UN Vienna Forum Part 3: Second Plenary and Role of Religious Communities

The second day of the conference opened up with presentations by three different speakers: Babacar Ndiaye, UNODC-West Africa and Central Africa Regional Office, Professor Claude d'Estree from the University of Denver, and Martin Chungong, Director of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Mr. Ndiaye spoke about the problem of post-conflict situations. Essentially, he opened up with the fact that children and women are extremely vulnerable in post-conflict areas, even in situations where there are peace agreements. He suggested that women need to have a stronger presence during peace negotiations in order to do something about this problem.

Professor d'Estree spoke about the Cape Town Forum in October 2007, which gathered religious leaders to discuss what the religious community is called to do in response to human trafficking/modern-day slavery. The results of this gathering included Cape Town Declaration, Plan of Action, and a series of projects. According to the professor, 84% of the world's population adheres to one of three major religions so the involvement of the institutions will be a tremendous resource in the fight against trafficking. Now, an educational campaign launched to reach religious leadership to then educate their congregation and a website has been created in multi-language for education and dialogue. Professor d'Estree believes, "There is power in the pulpit, but there is even more power in the congregation.”

Last to speak in the morning session was Martin Chungong of Cameroon, Director of Inter-Parliamentary Union. Mr. Chungong stated that the IPU was working to address some of the root causes of root trafficking: poverty, poor governance, globalization, development, and gender inequality. He feels the role of the IPU should effect cooperation between source and destination countries and stated that in any case, the response should be sensitive to local cultures and religions.

From this, he mentioned the following recommendations:

• Parliamentarians have legislative role to develop the right atmosphere and ratify relevant
  international instruments
• They should also take measures to ensure implementation and harmonization occurs
• Lastly, they need to adopt oversight of these policies

Although this is out of order, I'm going to report on some of the information gathered from the Role of Religious Communities as the session on Communities in Crisis will need a separate post. The session on the Role of Religious Communities brought together representatives from the Christian, Muslim, Judaic, and Buddhist traditions to speak about the faith-based approach to combating human trafficking. Among the panelists were Maria Anshor of Indonesia and Imam Yahya Pallavicini of Italy representing Islam; Rabbi Levi Lauer of Israel representing Judaism; Dr. Claude d’Estree of the United States representing Buddhism; and HR Vasile Ciobanu of Moldova and Sister Colleen Wilkinson of South Africa representing Christianity.

Two basic topics were discussed: the role of religious leadership in the fight against human trafficking and what religious organizations or institutions have already done. The conversation, at times, diverged to a more theoretical level, and thus perhaps points were missed, but I have included some of the important and interesting ones below.

Ms. Anshor spoke of the role of Ulamas as community leaders, preachers, counselors, and school teachers who have the authority to interpret Islamic values and laws. In Indonesia, the Central Board of Nahdlatul Ulama issued a fatwa that TIP is haram (forbidden) according to Islamic law. Ms. Anshor is the director of Fatayat, a faith-based Islamic organization in Indonesia which provides victims services as well as community activism. The details on the role of her organization's work after the 2005 Tsunami are detailed in the post about Communities in Crisis.

According to Dr. d'Estree, Buddhism in the West and Asia differ on the role of leaders and teachers. There is a type of Engaged Buddhism that exists, which aims to promote Buddhists to work together beyond seeking solely attainment of enlightenment for oneself. This also involves Buddhist leaders discussing these issues amongst one another.

The Christian representatives both cited the Bible, particularly "Love for one's neighbor" as the basis for Christian action against slavery. Both Sister Wilkinson and HR Ciobanu discussed their separate anti-trafficking activities in South Africa and Moldova at length, including providing some victim services, working with national religious leaders to promote awareness, as well as coordinating with non-religious NGOs.

Rabbi Lauer is the Founding Executive Director of Atzum, an Israeli NGO with a separate task force on human trafficking in Israel. Their current projects include advocacy, research, policy suggestions, and public awareness and education. His thoughts on how to engage Jewish religious figures included a series of questions that addressed the problems of how to present the crime and how to use scripture to call leaders to action.

UN Vienna Forum Part 2: Private Sector Involvement

On Tuesday, there was a special session focused on engaging the private sector in the fight against human trafficking. According to the background paper, the session was meant to focus on what efforts corporations are putting forth already and what they can do to further the solution to this problem:

Employers are increasingly aware that their supply chain is vulnerable to this crime, which can lead to unlawful practices and consumer discrimination against their brands. Some companies protect their supply chain against human trafficking by adopting codes of conduct that eliminate forced labour, trafficking, and sexual exploitation. On occasion, corporations take the additional step of supporting public awareness campaigns about the horrors of trafficking.

While these measures help, some corporations are going beyond mitigation and public awareness. These innovators are at the front lines of the battle, applying their core competencies in creative ways. Notable examples include financial institutions which focus on the flow of money, hotel chains which deny access to their facilities for sex tourism, and IT companies using technology as tools for prevention, enforcement and reintegration.

Yet compared to other issues, few corporations are actively involved in the front lines of the fight against human trafficking. Why is this so and what needs to be done to actively engage the private sector in this battle?

The session participants included Peter Brew, Director of the International Business Leader's Forum; David Arkless, Senior Vice President of Manpower; Dan Henkle, Senior Vice President, Social Responsibility at Gap; Lori Forman, Regional Director for Community Affairs at Microsoft; Rakesh Mathur, CEO of WelcomHeritage Hotels; and Minister of Labor Oscar Fernandes of India, among others.

WelcomHeritage Hotels- The Sardar Samand Palace in Pali

The first question the moderator put forth was about why the private sector has been slow to engage the issue compared to other projects. The panelists pointed out that often the media is slow to report on any of these activities, but also the companies are not campaign or lobby institutions and that organizations need to identify the real business issues connected with trafficking if they want the private sector to engage.

Then the panelists opened up into more of a conversation about current or suggested practices to combat trafficking within or by corporations:

1. Business-to-business advocacy


2. Corporations can regulate themselves and their practices


3. Companies do go into refugee camps and victims' shelters to recruit people for work to give them sustainable jobs and job skills


4. Rakesh Mathur of WelcomHeritage Hotels explained how the hotel chain has many hotels in rural areas and in an effort to promote local development, hiring local employees has become a priority


5. One panelist said that there needs to be a values system implemented within the corporation surrounding male employees who travel including the prohibition of purchasing sex while on business-related trips. He said this is very difficult to enforce, but is possible. This reduces the risk of your employees becoming demand factors in trafficking. (From what I have understood from other sessions, traveling males are one of the main demographic populations that sex tourism and brothels advertise to).


6. Another suggestion was to involve business schools and students in projects related to social responsibility and cooperation with NGOs. One panelist brought up a document produced by Harvard Business School that provides NGOs with some guidelines on how best to partner and approach for-profit businesses for support. I think it may be this document, but it is undoubtedly part of Harvard's Social Enterprise Initiative.

The panelists also made suggestions for how the private sector could become more engaged in the response to human trafficking:

1. Businesses are especially interested in investing in projects that work towards root causes like poverty reduction as an area they, as part of the global economic engine, can contribute to.


2. Companies like to donate to results-driven methods and programs such as how many kids were saved as a result of the project.


3. Someone also mentioned that coordination between private and non-profit would be boosted by a global organizing center point for business involvement like, for example, The Global Fund and (Product) for the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Two last points of interest brought up by the panelists were:

• From a business perspective, the people who fight against human trafficking and the people who commit the crimes have serious differences in terms of money. How can $15 million dollars invested annually against trafficking fight against a $32 billion dollar-a-year industry like human trafficking?


• Lastly, the panelists differed on whether the government should step up more regulations or businesses should self-govern on this issue. Some raised doubts that companies would go ahead and commit to ridding their supply chains and traveling businessmen from practices that fuel human trafficking.

UN Vienna Forum Part 1: Opening & Criminal Justice Procedure

The United Nations building in Vienna

VIENNA- I attended the recent UN GIFT Vienna Forum and have much to share. I will break down these posts into separate parts, each post covering either part of a day in the conference or one specific session if there is a lot of material to cover. I will post about the events I was able to attend, however as there were many events, it will only represent a small amount of the knowledge that was shared among the hundreds of experts, academics, NGO representatives, government officials, UN officials, and civic activists that were there over the course of last week. All together, I understood that about 1,500 people attended the conference.

It was an exciting opening day to the UN GIFT Vienna Forum on Wednesday. Lyse Doucet of the BBC served as the moderator for the opening panel of speakers, which included Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the UNODC (you can find his full opening speech here), Ursula Plassnik, the Austrian Minister for European and International Affairs, First Lady Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt, actress and Chair of the Helen Bamber Foundation Emma Thompson, and singer Ricky Martin.

Minister Plassnik touched on an issue that seemed to reoccur throughout the other sessions I attended and that was coordination: coordination between state and non-state actors, coordination on a regional scale, coordination on a global scale. Essentially, that the fight against human trafficking needs an organized center so that the criminals aren't more organized than the people trying to stop it. I do have half of First Lady Mubarak's speech here.



Her second half addressed many issues including the different elements of Egypt's success in anti-trafficking measures and the International Women's Peace Movement, which Mubarak started in 2003 to promote peace and human security. The Movement also has the End Human Trafficking Now Initiative, which works with the business community. She also highlighted things like the involvement of the private sector, the importance of legally binding international instruments such as the CoE convention, and the steps against trafficking taken by Arab states (especially the Arab League and the Arab Women Organization).

Emma Thompson's speech was especially moving as she told the story of a young woman who was trafficked from Moldova to the massage parlor on the street Ms. Thompson grew up on. This woman became part of the inspiration and a contributor to the exhibit "Journey". The exhibit has been on display throughout the conference outside the Hofburg Palace.

Steve Chalke, the Chair of Stop the Traffik, delivered a dynamic speech about the power of grassroots action by discussing the end of the gladiator games in Constantinople and the power of a 21 year-old monk that sacrificed himself to end the brutality of the games. Mr. Chalke then explained Stop-the-Traffik's humble roots, and how it grew to where it is today. He then delivered the 1.5 million signatures collected by the campaign and delivered them to Mr. Antonio Maria Costa of UNODC. The delivery was accompanied by a video of the campaign to gather the signatures.

Mr. Costa then delivered his speech that explained the efforts of UNODC and the importance of regional cooperation. He also mentioned that the UN General Assembly will be taking up debate on this issue in May or June of this year.

While the opening session ended, the program rolled right into statements by various government representatives who gave speeches on the activities and commitments of their respective countries including First Lady Margarita Cedeño of the Dominican Republic, Chair of the UAE's National Committee to Fight Human Trafficking Dr. Anwar Gargash, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Belarus, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria, and Indonesia's Minister for Women's Empowerment Dr. Meutia Hatta. Their speeches encompassed a very wide range of topics, all of which were addressed throughout the sessions of the conference.

That day, I was able to attend two more sessions. The first was "Criminal Justice Responses to Human Trafficking" and it was set up as a mock investigation and trial with the purpose of identifying detrimental and recommended practices especially in relation to the rights of the victim. It was opened with a short performance by Emma Thompson and followed by a series of good/bad scenarios in the police station and court house.

The scenarios that attempted to show detrimental practices or the "bad" scenarios showed the investigator using insensitive language to the victim, an assumption of consensual involvement in prostitution, allowing a translator to apply pressure on the victim using native derogatory phrases, etc. The "bad" court room scenario allowed for the trafficker to have contact with and harass the victim before the trial began, a poorly prepared prosecution, and the judge allowed a purposefully intimidating line of questioning.

