficking abuses,” Chuang wrote.

Embarrassing Rogue Diplomats

The apparent lack of tougher action against alleged human trafficking by diplomats also calls into question recent claims by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the U.S. doesn’t tolerate rights abuses by visiting officials.

“Whether they’re diplomats or national emissaries of whatever kind, we all must be accountable for the treatment of the people that we employ,” Clinton said on February 1, in an address to the Interagency Taskforce to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Diplomatic Immunity, granted by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign officials and ease their work abroad, makes it nearly impossible to hold accountable allegedly abusive diplomats. The lawsuit against Qatar’s Essa Al Mannai may be thrown out because of that immunity.

The lawsuit by Al Mannai’s domestic employees marks the second round of legal trouble in less than a year for the Qatari diplomatic team in Washington: In April 2010, Qatari diplomat Mohamed Yaaqob Al Madadi attempted to smoke a cigarette in an airplane lavatory during flight. When he was approached by air marshals, he allegedly joked that he was lighting his shoes on fire. In the end, two fighter jets were dispatched to accompany the United Airlines flight until it landed in Denver.

Al Madadi returned to Qatar the next day, amid State Department threats to place a “persona non grata” label on Al Madadi. That tag is one way U.S. officials have handled rogue diplomats. It requires a troublesome diplomat to leave the country, or else lose diplomatic immunity.

“At the end the day, all we have is the potential of embarrassing the diplomat or the diplomat’s country,” Chuang said.

The State Department this week declined to say how many — and why — foreign diplomats have been pushed out of the country.

In another case, the Lebanese ambassador in Washington on Tuesday successfully invoked diplomatic immunity against charges of labor abuse brought last year by his former housekeeper.

The State Department each year submits a report to Congress on court cases that involve diplomatic immunity. It refused to provide those reports to ICIJ. However, the 2008 GAO report cites one case in which the State Department asked a country to waive the immunity of a diplomat’s wife so she could be prosecuted. The diplomat’s home country refused the request, and the couple left the U.S.

For some time the State Department has issued a yearly Trafficking in Persons report, which it touts as “the world’s most comprehensive resource of governmental anti-human trafficking efforts.” The report ranks countries in tiers. Tier 1 holds countries working hardest to combat human trafficking; Tier 3 the negligent governments. Qatar has been in Tier 2 for the last two years. In 2008 it was in Tier 3.

Just One Example

Now a new controversy over human trafficking by foreign diplomats centers on an alleged pattern of actions by Mohamed Al Mannai’s family in Qatar and in the Washington, D.C., area. (The family lived in a $1 million, six-bedroom home in Vienna, Va., a 30-minute drive from the Qatar embassy on M Street in downtown Washington.)

In Qatar, Al Mannai’s mother and brother “recruited the women from their home countries [the Philippines and Indonesia] using Qatar-based labor-brokering agencies,” according to the complaint. When the women arrived in in Qatar, the Al Mannai family allegedly “arranged for fraudulent visas at the U.S. Embassy, made travel arrangements, and sent the women to the United States.”

In their contracts, the women were promised $7.25 an hour for 40-hour work weeks in the United States. They ended up making as little as 55-cents an hour for being on duty “around the clock,” according to the complaint.

What started out as an enticing deal for the women — who, the complaint said, “bore significant responsibility to provide financial support to their children, husbands, parents and/or extended families” back home — became a workplace nightmare. They claim they were made responsible for every detail of the household operation, while facing verbal, emotional and even sexual abuse. One woman, “the house keeper,” cooked, cared for three of the family’s children and cleaned the almost 5,000 square foot home. The other woman, “the nanny,” was allegedly required to always be with a fourth and seriously ill child, performing medical procedures, sleeping with the child – or on the child’s bedroom floor at night – and then staying with the child in a Georgetown University hospital room for “months at a time.”

“The nanny was not permitted to leave the hospital ward for any reason,” according to the complaint. “Defendant Essa Al Mannai called the telephone next to the hospital bed periodically to make sure that the nanny was at her post.”

