4 “ to promote the universal values of human dignity,” a roadmap

PURPOSE OF SCREENINGIt is impor tant to properly screen persons referred as trafficking victims to service delivery organizations for assistance to ensure that they are in fact trafficking victims and not smuggled or other irregular mi grants, or other individuals in an abusive or vulnerable situation who may be in need of assistance and/or protection.Furthermore, care should be taken to assess whether the presumed victim is in fact not a victim of trafficking or someone in need of assistance, but someone actually trying to infiltrate the service organization for other motives. -iom, The iom Handbook on Direct Assistance for Victims of TraffickingAfter the Japanese government enacted its Action Plan in 2005, Japan was removed from the US tip Report's Tier 2 Watch List.However, Japan's Tier 2 tip Report ranking persisted in 2005 and 2006, to the Japanese government's chagrin.By 2007, when Japan was once again ranked at Tier 2, the Japanese government had had enough.Other countries considered highly industrializedincluding Canada, all of western and northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and even South Korea, Hong Kong, and Malawi-were ranked at Tier 1. 1 The Japanese government firmly believed that it had met the minimum standards for a top tier ranking.It made its frustration clear to the US State Department, 4 " to promote the universal values of human dignity, " a roadmap arguing that the tip Report was "biased and unfair" and threatening to withhold cooperation with the United States on future issues.2 The US State Department now faced another diplomatic bind.The researchers and grassroots organizations in Japan that debriefed the US embassy in Tokyo for the tip Report's Japan country narrative maintained that the Japanese government was not adequately recognizing victims of human trafficking and questioned its victim identification procedures.3 They asserted that Japanese government statistics underestimated the actual number of trafficking victims in the country.4 Yet the Japanese government resisted this assessment.It demanded that the US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (hereafter the tip Office) clearly explain its evaluation criteria and give assurances that meeting those criteria would result in a top tier ranking the following year.The United States has long viewed Japan as a key ally with shared economic and security interests.5 Strained US-Japan relations over tip Report rankings was undesirable.To resolve the diplomatic tension, a meeting was quickly called between representatives from the Japanese government's Inter-Ministerial Task Force on Combating Trafficking and Mark Lagon, then the US tip Office's director.6 At the meeting, in a gesture of support and encouragement, Lagon provided a document-what later US embassy cables baldly referred to as the "Roadmap to Tier 1" (hereafter the Roadmap)-prescribing the steps the Japanese government needed to take to achieve a Tier 1 tip Report ranking.Following the Japanese government's further request for more detailed instruction, the Roadmap was subsequently appended by a "clarification memo" that included explicit benchmarks against which Japan would be evaluated the next year and offered specific guidelines for victim identification protocols, in large part adopted from the recently published iom Handbook on Direct Assistance for Victims of Trafficking (hereafter the iom Handbook).7 The tip Office representatives explained to the Japanese government that by following the outlined procedures in the memo, as well as working toward ultimately ratifying the un Trafficking Protocol, the Japanese government could come into compliance with US tvpa standards and receive a Tier 1 tip Report ranking the following year.8 According to a US embassy cable, when Lagon presented the Roadmap to the Japanese del e ga tion, he explained that the tip Report was written "in a spirit of partnership" and that the United States was committed to working closely with Japan, "not to export American morality, but to promote the universal values of human dignity."9 This chapter explores what official guidelines like the Roadmap, the clarification memo, and the iom Handbook on which the two are based accomplish "to

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