The scenarios intended to show the recommended practices when dealing with a trafficking case included an officer that used clear language, but used leading questions that eventually brought out the whole story of the victim without further adding to the trauma. He also asked for consent to allow an NGO representative to sit with the victim while she gave her testimony, and the representative then explain the services they have to offer the victim. The "good" court room scenario provided the victim with protection by bringing in a screen that hid the victim's identity from the public, as well as a well-prepared prosecutor with corroborative evidence, and the judge prevented the victim's personal sexual history from entering into evidence.

The audience discussed their thoughts and experiences after the scenarios were played out, and some concerns were raised with the recommended practices. For example, the NGO representative offered comfort to the victim while she told her story, and a member of the audience said she would never do that as the victim is most likely already traumatized by physical contact. Another objection was raised that the NGO representative was even at the police station as the victim should never feel confused about the role of the police and the role of the NGO. This also led to a debate as to whether police could conduct interviews at the NGO, however an officer in the audience felt that this tends to raise fears among other victims at the NGO and may put the victim at risk as everyone else at the shelter would know who was talking to the police.

Overall, I would say the presentations were a little overdone and unlikely, however, at the same time, court and investigation procedures are an important part of combating the crime, yet have been one of the slowest elements worldwide to be brought up to speed.

Trafficking Tough to Tame in Rich Gulf States

From Reuters:

DUBAI (Reuters) - Aysha sold her wedding gold to pay traffickers $200 (100 pounds) to find her and a cousin jobs in Dubai.

A world away from her village in Uzbekistan, she was forced to work in a disco and expected to offer sex. Beaten by her Uzbek boss when she shooed prospective clients away, she and her cousin fled and hid in airport toilets for two days, surviving on tap water.

Aysha's story reveals the dark underbelly of glitzy, fast-paced Dubai, the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub. It also highlights a problem that bedevils many states in the region and is a bone of contention with their close ally the United States.

The 26-year-old, who only identified herself as Aysha for fear the traffickers would hurt her family, supports her son and sick mother back home. "Some girls like going to discos but I am Muslim, I cannot go to places where people dance and drink let alone work there," she said at the shelter in Dubai where she now lives.

Tens of thousands of people arrive in Dubai and neighbouring states each year, seeking a better life in a region booming on record oil revenues. But the wealth on show in Dubai's sprawling shopping malls, skyscrapers and smart restaurants attracts traffickers too.

Foreign workers and expatriates with different lifestyles and cultures make up over 80 percent of the more than 4 million population in the United Arab Emirates, a Muslim country. Prostitution, even adultery, are illegal yet bars abound where women are available for sex.

In a 2007 report, the U.S. State Department accused its Gulf Arab allies of being among the worst offenders in failing to prevent people from being sold into sex and servitude. It put the UAE on "Tier 2 Watch List" for not doing enough but Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar joined Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan on a list of 16 states subject to possible sanctions.

In 2006, the UAE -- a wealthy seven-member federation including Abu Dhabi and Dubai -- passed the Arab world's first law aimed specifically at combating the trade in humans, with penalties ranging from five years to life in jail. Last month, the nearby Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, which has a free trade pact with the United States, issued its own law.

"It is not a stigma on the UAE that human trafficking takes place because many prosperous, attractive places to live have this problem," said Anwar Gargash, a minister who heads a committee set up to coordinate efforts to implement the law. "The stigma is if we do nothing about it," he said. "We have done a lot ... but we have a long way to go."

Read the full article

Human Trafficking in Wisconsin, USA

From Chippewa.com:

MADISON — Human trafficking is happening in Wisconsin, but most law enforcement agencies haven’t received any training to recognize the crime and don’t consider it a problem, a new state report says.

The Office of Justice Assistance’s study marks the first attempt to gauge trafficking in the state. It concluded international and domestic trafficking involving dozens of victims is taking place in urban and rural areas across much of the southern two-thirds of the state.

But three-quarters of the justice agencies and more than a third of social services providers surveyed in the study said trafficking is not a serious problem or isn’t a problem at all.

“This is an indication of the lack of awareness,’’ the report said. “At the very least, the results indicate a need for training and education.’’

Tim Dewane is the director of the School Sisters of Notre Dame’s Office for Global Justice and Peace in Elm Grove and a member of the Milwaukee Rescue and Restore Coalition, which was launched by the federal government to raise human trafficking awareness. He said the report’s findings aren’t surprising.

“When Wisconsin or anywhere else has taken a closer look at human trafficking, they realize for most law enforcement it hasn’t been on their radar screen,’’ Dewane said. “This isn’t just a global issue but has local ramifications as well. Hopefully (the report) will open up some eyes.’’

The state Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill that would outlaw human trafficking. Anyone caught trafficking a person for sex or labor would face up to $100,000 in fines and 25 years in prison. Anyone caught trafficking a minor could get 40 years.

Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, the author of the bill, said the report may drive him to amend it to include police training.

The report calls human trafficking the third largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world. Federal justice and immigration officials estimate as many as 17,500 people are trafficked annually into the U.S. for sex and forced labor, the report said.

The highest profile case in Wisconsin involved a pair Brookfield doctors who forced a Philippine woman to work as their maid for nearly two decades. The couple was convicted in 2006.

But hard data on victims in the state is nonexistent. The Office of Justice Assistance sent out a survey to police, sheriffs and prosecutors as well as social service providers early last year hoping for more information.

Of the 261 justice agencies that responded, only 6 percent said they had run across a case they considered slavery or human trafficking.

Thirteen percent said they didn’t know if they’d ever encountered a case, and 7 percent said they’d had any training on human trafficking.

Read the full article

Human Trafficking to Be a Felony Crime in New Mexico

From the Alamogordo Daily News:

SANTA FE- Human trafficking will be a felony crime in New Mexico under a new law taking effect in July. Governor Bill Richardson signed the crime legislation into law on Friday in Las Cruces. New Mexico was the only border state without a separate crime against human trafficking.

''Human trafficking must be outlawed, human beings should not be treated as property and detained against their will,'' Richardson said in a statement. Attorney General Gary King pushed for the human trafficking legislation, which was sponsored by Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Dona Ana.

Proponents said the new law was needed to prevent New Mexico from becoming a corridor for what often is described as modern-day slavery, in which victims are lured into exploitative jobs or the sex trade and held against their will.

Under the new law, human trafficking will be a third-degree felony, which is punishable by three years in prison. If the victim is under 13, it will be a first-degree felony, which can be punished by a prison term of up to 18 years. If the victim is 13 to 15 years-old, it will be a second-degree felony, which has a basic sentence of up to nine years in prison.

Read the full article

3 Arrested for Human Trafficking in Delhi

Ajay Shukla, allegedly involved in human trafficking, was arrested by the Crime Branch, Delhi Police

From the Times of India:

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Saturday claimed to have cracked a human trafficking racket, which sent over 100 people to the United States using forged documents in the past three years, with the arrests of three persons in the Capital.

The racket used to allegedly target "innocent looking" people who used to queue up at the US embassy for applying for visas, offering the vulnerables their help in rectifying mistakes in supporting documents.

This is one of the three biggest human trafficking racket cracked in the Capital in the last one year.

Following a tip off, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Satyendra Garg told reporters, the arrests were made from various parts of Delhi on February 20.

Ajay Shukla, the alleged kingpin who runs his office from a Safdarjung Hospital staff quarters, his associate Pawan Mishra and Gursahib Singh, a visa applicant, were caught by the special team of Delhi Police's Crime Branch, Garg said. Mishra was caught by the sleuths from Rohini in north-west Delhi and fake bank statements, authority letters, visa deposit slips, visa interview letters besides two original passports were allegedly recovered from him.

His interrogation revealed Shukla's alleged involvement in the racket and based on the information provided by Mishra, Shukla was arrested from near American embassy in Chanakyapuri.

Nigeria: Media Tasked on Human Trafficking

From AllAfrica.com:

The media has great roles to play in the fight against the trafficking in persons (TIP), the president of Economic Community in West African States (ECOWAS) said yesterday in Abuja.Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, made the statement yesterday at a sensitization workshop organized for the media by the Department of Humanitarian and Social Affairs, ECOWAS. Chambers said trafficking in person is a crime that is pervasive and growing in the West Africa region and to avert this, there is the need for "networking and dialogue with the media."

The ECOWAS president who was represented by the Acting Director of Humanitarian and social affairs, Mrs H.U.Didigu, said the crime which primarily involves women, children, the poorest and the least educated is so serious and pervasive that only a coordinated and vigorous effort of all stakeholders will be able to address it successfully.

"We have always regarded the media as partners in the fight against human traffic especially in the area of prevention and awareness rising. Our expectation from you as key stakeholders is indeed high. Your role as a watchdog in keeping human trafficking on the front burner of societal issues can not be over emphasized. We expect that the media cooperates with us and other stakeholders to give due publicity to counter Trafficking in persons initiatives."

Read the full article

Washington D.C. Couple Charged with Sex Trafficking

Adams Morgan, Washington D.C.

From the Examiner:

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - A D.C. couple was arrested on charges of human trafficking and prostituting young females from Mexico and Honduras, according to charging documents filed in federal court.

The arrests of Franklin Yasir Mejia-Macedo and Yaneth Martinez grew out of an investigation centered in North Carolina, according to court documents.

“These arrest were made out of an ongoing investigation, that is really all I can say,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Richard Rocha. Mejia and Martinez had business cards printed up for services such as “Hair Cuts for Men Only” and “Flowers Home Delivery,” and handed them to men on the streets of D.C.’s predominately Hispanic neighborhood such as Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights, authorities said. The business cards are commonly used to advertise prostitution, according to an ICE special agent who signed the charging document filed in U.S. District Court.

“Based on my experience in investigating human trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution and related offenses, I know that such language [is] commonly used as code language to advertise prostitution,” the special agent wrote.

The human trafficking and prostitution operation came to the attention of federal law enforcement when Martinez, 33, unwittingly handed one of her cards to a federal source, according to documents. On Monday, federal agents arrested her and Mejia at their Petworth residence. A 24-year-old woman at the residence told agents she served as a prostitute and shared her earnings with Martinez, according to documents.

Mejia admitted that he was a native of Honduras and living illegally in the United States. Mejia was charged with unlawful transportation of an alien. Martinez was picked up on arrest warrant out of North Carolina on charges of sex trafficking.

Read the full article

Corrupt Immigration Officials Facilitate Trafficking at Airports

From Xpress:

To help curb human trafficking, a visiting senior Philippine official wants Manila to implement stiff regulations that prohibit airport personnel from escorting departing passengers.

Surveillance cameras need to be installed in major international airports in the Philippines to monitor and catch erring immigration and airport personnel, said Dante Ang, chairman of Philippine Presidential Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force.

He said these are part of sweeping changes that his team has proposed following a dialogue in the UAE with Filipino workers that included about about 40 women who claimed they were forced into prostitution by syndicates between 2006 and 2007.

Ang said his team appreciated the cooperation of the UAE authorities and noted the work of Dubai Police in pursuing human trafficking crimes.

Airport ushers, also called “escorts”, are men or women employed by various government agencies at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.

They guide passengers through the maze of exit procedures, but they have been targeted by migrant workers groups and politicians for their alleged abuse of duty, including extortion.

Ushers are blamed for squirreling away undocumented overseas workers all the way to the aircraft knowing they don’t have pertinent papers and may end up at the mercy of abusive employers or handlers abroad.

The team’s recommendations will be submitted to Philippine President Gloria Arroyo.

“We recommend the termination of the so-called ‘escort services’, other than for the diplomatic passport holders,” Ang said.

Another solution, he said, is to randomise the queue, and retrofitting all immigration counters with cameras.

“This may not totally eliminate, but it can minimise the problem,” said Ang.

Visit visas have allegedly been used to lure Filipino women who end up being forced into prostitution.