Essa Al Mannai’s wife allegedly berated the women with profanities and allowed her children to repeat the taunts. The couple told the women that the United States was a “dangerous country” and that they would be harmed if they left the family, according to the complaint.

In the complaint, lawyers for the women also claim the employees feared the abuse would escalate – including the fears of one woman who alleged that Essa Al Mannai had sexually assaulted her.

Finally, with the help of two unidentified “Good Samaritans,” according to the complaint, the four women fled the residence in the dark of night, two of them through a window in June 2010 and the other two through a basement door in December 2010.

The plaintiffs are represented pro bono by the Jenner & Block law firm. Lawyers there declined comment for this story.

The Embassy of Qatar did not return requests for an interview. As of publication, the defendants have no attorney registered with the court, and no response has yet been filed. No hearings or appearances have been scheduled.

The State Department’s calling out some countries over alleged abuses shows “that bringing servants into the U.S. and abusing them is not going to be tolerated,” said Christopher Burgess, a human rights activist and blogger.

To centralize cases and work with victims, Clinton established an anti-trafficking unit in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. That office did not respond to a request for interview.

In her February address on the problem, Clinton said: “We will also begin an annual briefing for visiting diplomats and their domestic workers as part of an ongoing effort … to protect domestic workers brought here by diplomats and raise awareness within the diplomatic community.”

NOAA moves to police seas

United States — 2011-09-26T16:57:22-04:00

As part of their continuing effort to take a lead in managing global fisheries, officials with the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration told Congress earlier this month that they’ll work with six countries – singled-out for their lack of enforcement — to cut down on illegal fishing around the globe.

A NOAA taskforce identified vessels in Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, Panama, Portugal, and Venezuela for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, or IUU. Most infractions were for fishing out of season or without proper registration, but in one instance driftnets were used illegally by an Italian vessel to catch 24 eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna — 20 of them under the legal catch size — in the summer of 2009.

This overfished species was at the center of Looting the Seas, an ICIJ investigation that revealed an inept international management structure that fueled a $4 billion black market in eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna.

This is the second time NOAA has attempted this collaborative policing of the seas. Since 2007, an international provision of a U.S. law requires NOAA biennially to identify IUU fishing in U.S. waters, international waters shared with U.S. fishermen, and of protected living marine resources. It does this by working with fisheries management organizations, NGOs and by talking to governments and other regulators. NOAA then works through the U.S. State Department to address shortfalls in regional fisheries management operations or government regulations.

"Illegal fishing must be stopped as it subjects our (U.S.) fishermen to unfair competition and undermines efforts to sustainably manage the valuable fish stocks around the world that so many communities depend on for food and jobs," said Russell Smith, NOAA deputy assistant secretary for international fisheries in a statement.

This announcement comes as NOAA wraps up a controversial evaluation of the Gulf of Mexico-spawning western Atlantic bluefin tuna stock. The evaluation stems from a bid by a conservation group to list the species under the Endangered Species Act, and thus end all bluefin tuna fishing off the U.S. Atlantic coast.

On top of regional regulations, NOAA has set forth some of the most conservation-friendly fishing guidelines for American fleets — rules so stringent, some fishermen say they can’t compete on international markets.

The strict U.S. rules, though, have made American fishermen leaders in conservation efforts. A recently-retired NOAA scientist projected this month that 2011 will be the first year U.S. fishermen will not take more than their share from the sea.

By documenting effectively enforced reforms — reforms held to U.S. and United Nations management standards — NOAA has certified the six countries it pegged with IUU-fishing vessels two years ago in its first report to Congress. Italy, Libya, Panama, China, France, and Tunisia were all cleared of prior claims of fishing-rule violations, though Italy and Panama reappeared in this year's report for new violations.

This is a good sign, Smith said in a phone interview. "Our goal is to get countries to be responsible and take positive actions."

In the case a country doesn't enact appropriate reforms or illegal fishing persists, Congress can decide to bar its vessels from U.S. ports or ban imports.

"We don't want our dollars to go to those that are decimating the resources that we rely on both for food and jobs," Smith said.

In the future, the administration will centralize IUU vessel lists and continue to work "multilaterally" with fishing nations, Smith said.