In 2006, 30 Filipinas sought protection from the Philippines Consulate in Dubai against pimps who they claimed forced them into prostitution and 10 more came forward last year. The age of the 40 alleged victims were between 16 and 24.

The official said some of the victims go through Singapore, Hong Kong or Malaysia, before they arrive in Dubai. Filipinos do not require visas to travel to other countries in South East Asia.

“We’ve learnt that in several cases, the syndicate uses a ribbon marker for pre-selected Filipina human trafficking victims so they slip through the airport without any questions being asked.

“The Mama Sangs [handlers] deal with a few bad eggs at immigration. That’s what the victims are saying. Apparently, these syndicates have people both inside and outside the airports,” Ang said.

An official from the Philippine consulate told XPRESS on condition of anonymity they had gathered statements from several victims last year that bribe money changed hands at immigration counters before the girls ended up in the UAE.

“The bad guys [there] never go to jail because the evidence is weak, and testimonial evidence against them have no value, especially when complainants are overseas. They are just reassigned to other posts and recycled.”

Read the full article

'Dr Kidney' Arrest Exposes Indian Organ Traffic

From the Asia Times:

MUMBAI - The arrest of "Doctor Kidney" Amit Kumar for running a sizeable racket in live kidneys has highlighted the role that South Asia plays as the hub of an international trade in human organs.

A sophisticated but unregulated healthcare industry, a "donor pool" of desperately poor people ready to sell a kidney, and a corrupt monitoring system have combined to create a special brand of "medical tourism" in the region, especially in India and neighboring Pakistan.

While India's 1994 Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA) is observed mostly in the breach, the impact of Pakistan's Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance passed in 2007 is yet to be gauged. Until last year, the organ trade was legal and flourished openly in that country.

Top transplant surgeons are collaborating with criminal organ trafficking networks to target the desperate, noted Nancy Scheper-Hughes, founding director of Organs Watch, an academic research project at the University of California, Berkeley, while speaking at the Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking this month.

"The latest arrests reveal a global network larger in scale than any other one," said Dr Samiran Nundy, gastroenterological surgeon at the prestigious Sir Gangaram Hospital in New Delhi. Nundy was one of the architects of India's transplantation laws that should have put an end to paid transplants in this country. The THOA was the result of activism by a small group of conscientious medical professionals appalled by the trade.

Kumar is accused of luring poor laborers to his "hospital" in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon with promises of job offers or large sums of money. Typically, they were promised 300,000 rupees (US$7,500) but paid only 30,000 ($750) after the surgery, police said.

He is alleged to have conducted more than 500 transplants over an unspecified period, charging up to $50,000 dollars for each operation. Investigators say his patients came from Britain, the United States, Turkey, Nepal, Dubai, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The racket first came to light on January 24 when police raided Kumar's hospital following a complaint by a "donor" who had been paid less than the amount promised. At his hospital police found recipients recovering from surgery and arrested a number of doctors, nurses and support staff.

Read the full article

New York Detective Accused of Forcing a 13-Year Old Girl into Prostitution

The accused- Detective Wayne Taylor

From the New York Times:

By Bob Herbet- A New York City police detective and his girlfriend have been accused of kidnapping and forcing a 13-year-old girl into prostitution.

According to the Queens district attorney’s office, the detective, Wayne Taylor, and the girlfriend, Zalika Brown, would parade the girl at parties and other places where adult men had gathered and force her to have sex with them for money — $40 for oral sex, $80 for intercourse.

The child was an investment. The couple allegedly told her that she had been purchased for $500 — purchased, like the slaves of old, only this time for use as a prostitute. Other than the fact that one of the accused in this case is a police detective, there was nothing unusual about this tale of trafficking in young female flesh.

Our perspective is twisted. It was a big story when a television newsman was crude and thoughtless enough to use the term “pimped out” in a reference to Chelsea Clinton. The comment generated outrage — as it should have — and the newsman was suspended. But if someone actually pimps out a 13-year-old child, and even if that someone is alleged to be a police detective, it generates a collective yawn.

Across the country, young girls by the many thousands — children — are being drawn into the hellishly dangerous world of prostitution. They are raped, beaten and exploited in every way imaginable.

As part of the staggeringly lucrative commercial sex trade, the role of these children is to satisfy the sexual demands of johns who in most cases do not fit the stereotype of a pedophile.

“Many of the guys who buy sex with children would never consider themselves pedophiles,” said Rachel Lloyd, founder of an organization in New York called GEMS that offers help to under-age girls in the sex trade. “They’re not necessarily out there looking for 12-year-olds or teenagers. They just kind of don’t care. They feel like they have the right to buy sex from someone, and they prefer it to be someone who looks younger and cleaner and less drug-addicted.”

In the case of the accused New York City detective, the authorities acted promptly and effectively. The girl managed to escape and notified the police, who investigated immediately. Detective Taylor and Ms. Brown were arrested and the case has been turned over to the office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. Both are in custody.

But law enforcement does not always respond in a positive or constructive way. It is common across the country for under-age girls engaged in prostitution to be arrested, which is bizarre when you consider that it is a serious crime — statutory rape — for an adult to have sex with a minor.

If no money is involved, the youngster is considered a victim. But if the man pays for the sex — even if the money is going to the pimp, which is so often the case — the child is considered a prostitute and thus subject in many venues to arrest and incarceration.

“We often see the girls arrested and the pimps and the johns go free,” said Carol Smolenski, the head of Ecpat-USA, a group that fights the sexual exploitation of children. “One of the big problems is that there is this whole set of child sex exploiters who are not targeted as exceptionally bad guys.”

What’s needed is a paradigm shift. Society (and thus law enforcement) needs to view any adult who sexually exploits a child as a villain, and the exploited child as a victim of that villainy. If a 35-year-old pimp puts a 16-year-old girl on the street and a 30-year-old john pays to have sex with her, how is it reasonable that the girl is most often the point in that triangle that is targeted by law enforcement?

Read the full article

The Age of Ambition

From the New York Times:

By Nicholas Kristof- With the American presidential campaign in full swing, the obvious way to change the world might seem to be through politics.But growing numbers of young people are leaping into the fray and doing the job themselves.

These are the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s, and they are some of the most interesting people here at the World Economic Forum (not only because they’re half the age of everyone else).

Andrew Klaber, a 26-year-old playing hooky from Harvard Business School to come here (don’t tell his professors!), is an example of the social entrepreneur. He spent the summer after his sophomore year in college in Thailand and was aghast to see teenage girls being forced into prostitution after their parents had died of AIDS.So he started Orphans Against AIDS (www.orphansagainstaids.org), which pays school-related expenses for hundreds of children who have been orphaned or otherwise affected by AIDS in poor countries. He and his friends volunteer their time and pay administrative costs out of their own pockets so that every penny goes to the children.

Mr. Klaber was able to expand the nonprofit organization in Africa through introductions made by Jennifer Staple, who was a year ahead of him when they were in college. When she was a sophomore, Ms. Staple founded an organization in her dorm room to collect old reading glasses in the United States and ship them to poor countries. That group, Unite for Sight, has ballooned, and last year it provided eye care to 200,000 people (www.uniteforsight.org).

In the ’60s, perhaps the most remarkable Americans were the civil rights workers and antiwar protesters who started movements that transformed the country. In the 1980s, the most fascinating people were entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who started companies and ended up revolutionizing the way we use technology.

Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways.

Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry. If that sounds insanely ambitious, it is. John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan title their new book on social entrepreneurs “The Power of Unreasonable People.”

Universities are now offering classes in social entrepreneurship, and there are a growing number of role models. Wendy Kopp turned her thesis at Princeton into Teach for America and has had far more impact on schools than the average secretary of education.

So as we follow the presidential campaign, let’s not forget that the winner isn’t the only one who will shape the world. Only one person can become president of the United States, but there’s no limit to the number of social entrepreneurs who can make this planet a better place.

Read the full article

48 Charged in Supposed Human Trafficking Ring

The Arizona-Mexico border

*There is no specific mention of exploitation in this article. Smuggling is smuggling. Human trafficking is human trafficking. Although similar, there is a distinct difference in that human trafficking involves the deceit, coercion and exploitation of its victims while smuggling involves a consensual transaction between transporter and transportee for mutually advantageous reasons. Read more about trafficking vs. smuggling HERE.

From Fox News:

PHOENIX — Four dozen people accused of taking part in an immigrant trafficking ring have been indicted on human smuggling and money laundering charges, authorities said.

The group brought in as much as US$130,000 a week moving people from Naco, Mexico, to its center of operations in Phoenix and then to destinations across the U.S., Phoenix police Lt. Vince Piano said Thursday. Piano said the ring was believed to be one of the biggest operating in Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point into the country.

"It's not the end of the game, but we believe we have made some very important intelligence directions in the fight against the smugglers," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, whose office was prosecuting the case.

Ten of the 48 suspects were arrested. An additional 10 people who are expected to face charges in the future also were netted in the sweep, authorities said. The investigation led to the discovery of 13 "drop houses" in Phoenix where human smugglers hold customers until they pay up and are sent to their final destinations. The area is believed to have about 1,000 drop houses.

Authorities allege that two Cuban immigrants living in the area, 41-year-old Jose Luis Suarez-Lemus and 35-year-old Roel Ayala Fernandez, ran the ring and paid people in Mexico and Arizona to help smuggle immigrants.The two paid recruiters in Mexico to find customers, Mexican police to allow smugglers to stage their crossings and trail guides to lead immigrants through a conservation area in southeast Arizona, Piano said.

Drivers were paid to bring the immigrants by van to Phoenix, and other drivers were used to spot law enforcement vehicles and protect rival smugglers from forcing them off the road in an attempt to kidnap and extort their customers, he said. Once the immigrants were in a drop house and payments were made, drivers were hired to bring immigrants to spots across the country, authorities said.

They said the group would move four to six loads of immigrants per day, each with six to 10 people. Smuggling fees averaged US$2,500 per person.

Human Trafficking Covered by Two New International Masters Degrees in Ireland

From Dublin City University:

Ireland- The School of Communications [at Dublin City University] today announced the introduction of two new Masters programmes which will start in September 2008 - a Masters in International Journalism Studies and a Masters in International Communication. Both programmes analyse international human rights issues and conflicts in the world today, such as human trafficking, sweatshops and torture, and crises in Darfur, West Bank and China. Modules offered include Media and Conflict, Human Rights Journalism, International Journalism and Europe, and Politics and Media. Whereas the MA in International Communication will examine these from a theoretical perspective, the MA International Journalism Studies will take an approach based on journalism practice.

The two degrees are full-time, one-year programmes.

The MA in International Journalism Studies is particular suited to journalists and graduates of undergraduate journalism programmes. Uniquely, it offers students the opportunity of spending one semester at DCU, and one semester at Schools of Journalism in either the US or Australia. It is targeted at journalism graduates who wish to deepen their understanding of the media's role in international society and develop their capacity to operate professionally in international contexts. The MA in International Communication is targeted at Irish media professionals who wish to explore contemporary media practices. Applicants should have a primary degree in journalism, communications or related area, and have an active interest in international affairs. The course will examine current developments in media institutions, values and practices, with particular reference to globalisation influences and tendencies.

Professor Paschal Preston, Head of the School of Communications said, "The School of Communications has built up a world-renowned reputation in media studies and is now delighted to announce the introduction of these two new programmes which will build on the School's leading-edge expertise in communication theory and journalism education".

Students can apply online through PAC. Further details on the programme can be found at www.dcu.ie

Poverty Fuels Child Trafficking

From Indianmuslims.info:

Lahore- A disturbing new trend in people smuggling is emerging in Pakistan: more and more children are being sent by their parents on hazardous journeys in a bid to reach wealthier countries, with several instances of such trafficking reported recently in local newspapers.

Of the more than 2,200 persons deported to Pakistan in 2007, mainly from Oman or Iran (from where many hoped to reach European destinations), 15 were children under 18, according to figures maintained by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Two of the children sent back were Muhammad Zulfikar, 12, of Bhimber District in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, and Waqar Hasan, 14, from the town of Mandi Bahauddin, near Gujrat, a town 120km north of Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab. Zulfikar had been apprehended on the Turkish border and Waqar on the Iranian frontier. Both boys had hoped to make it to Greece.

"I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the many people from my area who have gone abroad and made a fortune," Zulfiqar said after being handed over to the FIA, the government agency responsible for tackling human trafficking.

According to Arif Bokhari, the FIA's assistant director, the "trend of trafficking teenage boys" is rising in Pakistan's populous Punjab. He blamed parents who "paid out large sums of money to agents" for subjecting children to such hazards.

Under an agreement between the FIA and the Lahore-based Child Welfare Protection Bureau (CWPB) of the Punjab government, both Zulfikar and Waqar are now at the bureau's well-run premises, attending school and living with some 200 other children at the hostel.

Other victims of child trafficking, including former child camel jockeys rescued from Gulf States over the past few years, are also housed at the facility. "We educate and rehabilitate these children," Zubair Ahmed Shad, programme director at the CWPB, told IRIN. He also explained that the "children saved from traffickers and living with us are doing well", and pointed out there had been a sharp decline in trafficking to Gulf states since the United Arab Emirates (UAE) banned the use of child jockeys in March 2005.

But other children are not as fortunate as Zulfikar and Waqar, who, despite their ordeal, are alive and well.

In 2006, a family from the town of Gujranwala, about 80km north of Lahore, reported their son missing - apparently while on his way to Greece - only to learn later that he had died during the ordeal.

The agent whom the parents had paid to organise the hazardous journey was arrested, but the victim's family declined to testify against him after he promised to take two other sons overseas free of charge.

"It is the economic desperation of people that leads them to do such things," said Akhtar Hussain Baloch of the Islamabad-based Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, which has campaigned against child trafficking for many years.

Recognising such realities, the authorities have in recent years worked to mitigate this, putting forward the Prevention of Human Smuggling Control Ordinance, which was enforced by the Pakistan government in 2002. Under the law, tougher punishments are envisaged for anyone found involved in trafficking people, including prison terms and fines for parents.

Additionally, as part of its measures to curb smuggling, in 2006 Pakistan's FIA published a "red book" listing 165 agents in various places from Pakistan to Greece, and has sought Interpol assistance to tackle them.

While boys in impoverished parts of rural Pakistan, particularly towns in the southern Punjab, are more likely to be trafficked overseas, girls are trafficked more often within the country, and sometimes sold into what amounts to little more than sexual slavery, says the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

HRCP has reported that in most cases, they are given away for amounts of money ranging from US$1,300 to $5,000 by impoverished parents, sometimes in "marriage"; and sometimes to agents who promise lucrative jobs as domestic servants in large cities. Many of these girls, according to child rights groups, end up as sex workers. Some are no older than 10 at the time of the "sale".

Kenyan Negotiators Resume Talks to End Crisis

*The political instability in Kenya has displaced 300,000 people creating a large population that is extremely vulnerable to trafficking. Click HERE for a profile of trafficking in Kenya.

From Reuters:

NAIROBI- Kenya's feuding parties resume talks on Tuesday after a calls from home and abroad to solve a post-election crisis that has killed 1,000 people and jeopardized the east African nation's reputation.

Foreign powers and the majority of Kenya's 36 million people are impatient for President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to find a political solution to their country's darkest moment since independence in 1963.

Their dispute over who won the December 27 election unleashed protests and ethnic attacks that have traumatized the population, displaced 300,000 people, and hurt Kenya's reputation as a stable democracy and peacemaker in the region.

"The time for a political settlement was yesterday," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the end of a lightening trip to Kenya on Monday to push for a power-sharing accord as the best way out of the impasse.

Apart from hardliners on either side, a similar message is reverberating around Kenya from businessmen, clerics, civil society groups and ordinary citizens, who are increasingly angry with the political class.

"Where are the leaders who will put selfish gains aside and accede to the higher commitment to serve and honor a country's craving for peace?" said Daily Nation columnist Mildred Ngesa.

Human Trafficking & Globalization

From Reuters:

Globalisation has vastly increased human trafficking over the past decade and governments must take urgent action to combat the abuse, United Nations officials and human rights activists said on Tuesday.

On the eve of the first U.N. global forum on human trafficking in Vienna, Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson said it was time end what the U.N. says is a multi-billion dollar market. "It is increasing big, big, big time," Thompson, chairwoman of human rights group the Helen Bamber Foundation. "It's the third largest shadow economy after drugs and arms."

The U.N. says some 2.5 million people are trapped in forced labour, including sexual exploitation, in forced marriages, or are pushed to provide body parts for black market organ trade.

The surge in human trafficking coincides with a revolution in affordable transport and instant communication around the world, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "All of this has facilitated things like trade and services, (yet it has) also facilitated the trafficking of human beings," Costa told a news conference.

A U.N. anti-trafficking protocol took force in 2005, establishing a framework for a crackdown, and now governments must create laws and prosecute perpetrators, he said. "Governments have not done much. But the international agreement puts a burden on the countries," he said.

The organisers will push for a universal ratification of the U.N. protocol, which has been signed by more than 110 states.

There is also a pressing need for better data, as most has come so far from sources like media reports, said Costa.

Most trafficking victims come from nations in the Commonwealth, central and southeastern Europe, West Africa and Southeast Asia, according to a recent UNODC report. Western Europe, North America and Western Asia top the list of destinations for victims of human trafficking.

Adult woman and girls are most at risk of becoming victims and sexual exploitation is the most prevalent abuse, it said.

Few Traffickers End Up in Court

*According to the interviews I conducted in the Philippines with various anti-trafficking non-governmental organizations- a justice system with too many cases and too few judges, corruption, the financial leverage of traffickers used to buy off both victims and criminal justice officials and an unfamiliarity with the anti-trafficking law on the part of prosecutors, amongst other factors, continue to hamper efforts to put traffickers behind bars in the Philippines.

From the Sun Star:

Philippines- Efforts to curb human trafficking are hobbled by the paucity of successful prosecutions, amid the lack of cooperation from victims and the limited ability of authorities to rescue possible victims, especially those in transit at the country’s many seaports.

Figures from the Department of Justice (DOJ) show that while 109 cases of human trafficking had been received and investigated from 2003-2005, only 22 cases had been filed.

The National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) Anti-Human Trafficking Division also reported that while it received 122 cases in 2006, it had recommended only three cases for prosecution, said University of the Philippines journalism professor Yvonne Chua.

Chua reported the figures during a media training workshop by the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD), The Asia Foundation and the US Agency for International Development last Jan. 31 to Feb. 2.

Breakthrough
During the workshop at Parklane International Hotel, Nancy Lozano, state counsel at the DOJ and a member of the secretariat of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (Iacat), said there had been convictions in only 10 cases filed against traffickers in the country since Republic Act 9208 or “The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003” was passed.

The first seven convictions took place in 2005, of which four took place in Quezon City, two in Batangas City and one in Zamboanga. The rest of the convictions were handed down last year, one each in Cebu, Davao and Zamboanga.

Last July, Regional Trial Court Branch 14 Judge Raphael Yrastorza Sr. found two pimps guilty of qualified trafficking of persons and imposed on them the penalty of life imprisonment and a fine of P3 million after a 2004 entrapment operation caught them offering nine females, one of them a minor, for sex to undercover NBI agents.

Interviewed earlier this month by participants of the media training workshop, Cebu City Assistant Prosecutor Rudolf Joseph Carillo described the conviction as a “breakthrough,” saying it was the first major promulgation in the Visayas region.

Trafficking Victims Are Getting Younger

Photographs of young Filipina women hired as overseas workers. Though trained as entertainers, many face pressures to enter the sex industry.

From the Sun Star:

Philippines- The victims of human trafficking are getting younger and younger as more and more women fall prey to the false promises of people offering them a better life.

Visayan Forum Foundation Inc. (VFFI) president Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda revealed this in a video shown during a media training workshop conducted by the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD) and the Asia Foundation last week at Parklane International Hotel.

Asked to elaborate, Ligaya Abadesco, VFFI field coordinator for Cebu and Dumaguete, told Sun.Star Cebu that in the past, the victims that the VFFI intercepted at seaports and brought to its halfway houses for temporary shelter and counseling were adults.

But in recent years, the VFFI has been intercepting 14- and 15-year-olds.

She explained that traffickers have been recruiting younger and younger victims because they command higher prices in the sex trade.

Republic Act 9208 or “The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003” defines human trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring, or receipt of persons with or without the victim’s consent or knowledge by means of threat, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception or abuse of power for the purpose of exploitation.

Exploitation includes prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, servitude or the removal or sale of organs.

Targets
During the forum, VFFI regional coordinator for the Visayas Vicente Abadesco said traffickers target women and children from 12-22 years old.

The women are transported from the rural areas—usually in the Visayas and Mindanao—where they came from, to urban areas in the country or abroad where, instead of the decent jobs in factories or restaurants they were promised, they find themselves working as prostitutes in brothels.

Abadesco said it is difficult to tell exactly how many women and children have been trafficked because of the illegal and covert nature of the activity, aside from the fact that women who are trafficked usually change their names.

But from July 2001 to June 2007 alone, the VFFI intercepted and provided halfway house services to some 7,996 victims.

The problem is much bigger though.

The United Nations estimates that there may already have been anywhere from 600,000 to 800,000 victims of human trafficking from the Philippines.

Clueless on rights
The difficulty in tracking victims also comes amid the low level of consciousness of people about the law and their rights, and the prevailing attitude of communities that people have a right to migrate to seek a better life.

Red Batario, executive director of the CCJD, said that in some cases it is the parents of the victims themselves who allow their children to be trafficked.

“At the back of their minds, they know what will happen to their children,” he said. But driven by desperation as a result of poverty, the parents just give in.

Despite the number of women and children known to have been trafficked, there have been convictions in only 10 cases filed against traffickers in the country since RA 9208 was passed, said Nancy Lozano, state counsel at the Department of Justice and a member of the secretariat of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (Philippines).

One of these judgments was handed down in Cebu.

On July 20, 2007, Regional Trial Court Branch 14 Judge Raphael Yrastorza Sr. found a couple from Barangay Kamagayan guilty of qualified trafficking of persons and imposed on them the penalty of life imprisonment and a fine of P3 million.

The pimps were tried for the more serious crime of “qualified trafficking” because one of the nine females they offered for sale to the undercover National Bureau of Investigation agents in the entrapment operation that led to their arrest in 2004, was a minor, at only 15 years old.

The case is now in the appellate court.

Prevention
VFFI regional coordinator Abadesco hopes more people will get involved in the prevention of human trafficking.

To help determine if women and children traveling in a group on a ship may be trafficked victims, he said to watch out for these warning signs: the bulk buying of tickets; the individual embarking and disembarking of the members of the group who always regroup once inside the vehicle; and the possession by the usually lone adult in the group, the recruiter, of all the travel and personal documents of everyone in the group.

Normally, the members of the group are also told not to talk to anyone, and to say, if challenged, that they are 18 years old even if they are minors.

To emphasize the scale of the problem, Abadesco said no country is immune to trafficking and that the causes of trafficking go far beyond mere poverty to the poor values of parents and the maneuvers of exploitative recruiters feeding an ever-increasing demand for cheap labor as the Philippines opens itself up further to tourism.

Indian American Convicted of Human Trafficking in the U.S.

The U.S.-Canadian border

*What appears to be a human smuggling ring has been misconstrued by the media as a human trafficking operation. The journalist makes no clear distinction between human trafficking and smuggling. For clarification on the issue read HERE.

From the Hindustan Times:

2/23/07, Vancouver, Canada- An Indian American has been convicted in a human trafficking racket that illegally transported South Asians from Canada to the US.

The trial in Seattle showed that as many as 100 Indian and Pakistani nationals were smuggled first into Canada and later into the US. The gang charged up to USD 40,000 per head.

Thirty-eight year old Harminder Singh of Kent, Washington, was convicted on Monday and faces between three and 10 years in jail, including deportation, the Vancouver Sun said yesterday.

Four Canadian residents facing similar charges are yet to be extradited to the US, but have a hearing scheduled in late March, according to the Canadian Department of Justice. Five other Canadian residents arrested for their involvement in the racket pleaded guilty and testified at Singh's trial, Assistant US Attorney Ye-Ting Woo said in an interview.

The five, Raman Pathania, Jatinder Singh Brar, Sukhveer Singh Sandhu and Harjeevan Singh Parhar, all of Surrey, as well as Matthew Dehagi of Port Coquitlam, are due to be sentenced in the next two weeks, the US Attorney said.

From the Vancouver Sun:

"Throughout the course of the investigation both Canadian and American investigators had full access to each other's intelligence on a daily basis," said Mercer. "This collaboration demonstrates our shared resolve to keep our borders secure while respecting each other's sovereignty."

Winchell said officials have begun deportation proceedings against all of the people caught sneaking into the U.S., but could not say how long it would be until their cases are resolved.

Vietnam's Desire for Baby Boys Skews Gender

From MSNBC:

8/31/07, HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam's preference for boys over girls is further tipping the balance between the sexes in Asia, already skewed by a strong bias for boys among Chinese and Indians. The trend could lead to increased trafficking of women and social unrest, a U.N. report says.

Vietnam is now positioned where China was a decade ago, logging about 110 boys born to every 100 girls in a country where technology is readily available to determine the sex of a fetus and where abortion is legal, according to research released this week by the U.N. Population Fund. The sex ratio at birth generally should equal about 105 boys to 100 girls, according to the report.

"The consequences are already happening in neighboring countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan. They have to import brides," said Tran Thi Van, assistant country representative of the Population Fund in Hanoi, adding that many brides are coming from Vietnam. "I don't know where Vietnam could import brides from if that situation happened here in the next 10 or 15 years."

'Marriage squeeze' predicted
The report, which looked at China, India, Vietnam and Nepal, warned that tinkering with nature's probabilities could cause increased violence against women, trafficking and social tensions. It predicted a "marriage squeeze," with the poorest men being forced to live as bachelors.

Gender imbalance among births has been rising in parts of Asia since the 1980s, after ultrasound and amniocentesis provided a way to determine a fetus' sex early in pregnancy. Despite laws in several countries banning doctors from revealing the baby's sex, many women still find out and choose to abort girls.

"I have noticed that there have been more and more boys than girls," said Truong Thi My Ha, a nurse at Hanoi's Maternity Hospital. "Most women are very happy when they have boys, while many are upset if they have girls."

In China, the 2005 estimate was more than 120 boys born to 100 girls, with India logging about 108 boys to 100 girls in 2001, when the last census was taken. However, pockets of India have rates of 120 boys. In several Chinese provinces, the ratio spikes to more than 130 boys born to 100 girls.

Reports of female infanticide still surface in some poor areas of countries and death rates are higher among girls in places like China, where they are sometimes breast-fed for shorter periods, given less health care and vaccinations and even smaller portions of food than their brothers, the report said.

It estimated Asia was short 163 million females in 2005 when compared to overall population balances of men and women elsewhere in the world. It said sex ratios at birth in other countries, such as Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also should be closely monitored to avoid uneven trends there.

Earlier research has documented the gender imbalance in the region. A UNICEF report last year estimated 7,000 girls go unborn every day in India."It's very difficult to imagine what's going to be the exact impact of these missing girls in 20 years," said Christophe Guilmoto, an author of the report presented this week at a reproductive health conference in Hyderabad, India. "No human society that we know has faced a similar problem."

The reasons boys are favored over girls are complex and deeply rooted in Asian society. In many countries, men typically receive the inheritance, carry on the family name and take care of their parents in old age, while women often leave to live with their husband's family. In India, wedding costs and dowries are usually required of the parents of the bride, and sons are the only ones permitted by the Hindu religion to perform the last rites when their fathers die.

"My husband took me to a private clinic to be checked. I broke down in tears when I saw the result because I knew this is not what my husband wanted," said Nguyen Thi Hai Yen, 33, recalling when she discovered her second baby was a girl. "But he was good. He told me it was OK."China has a one-child policy, while Vietnam encourages only two children per family after relaxing an earlier ban on having more.

Such limits have led many women to abort girls and keep trying for sons who can carry on the family lineage.The report calls for increased public awareness, more government intervention and steps to elevate women's place in society by promoting gender equality.

Trafficking in the USA

From the Daily O'Collegian:

Last month, a Romanian couple living in New York City were accused of enslaving a teenage baby sitter and others, forcing them at gunpoint and by rape and assault to become beggars on the streets.

Each beggar would work upward of 12 hours a day and would make about $400, all of which went to the Romanian couple.

They had been doing this as early as 2004, according to a report filed by FBI Special Agent Evan Nicholas.

In 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services provided government assistance to 234 foreign victims of trafficking. Also, the Department of Homeland Security issued 729 visas to survivors of human trafficking.

“The United States has estimated 800,000 people a year are trafficked internationally. That’s not only sexual exploitation, but all other forms of trafficking into labor exploitation, as well. But that really is an estimate; it can’t be said to be an accurate figure, because again, the difficulties of this hidden crime make it impossible to know actually how many are being trafficked,” Mary Cunneen said.

Cunneen, formerly the director of Anti-Slavery International, also says that the “Trafficking in Persons Report” is flawed in one major way. “…the report does not deal with trafficking in the United States, and there are serious problems with trafficking in the United States, and perhaps the report should also look at what the American government is doing and if their policies are being implemented, if they’re looking at other countries.”

Filipina Domestic Workers Losing Out to Indonesians in HK Job Market

Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong relax during their day off

From the Inquirer:

MANILA, Philippines -- The number of Filipino domestic helpers entering Hong Kong has dropped sharply in the past five years as Indonesians are beginning to challenge the Filipinos’ domination of this job market in the former British colony.

“Data from the Hong Kong immigration office show that fewer Filipinos have been working in the former Crown Colony as Indonesian domestic helpers are taking over their territory,” said recruitment consultant Emmanuel Geslani Friday.

Geslani said that as of October 2007, 123,000 of the 250,000 foreign domestic helpers working in Hong Kong were Filipinos. Indonesians comprised 115,000 while Thais, Nepalese, Sri Lankans and other nationalities made up the rest.

“Many Hong Kong employers prefer the Indonesians who are more subservient and allow themselves to be underpaid,” Geslani said. He said Indonesians agree to work every day of the week unlike Filipinos who always want to have a day off.

Geslani said the Philippine government’s policy of raising the monthly salary rate of Filipino domestic helpers and requiring that they undergo language and skills training before their deployment has made the situation worse.

Meanwhile, a number of Hong Kong recruitment agencies are complaining against the allegedly inconsistent and selective application of the processing rules by a Philippine labor official there, Geslani said.

*A few points of interest in this article. For starters, it is admirable that the Philippine government has pursued efforts to improve the skills of and demand higher wages for its domestic workers. Unfortunately, as the article mentions, the domestic help industry, at least in Hong Kong, values cost over anything else.

Therefore, even as Filipina domestic workers now have government policies to raise their pay and skill level, they find themselves losing in the race for the cheapest taker to Indonesians who, as the recruitment consultant so graciously put it, are in a nut shell willing to work more for less and are more tolerant of abuse than their Filipina counterparts.

In international labor migration, a country is exporting its citizens to provide added value to a foreign economy. In an industry like domestic work, however, that does not prize added value as much as it does overhead, this logic does not apply and leaves domestic workers from the Philippines or any country vulnerable to low pay, no time off, and sexual, physical and mental abuse. The domestic help industry is a race to the bottom, not a race to the top.

With higher required monthly salaries, fewer Filipinas will find employment in domestic work abroad, which ultimately hurts the economy that has become over reliant on migrant earnings sent home and trickles down to the families that generally use these earnings to cover the cost of food, education and health care.

This article truly displays the need for reform in the domestic worker industry. Because of the economic quagmire faced by countries like the Philippines (if they increase monthly wages for domestic workers they decrease demand for their domestic workers, if they let market forces prevail and allow lower salaries they support an industry rife with abuse and little regulation), I think the responsibility to protect domestic workers from abuse, including human trafficking, ultimately falls in the lap of the destination countries like Hong Kong who are in a position to institute industry standards and regulation as well as provide legal and social service resources to workers who are being abused.

What do you all think? What can source countries and destination countries do to reform the domestic help industry and other low pay, largely unregulated service sector industries that attract migrants?

Nigerian Extradited to the US on Human Trafficking Charges

From the Gazette:

Germantown, Maryland, USA- A Nigerian man, formerly of Germantown, Maryland wanted since 2003 in connection to the human trafficking and abuse of a teenage girl was extradited from the West African country on Monday.

George Chidebe Udeozor, 51, formerly of the 14400 block of Seneca Road, and his ex-wife, Adaobi Stella Udeozor, were charged in 2003 in connection with the physical and sexual abuse of the Nigerian teen who worked for them in Germantown for little or no pay for more than five years, according to a statement from U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. George Udeozor appeared in the Greenbelt court Monday, and was held pending a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.

It could not be learned if he has an attorney. ‘‘He’s been fighting extradition for some time, and it’s a diplomatic process,” said Marcia Murphy, spokeswoman for the state U.S. Attorney’s office. ‘‘He did not want to come back.”

Udeozor had already fled the country when he was charged with involuntary servitude, conspiracy and harboring an alien for financial gain in 2003. The charges come with maximum penalties of 20 years imprisonment, a three-year term of unsupervised release and a $250,000 fine.

Adaobi Udeozor was found guilty in 2004 and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. She was ordered to pay $110,250 in restitution to the girl, who was physically and sexually assaulted and denied an education while living in the couple’s home. She appealed her case to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a judge affirmed her conviction and sentence on Feb. 1.

Their three-count indictment alleged the couple forced the girl to work and care for their six children from September 1996, when she was 14, to October 2001.

The girl, now in her mid-twenties, gave an victim impact statement during the sentencing, Murphy said at the time.

The indictment said the couple brought the girl to the U.S. on a passport that was not in her name and promised her family that she would be paid and attend school. She was physically and sexually abused.

The couple took advantage of the girls’ illegal status, threatening to send her back to Nigeria to discourage her from resisting their assaults, authorities said. And they occasionally represented her as a relative, to avoid detection.

UN Conference on Trafficking is Underway

English actress Emma Thompson speaks at the opening of the UN-organized event

From the BBC:

The first major United Nations conference on the growing problem of human trafficking has opened in Vienna.

More than 1,000 delegates from over 100 countries are attending the forum to discuss solutions, including techniques to monitor criminal gangs.

There are believed to be millions of victims of trafficking worldwide - in a multi-billion dollar industry. UN officials say human trafficking is the hidden crime of globalisation and nothing short of modern day slavery.

International celebrities among the delegates included British actress Emma Thompson, Latin pop star Ricky Martin and Egypt's First Lady Suzanne Mubarak.

The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa welcomed their support in tackling a problem that affects both wealthy and developing countries. He compared the three-day conference, that ends on Friday, to something between the World Economic Forum at Davos and the infamous 1960s music festival, Woodstock.

"Government statements, expert discussions, along with music, speeches, videos, films and art to inspire us all. I hope, by the end of the forum, a roadmap will be developed to guide us forward," he said.

"This is not an inter-governmental conference, nor is it a talk shop. Think of it more as a rally. We march together." He said that "200 years after the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, we have the obligation to fight a crime that has no place in the 21st Century". "Let's call it what it is: modern slavery," he said.

Booming business
The UN estimates that about 2.5 million people are involved in forced labour as a result of trafficking. It says the majority of victims are between the ages of 18 and 24 years and about 1.2 million children are trafficked each year.

Ursula Plassnik, Austrian Federal Minister for European and International Affairs, said national action plans and regional international co-operation was needed. She said human trafficking had become a "booming organised crime" with annual profits of up to $32bn (21bn euros; £16bn) on a global scale. "It is thus considered an even more lucrative business than trafficking of weapons," she said.

Protocol
Pop star Ricky Martin, who set up the Ricky Martin Foundation for children, told delegates that when he heard about the situation, he had to act. "I witnessed the horrors of human trafficking on a trip to India, where I saved three little girls from the streets of Calcutta," he said. "You know what was going on and if you won't do anything, you allow it to happen."

Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson told the forum the story of a Moldovan woman who was trafficked to the UK and forced to work as a prostitute.

The UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking was launched by the UN in March 2007. Forum organisers hope more countries will be encouraged to ratify a UN protocol on human trafficking and to develop laws to fight the crime.

Other issues on the agenda include finding ways of disrupting internet payments for sex services on the web.

U.S. Eases Sanctions on North Korea in 2007

North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il

From the Korea Times:

The United States eased some of its sanctions on North Korea last year, according to a U.S. government broadcaster Tuesday.

The Voice of America (VOA) said that U.S. President George W. Bush approved the lifting of some sanctions imposed on Pyongyang under an act governing human trafficking in mid-October, 2007. Washington notified the North of the decision.

The State Department designated North Korea as one of the worst states involved in human trafficking, and the act prevented the United States from offering any aid except humanitarian assistance. But the easing allowed Washington to provide assistance in educational and cultural exchanges to the extent that the aid doesn't damage its national interest.

This is the first time for the United States to lift any sanctions on North Korea since the communist country first appeared on its blacklist for human trafficking in 2003. An official of the State Department said the rare measure came in order to improve ties and expand exchange with North Korea. ``Though Washington wants to expand exchanges in various fields with Pyongyang, in reality, all the efforts are affected by the results of the six-party talks,'' the official said on condition of anonymity. ``The lifting of sanctions indicates the U.S. intention to open its doors for more exchanges and better relations with North Korea.''

In a report on human trafficking in 2007, the State Department said prostitution and forced labor often take place in North Korea and human trafficking of female North Korean defectors also exists in China. The department classified North Korea as the third-worst nation in the world in terms of human trafficking because Pyongyang hasn't made any effort to improve the situation.

Meanwhile, Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. special rapporteur said last month that North Korea has shown no improvement in its human rights record including human trafficking and still systematically tortures its citizens. Muntarbhorn condemned North Korea's practice of public executions, inhumane prison conditions, and oppression of dissidents.

Saddam’s Unrepentant Judge

An Iraq High Tribunal member talks about Saddam Hussein's trial



*This is a powerful interview which depicts the brutality of the Hussein regime. It also delves into the issue of "honor killings" when rape victims are killed by a family member to restore family honor.

From Newsweek:

Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa is a member of the Iraq High Tribunal, which was created to prosecute crimes that occurred under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Khalifa presided over the conviction of Saddam Hussein and the so-called Anfal trial, which specifically dealt with the crimes committed against Iraqi Kurds. The Anfal decision, as it is known, named six of Saddam's highest officials as responsible for the genocidal campaign that left hundreds of Kurdish people dead. It also designated rape as a form of torture. In one case Khalifa remembers the story of a female prisoner whose baby died soon after she gave birth. The woman was not allowed to bury her child. Instead she was forced to watch dogs rip its tiny body apart and eat it. During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., Khalifa spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Ramirez about the work of the Iraq High Tribunal. Excerpts:

What kind of court is the Iraq High Tribunal?
Our court is an exceptional court, in part, because we are doing very specific work on crimes committed by Saddam's regime. When that mission comes to pass then the court will be dissolved. The Global Justice Center, which has recognized the Iraq High Tribunal's work in the area of women's rights, had you meet Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg. What did you discuss? It was brief, but we learned about the high court in America and the function of the constitution. We talked about the kind of cases they have looked into and jurisdiction. We discussed the number of judges who preside and some history of the court.

When you and the other judges reviewed the information that led you to believe rape was a form of torture in the Anfal decision, what kind of stories helped you reach that decision?
There were many. Kurdish women have suffered a lot. When the ruling authorities at the time used to arrest civilians, they would isolate women from men. That was the first step. Then they would isolate young men from old men. The young men would be taken and killed. The elderly people would be taken to stay with the women. Once this was done then they would start investigations. The elderly ladies, their investigation would not take a long time. The investigation would be concentrated on the young ladies. That is what court witnesses said.

Some of the elderly ladies told us that the investigators would take some of the young women at night saying they wanted to investigate them. In fact, there was no investigation. They were being raped. We asked the elderly women how they knew this. They said that when the young ladies came back they told that they were raped. Another elderly woman had seen the rape occur through curtains. Those who were not raped directly during the investigations were asked to be naked and investigated in that manner.

Another witness we spoke to was arrested under the accusation that he had used foul language against the son of the president. He was beaten and tortured. He was ordered to confess to being a member of an opposition party. If he confessed he was told he would be executed. He refrained. He was a university student. So the security men resorted to another way of getting him to confess. They tortured him with electricity, pulled out his nails and broke his bones. I believe he was even sexually violated. As a means to force him to confess, they brought his mother and sister. The security men then raped them one after the other before him. They expected him to confess, but he didn't. They sentenced him to prison. He was released in 1990. When he was released he found that his mother had been executed. In 1991, during the events of the uprising, he fled. So they executed his father, two of his brothers and three sisters. He had no one remaining. Every member of his family is dead.

Often, if a woman is raped, a family member will kill her in order to restore the family honor. Do you think Iraqis should change their view of rape in general, and not just as it pertains to crimes committed by Saddam's regime?
[Honor killing] happens when a family does not understand and does not have a clear viewpoint of what happened to their daughter. She is a victim. How can she be a victim twice? Iraqi law does not protect those who kill women that are raped. The court should always be on the side of justice when the woman is a victim.

Read the full interview


Thousands of Women Killed for Family "Honor"

From National Geographic:

Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.

Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women's Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.

But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.

Everybody Wants to Save the World

From the Financial Times:

Business school students once coveted jobs in finance and consulting. Now they want to save the world. They once strove to accumulate wealth. Now, before they’ve even made it, they learn how to give it away.

At the same time, non-profit staff, who historically valued practical experience over time in the classroom, are approaching charity work like business people. They enroll in graduate programmes to learn to run their operations, and work with donors and policymakers to achieve goals.

The trend towards non-profit management training mirrors Americans’ mounting engagement in the field as a whole. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in the past 30 years non-profit value added to the US’s gross domestic product grew tenfold, almost twice as much as the public sector and 64 per cent more than the private sector. Non-profit salaries increased 115 and 66 per cent faster than those in the public and corporate sectors, respectively.

Recent years have seen greater employee crossover between corporate, non-profit and public sectors, and this increased fluidity has created more professional non-profits and a business world with a burgeoning social conscience. As a result, non-profit education has become centralised and formalised, both at stand-alone graduate schools and in business schools, where these courses are often oversubscribed.

Rising Interest
“There has been an astronomical increase in student interest,” says Raymond Horton, director of the social enterprise programme at Columbia Business School, which recently launched a $20m capital campaign. “It’s growing so fast we’re having trouble keeping up with demand.”

Horton believes his students have been affected by the corporate scandals of the late 1990s and the events of September 11 2001, and are acutely aware of global issues such as climate change. “Today’s students understand the problems and perils that lie ahead of them both professionally and personally. There aren’t as many Gordon Gekkos as there used to be.”

Social enterprise courses top other courses in terms of average enrolment. His degree concentration provides two student clubs with about 400 members, almost a third of the business school.

Harvard Business School

Professor V Kasturi Rangan, faculty co-chair of Harvard Business School’s social enterprise initiative, says students “have really shown that they care ... especially about healthcare and education”. Last year’s social enterprise conference attracted 1,000 people, and the accompanying club has the highest affiliation of any at the business school: each class of 850 students yields more than 300 members.

A wider-reaching admissions policy is also responsible for business students’ demand for non-profit courses. Prof Rangan says in order to produce a more diverse class with varied experiences, the Harvard admissions office screens applicants from non-traditional sectors. “If you work for United Way or Teach for America, that’s now considered relevant experience. It has increased the number of students who apply from these places and get in.”

After School
Few business school students join non-profits directly after graduation. Only 5 to 7 per cent of Harvard students take non-profit jobs. However, Oster says: “If you look five years out, you see a bigger number. If you were interested in working at a high level in a museum, you might decide your first job out should be at Goldman Sachs, that you need to get experience in a mainstream firm first.”

Students who join corporations are also likely to become non-profit board members at some point in their lives. Within five years, 25 to 30 per cent of Harvard Business School alumni engage in some way with the non-profit world. After 20 years, that figure jumps to between 75 and 80 per cent.



For this reason business school administrators aim to design civic-minded courses that are relevant to students who pursue a for-profit route. “The emphasis is social enterprise rather than non-profit. You can work for a for-profit company and still create social value,” Prof Rangan says. “We are trying to teach our students that the role of a business leader is to add value to shareholders but also to help society as a whole.”

Professionalizing Non-Profits
As the non-profit world becomes more proficient, adopting the language and metrics of business, some charities actively seek to hire people with MBAs. And this new focus provides legitimacy to a non-profit career track that business school students require.

“There is genuine recognition that non-profit management is a highly disciplined area,” Prof Rangan says. “People have started thinking about it professionally, as opposed to [things] like social work, like the thing you do on Sunday to cleanse your soul.”

Eugene Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, says philanthropy and volunteerism should be viewed as vital aspects of all social activity. The programme teaches financial management in addition to humanities and social science courses.

“Our students learn how to engage donors and volunteers and make them more effective, and how to build strong boards,” Tempel says. “This is all part of the professionalisation of non-profits.”

Lower salaries often dissuade non-profit staff from pursuing additional degrees and business school students from joining non-profits; it is too hard to repay debts. Columbia and Yale offer loan forgiveness programmes, and Harvard helps students get strategic positions at leading agencies, then supplements their income to $90,000.

But, as Tempel says: “People are not generally working in this field because of money. They accept the burden of loans and earning less money to be in a more satisfying career. These are people who want to make a difference and spend their lives doing something they believe in.”

Building Bridges

May-an Villalba, Director of Unlad Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation, Named Philippines Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 in Ernst & Young Competition



From Business World:

Maria Angela Villalba, Executive Director of Unlad Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation was cited for applying a practical, innovative, and market-oriented approach to her business through creation of products and services that address the challenges faced by communities, help solve complex social problems, and benefit the marginalized and the poor. She was given the Social Entrepreneur category award. She links migration of Overseas Filipino Workers to local community development by harnessing migrants’ resources through credit programs and eventually investing these in local social enterprises or commercial operations such as in a coco coir plant, a rice center, milling, and palay trading business.

Ms. Villalba was first exposed to the plight of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) when she worked in Hong Kong as a Training and Organizing Consultant. She observed the behavior and learned about the pressing concerns of migrant workers, bringing these to the attention of her Korean boss.

Her involvement with migrant issues eventually led to the creation of the Asian Migrants Center (AMC) and she became its first director. AMC focused on helping abused migrants and assisting them in their legal requirements. What struck her was that in each of the cases that she handled, the abused migrants would choose to stay and search for a new employer. "We had very interesting cases where the women were clearly abused but were not willing to come home. I can only imagine the kind of trauma that they had. I would ask, ’What would it take to help you go home?’ They would answer, ’We would lose face with our family. We would lose face in our community. What is there to go home to?’."



Because of this recurring phenomenon, Ms. Villalba sought to create a program for migrant workers to help them build long-term assets back home. She also prepared savings and investment studies about migrant communities in Hong Kong and Malaysia. She took her cause to the United Nations where she was able to help draw better policies for migrants all over the world.

After conducting the studies, Ms. Villalba finally formed the Migrant Savings and Alternative Investment for Community Development and Reintegration (MSAI-CDR) development model. Migrants of different nationalities were grouped together.


Unlad Kabayan gives an MSAI training to women from a Davao community.

In 1996, she launched Unlad Kabayan in the Philippines with the MSAI-CDR development model at its core. Ms. Villalba then formed partnerships with local cooperatives to perform studies on what types of businesses are most suitable for investment. The first $100,000 of migrant savings was invested in a shoe factory in Cebu. A campaign to convince Filipino migrants to invest in local businesses in their hometowns also followed.


Lolita Tocayon's candy and toy-making business is one of the credit program's most diligent borrowers.

Unlad Kabayan concentrates its operations in poor communities in the Philippines. This in turn presents benefits for all the parties involved. Migrant workers invest in a business that they can manage when they retire or when they decide to return home. The investments are welcomed enthusiastically by the community. Local residents are provided with jobs and the community can progress economically.

At present, the organization is incubating five businesses in different communities nationwide. These include P7-8 million in assets ($171,500 to $200,000 US) in a coco plant, a rice center, milling, and palay trading business. In the next four years, Unlad Kabayan is set to support farming communities with new agricultural technology, crop and livestock production techniques, and farm credit.

May-an Villalba (center) at the awards ceremony

The success of Unlad Kabayan signals a very crucial shift in the common belief that there is little hope left for the Philippines. Ms. Villalba has demonstrated that social entrepreneurship can link people and their dreams; that there is hope in alleviating poverty. Unlad Kabayan bridges two of Philippine society’s significant yet under-represented sectors — OFWs and impoverished communities — by harnessing migrants’ resources, investing these wisely in communities and that, in turn, developing the local economy.

Congratulations to

*Visit Unlad's website for more information on the innovative services they offer

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Families Sold Their Relatives To Be Trafficked

From the Times of India:

MOTIHARI: Trafficking of poor girls by unscrupulous persons or gangs along the Indo-Nepal border here is common, but local people were shocked to know that a father sold his daughter and a husband sold his young wife for money.

According to reports, one Rina Kumari (20) has lodged a complaint case in the court of chief judicial magistrate, Motihari, against her father Nagina Yadav and one Ram Kumar Singh. Nagina is a resident of Thawe and Ram Kumar hails from Bhojpurwa village of the Gopalganj district. Both are friends and are involved in liquor business.

Rina's mother died 10 years ago and her stepmother neglected Reena and her two younger brothers. Unable to bear the agony, Rina's brothers left the house, but Rina stayed there. Reena's stepmother then asked Nagina to sell his daughter to his friend Ram Kumar Singh for Rs 15,000 three years ago.

Later, Ram Kumar forced Rina to join a musical group and earn money. She joined a musical group of Gopalganj, but later shifted to Motihari and joined Shiva Musical Group. Now, she has become a good dancer and earns money.

Speaking to TOI , Rina said she had signed a contract of three years with the musical group of Motihari and got Rs 40,000 as contract money. But, Ram Kumar arrived at Motihari on January 30 and snatched the money from her.

She alleged that police did not lodge a case in this regard so she filed a complaint in the court.

"My wicked father spoiled my life. I will try my best so that he and Ram Kumar are punished," she said.In another incident, one Baleshwar Mahto, a rural worker of Kalyanpur village in East Champaran district, sold his young wife Nitu (21) to a person of Rajasthan, through a middleman, at a price of Rs 10,000.

The Kalyanpur police officer in-charge Priyavrat said Nitu's father has lodged a case with the police station that his daughter Nitu has been missing.

Police interrogated Baleshwar who confessed that he sold Nitu because he needed money. Later, sub-inspector Srikant went to Rajasthan in search of the girl, but it proved futile.

Chakia DSP BP Rajak said Baleshwar Mahto and the middleman have been arrested and further investigation is going on.

*Because of economic need, relatives selling their sons or daughters to traffickers is not uncommon in the Philippines. Oftentimes a relative such as an aunt, uncle or cousin can be involved in setting up a meeting with a trafficker promising a job waitressing in the city or abroad but actually involving prostitution or some form of exploitation. The NGOs I worked with in the Philippines make sure to check if the victim's family played a role in the trafficking and if so, instead of reintegrating them into their home community, they will look for other shelter options for the victim such as a relative's or friend's house in another part of the country.

South African Politician: Legalise Prostitution to Combat Rape & Human Trafficking at the World Cup

Cape Town, South Africa

From Play the Game:

South African parliamentarian George Lekgetho of the ruling ANC party has proposed that South Africa legalises prostitution for the duration of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in order to prevent instances of rape, as well as bring in revenue for the government to help the unemployed. His suggestion is the latest development in an ongoing debate in South Africa about how to tackle prostitution and human trafficking before the World Cup kicks off in two years time.

Advancing a crude rationale based upon supply and demand, Lekgotho told a Parliamentary committee that legalising prostitution would be “one of the things that would make [the World Cup] a success because we hear of many rapes, because people don’t have access to them.” Lekgotho backed up his case on socio-economic grounds saying that “if sex working is legalised people would not do things in the dark. That would bring us tax and would improve the lives of those who are not working,” reports the South African Press Association.

South African newspaper The Times denounced the logic of the Lekgotho’s argument, which appears to endorse the opinion that rape is generally a case of releasing sexual frustration rather [than] an act of violence based upon deeper underlying psychological issues. Furthermore, the fiscal justification for his suggestion was criticised on ethical grounds by opposition MP Sydney Opperman who stated that “You cannot attach a price to the deepest union between a man and a woman and link it to our tax base,” writes the South African Press Association.

The BBC reports that Lekgotho’s idea drew laughter and groans of protest in the South African parliament when he presented it to a parliamentary arts and culture committee. However, his plan was not rejected outright by the committee, with the Director General of the Arts and Culture Department agreeing with committee member Christopher Gololo that the matter should be “thrown to the public to debate.”

Prostitution Under Consideration
Concerns over prostitution as a result of an influx of predominantly male football supporters during the World Cup are not new in South Africa and Lekgotho is not the first senior South African official to suggest legalising prostitution in time for the tournament.

Jackie Selebi, the former National Police Commissioner and president of Interpol (currently suspended on allegations of corruption), suggested to a government committee in March 2007 that prostitution and public drinking be legalised or at least tolerated for the duration of the World Cup as the police force lacked the manpower to enforce the law in these areas. “I want you to apply your minds to my dilemma of what to do with the thousands of soccer hooligans expected to imbibe in public spaces and those who would feel the urge to try out other more exotic pastimes both currently illegal in South Africa” he told a parliamentary safety and security committee. “You as a committee must be sitting and thinking of how we are going to get around this. If a visiting fan is out on the street having a bottle of beer, must I arrest him, because it is illegal?”

The South African public has been less responsive to calls for legalisation of prostitution during the tournament however, with 79% of South Africans against the idea according to a survey carried out by African Response in June 2007. This lack of enthusiasm has been echoed by many public health and sex workers’ rights organisations, which criticise the emphasis being placed upon potential clients – soccer hooligans and potential rapists according to Selebi and Lekgotho respectively – rather than on the prostitutes themselves. Many believe that offering alternatives for prostitutes rather than the legalisation of the trade is the only workable solution.

Concerns Over Trafficking
Debbie Toughey, a former prostitute now working for the public health charity, Doctors for Life, believes that past experience shows that toleration of prostitution will act as a magnet for traffickers. Legalisation would simply mean “rolling out the welcome mat for organised crime syndicates who trade in human lives, exploiting the poor and desperate, and forcing them into the sex trade,” she said in a statement after Selebi’s suggestion to Parliament. “Approximately 40,000 women and children were trafficked into Germany to accommodate the demand for sex during the World Cup Games. The same can be expected for South Africa.”

However, Professor Vasu Reddy of the Human Sciences Research Council believes that legalisation or toleration may be the best way to prevent trafficking before the World Cup commences due to the clandestine nature of trafficking. “Statistics [on trafficking] are anecdotal evidence because cases of human trafficking are rarely reported and the victims who have been trafficked don't report it to the authorities. There is still a need for evidence-based research,” Reddy told delegates at a seminar on the issue of trafficking in December 2007. By bringing prostitution into the open, Reddy believes it will become harder to force the victims of trafficking into prostitution as greater government regulation of the industry will make it harder to hide away evidence of trafficking from the authorities.

However, given Jackie Selebi’s belief that there would not be enough officers to police prostitution and public alcohol consumption during the tournament, the ability of the government to oversee a regulated prostitution industry during the World Cup seems unlikely.

Alleged Ringleader of Kidney Transplant Ring Sent Back to India

From the International Herald Tribune:

KATMANDU, Nepal: The alleged leader of a syndicate accused of illegally removing hundreds of kidneys, sometimes from poor laborers held at gunpoint, was deported back to India on Saturday night from Nepal where he was arrested days earlier, officials said.

Nepalese authorities handed over Amit Kumar to Indian officials who had been seeking his extradition since he was arrested Thursday at a jungle resort in neighboring Nepal, said Upendra Aryal, a top police officer in Nepal's capital, Katmandu.

Authorities had been searching for Kumar since last month, when he fled after police said they broke up the kidney transplant racket they claimed he ran from an upscale New Delhi suburb. Police were also investigating whether Kumar was involved in illegal kidney transplants in Nepal, Aryal said. Indian authorities declined to comment on the case.

Indian police say Kumar headed an illegal organ transplant ring based in the affluent New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. Authorities believe his group sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world in the past nine years. Police said they raided the operation's main clinic in Gurgaon in January and broke up the ring, which officials claim spanned at least five Indian states and involved at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics, as well as a car outfitted as a laboratory.

Subsequent raids allegedly uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names.

Filipinas Tried for Trafficking Compatriots in Hong Kong

From the Inquirer:

12/3/07 HONG KONG -- The trial of two Filipino women in what government officials said was a “landmark” human trafficking case began here on Monday.

Jennifer B. Nicdao, 27, and Angelita D. Amparado, 39 were charged at the District Court with trafficking in persons and aiding and abetting the breach of condition of stay after they allegedly brought to Hong Kong, last July, five Filipinas who ended up working as prostitutes in the city’s red light district in Wan Chai.

Government prosecutor Edward Le Breton Laskey said the two women were the first Filipino women charged with human trafficking outside the Philippines. However, the accused pleaded not guilty to the charges and their trial is expected to last until Thursday.

“This is the first case that Filipinas were prosecuted outside the Philippines in relation to trafficking of people. This has not happened in Singapore or the Middle East,” said Laskey during a break in Monday’s hearing.

“I am told that officials in the Philippines, including an adviser to the President, are very interested in this case,” he added.

Laskey said that he had handled cases of Thai or Chinese traffickers bringing into Hong Kong women for prostitution but this was the first time that he encountered the case of Filipino women being charged for the crime. “This is a landmark case because, if the authorities before charged only the trafficked women they arrested, this time, they’re going after the traffickers themselves,” said Vice-Consul Val Roque, head of the Assistance of Nationals section of the Philippine Consulate.

The five complainants in the case initially sought the help of the Philippine Consulate before going to the police. The police then raided several bars in Wan Chai on August 4 and invited for questioning at least 35 Filipino women, including Nicdao and Amparado.

According to Laskey, a certain Loida approached the first two victims in June and offered them work in Hong Kong.

Loida then introduced the women to Amparado, who allegedly told them that they would work as entertainers in a club, and this could include providing sexual services to customers, so that they could later pay the P60,000 for their plane ticket and their hotel accommodation.

According to one of the victims, the “loan” of P60,000 had to be repaid within three months after they arrived in Hong Kong.

There was supposed to be a written contract and Amparado allegedly even threatened one of the victims that she could end up in jail if she failed to pay up.

“(Amparado) told her that she could earn money by drinking with customers but if she wanted to earn more money and repay the loan quickly, then she should have sex with customers,” Laskey said.

The women earned their keep by getting commissions from the drinks their customers bought at the bar or by walking the streets to look for customers who would pay for sex.

And the outcome...

From GMA News:

12/20/07 HONG KONG - After a 10-day trial, a district court judge on Friday sentenced to three years in prison two Filipina women charged with trafficking persons into Hong Kong for the purpose of prostitution.

Jennifer N. Balibat or Nicki, 28, was seen crying beside a stoic-faced Angelita David, 40, as Judge Susanna D'Almada Remedios read out her verdict before sentencing them. David, who was referred to in court as Ampy, only broke down in tears after the judge finished and left the courtroom.



The two also received three months each for five counts of aiding and abetting their five Filipina victims, aged between 24 to 39 years old, to work here without valid employment visas, but all sentences will run concurrently.

Vice Consul Val Roque, who heads the Assistance to Nationals section of the Philippine Consulate, welcomed the verdict, saying it will serve as a deterrence to those who traffic Filipinas into Hong Kong.

India's Booming Kidney Racket

Mr Ahmed is the only earning member of his family

From the BBC:

"When I woke up, I felt this terrible pain on my abdomen. They told me they had taken out my kidney. "I thought I was going to die."

Shakeel Ahmed only wanted to come to Delhi to find work. So when two men approached him outside the railway station offering him a construction job, he readily agreed.

"They drove me to a house far away. On the way they asked me some strange questions like if I had any diseases," he says. Later that night he was transferred along with two other men to another house. "There were these men in green coats they took a sample of my blood. "I was given an injection and I passed out."

Massive racket
Shakeel and two other victims are now being kept in a solitary ward in a civic hospital in Gurgaon, an affluent suburb of Delhi, under the watchful eyes of a policeman. They were brought here by the police, who found them during a raid on an illegal clinic. It was the first hint that they had stumbled on a massive racket involving millions of dollars and reaching out to all corners of India and even some countries abroad.

"Many men, mostly poor labourers, were brought here and their kidneys removed," says Gurgaon police commissioner Mohinder Lal. "They were offered between $1-2000. The recipients were wealthy clients in India and other countries. Some of them were from Greece, Arab countries, United States and one or two patients from European countries."

An international investigation is now under way. Interpol has been alerted to look out for two doctors believed to be the kingpins of the operation.

But in India a debate is now beginning on why so few people come forward to donate their organs. An estimated 150,000 Indians need a kidney transplant every year, but only 3,500 are available.

One of the needy is Kamal Verma. A year ago he was told that he would need a transplant or undergo dialysis for his failing kidneys. "The laws in India are so that it makes it impossible to get a kidney legally. "I can only get one from a blood relative." It's one of the major reasons for the thriving black market.

"Every hospital has a tout. In fact, the doctors or nephrologists will often suggest a person that you can contact to get a kidney. They charge up to $10,000. "But I don't have the money and in any case it's illegal so I don't want to go down that route."

So the once active trade exhibitor is now resigned to a life of virtual retirement. "I can barely see, I can't do a strenuous job, I get short of breath. My life is finished," he says as he suns himself on the terrace of his modest flat. Small-town India It's this hopeless mismatch between demand and supply that is being ruthlessly exploited by some doctors and agents.

And fueling it is a million-dollar black economy that has spread its tentacles across the country.

'Who can refuse?'
"I needed the money," says Om Prakash simply. A house painter, he's in his forties but looks a decade older. His cheeks are hollowed, his eyes glazed and his skin is stretched tight over his bones.

"Three years ago some men said they'd pay me 80,000 rupees ($2,000) for my kidney. "Who can refuse?

People kill for money this isn't that bad."

UAE National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking to Expand Activities Internationally

Dr Gargash to head UAE delegation at the 'Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking'

From AME Info:

The United Arab Emirates National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking (NCCHT) concluded its seventh meeting at the Presidential Palace with a series of resolutions to expand its activities internationally.

The meeting was chaired by His Excellency Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for FNC Affairs and head of the UAE NCCHT.

The meeting discussed the preparations by the UAE for its participation at the UN Vienna Forum on Human Trafficking. A delegation led by Dr Gargash and comprising NCCHT members and government officials actively engaged in initiatives to combat human trafficking, will participate in the Forum to be held from Feb 13 to 15, 2008 in Vienna where the Minister will deliver a keynote speech.

Chairing the meeting, H. E. Dr Gargash said: 'The active participation of the UAE in the UN.GIFT - the (Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking) highlights our commitment to combating transnational human trafficking by pursuing a unified approach in line with international efforts and resources. The UAE delegation comprises representatives from NCCHT and government officials who are actively engaged in combating the human trafficking issue. Our international participation will help us expand our activities internationally, which is important to curb the problem at its roots'.

He added: 'The seventh committee meeting reiterated our four-pronged strategy to combat human trafficking which involves stronger legislations, focused training to law enforcement officials, providing support to the victims and promoting international co-operation'.

More on the Upcoming UN GIFT Conference

From Earth Times:

Vienna - Human-trafficking is a crime permeating all societies, United Nations experts warned on Tuesday ahead of a large- scale UN conference tackling the issue.

"I would not exclude any industry, with the possible exception of the nuclear industry, from being affected by human-trafficking; agriculture, construction or the textile industry are all affected," said Doris Buddenberg, head of the UN anti-trafficking forum UN GIFT.

From February 13 to 15, about 1,000 participants from more than 100 nations are gathering in Vienna for the first large-scale UN human trafficking conference, hoping to raise awareness and propose concrete measures in the fight against the crime, that is rapidly developing into a global business worth billions of dollars.

"The conference is a milestone," Buddenberg said. Almost everyone had already seen or - often unknowingly - interacted with a trafficking victim, Kriistina Kangaspunta, trafficking expert of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told journalists, pointing out the true scale of the problem.

Human-trafficking should not be confused with illegal migration, she said. People-smugglers made their money from transporting illegal migrants, while human-traffickers committed the crime of exploiting their victims, using pressure, deception and violence. An essential factor in understanding the issue was to see that human beings had become tradable, Buddenberg said. "Human beings have become a cheap commodity for traffickers," she said. People are trafficked from 127 countries to be exploited in 137 countries, UNODC said.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), around 2.5 million trafficked people are being exploited at any point, including victims of forced labour or sexual exploitation, Kangaspunta said. A major problem was lack of data, UN officials admitted, a problem they hoped would be remedied by a large-scale international survey currently in the works.

Human Trafficking Center in Sheffield Assists Survivor

From the Star:

A woman forced to work as a prostitute by a human trafficking gang was supported by the UK's human trafficking centre in Sheffield in the wake of her ordeal. The woman's experience emerged this week when an illegal immigrant who ran a Derby brothel on behalf of a Chinese crime gang appeared at court and was jailed.

Jing Wu, who entered the UK illegally in February last year and began working as a madam at a massage parlour, was given an eight month sentence at Derby Crown Court.

The 38-year-old was caught as part of a police operation set up to combat human-trafficking and release sex slaves from their captors.

She arranged for women flown over from Asia to work in the brothel, handing over the profits to a mysterious figure called "the boss".

Wu told police that she had been given the work by "Snakeheads" - Chinese traffickers who help people get into the UK in return for them agreeing to work for them on arrival.

The court heard that when police raided the brothel they freed a terrified woman forced to sell her body to earn her keep. Derbyshire Police said the prostitute was treated as a victim by officers and referred to Sheffield' s Human Trafficking Centre, which provides support with issues such as housing, asylum applications and repatriation.

Human Trafficking Campaign in Prague Seeks Help from Customers of Prostitutes

From the Prague Post:

The Czech Republic has long been a destination for sex tourists from the West.

Brothels line the road in some border towns and hordes of stag partygoers have filed through Prague’s numerous sex clubs.

Now a nonprofit group has teamed with the government to expose a side of the industry some customers would rather not think about — or don’t know about — and to seek help from them.

“The customer might be for the victim of human trafficking the only connecting link to the outside world and the only person who can primarily help her,” said Kristina Klepková of the nonprofit group International Organization for Migration (IOM). Klepková led a three-month program, called Together Against Human Trafficking, which ended last week, to raise awareness of sex slavery in the Czech Republic. The 950,000 Kč ($53,855) initiative, financed by the Interior Ministry, included posters at Prague Ruzyně International Airport and in city metro stations featuring a troubled woman and the phrase “Don’t be afraid to say it for her!” in English. On the poster were numbers people could call anonymously when they suspected human trafficking. Informational postcards were handed out at German and Austrian border crossings.

IOM received 24 e-mails and 30 phone calls during the campaign. The police are following up by investigating all possible crimes, Klepková said, but so far there is no information that a criminal case has been filed. “Usually everything depended on the person who told us about the particular case of human trafficking and on his willingness to tell us the details,” she said.

No Way Out
Although some details may not be known, the general picture of sex trafficking in the Czech Republic follows a pattern, according to IOM information. Women forced into prostitution are often lured here by seemingly legitimate jobs such as cleaning or babysitting. After they arrive they have their personal papers taken away and their will broken by rape, beatings and threats. They are then told that they have a debt to repay and are sold from trafficker to trafficker, thereby increasing the amount owed to impossible levels.

They often come from countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union and the former Eastern bloc, and some are from Vietnam and China.

IOM said that 300,000 to 500,000 people are trafficked every year in Europe. This includes all trafficking, not only sexual slavery. Human trafficking brings its organizers profits comparable with drug dealing or arms trading but without nearly the risk because catching traffickers is more difficult due to the complicated issue of forced compliance among victims, according to IOM.

The crime started in the Czech Republic in the 1990s, when, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, women from Eastern Europe became the chief export to the West European market.

Today the Czech Republic is an attractive target country for traffickers and it can be hard to spot which prostitutes are trafficked, IOM said. “Among all prostitutes, whether on the street, in clubs, or in houses of prostitution, there are women who have been forced into doing this,” IOM information states.

For more information on sexual trafficking in the Czech Republic, visit Say-it.cz.

Organ Trafficking around the World

Israeli Police Bust Organ Trafficking Ring


From Reuters:

6/7/07- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expressed alarm on Thursday over rising cases of trade in human organs in Asia, and said globalization had increased risks of human trafficking.

Bruce Reed, IOM regional representative, said trafficking in persons for sexual or labor exploitation and other purposes such as adoption, false marriage and human organ donation was the third-largest international criminal activity, behind drugs and arms smuggling.

"The profile (of those being trafficked) is constantly changing," Reed told a seminar on human trafficking in Manila. "Women and girls are being trafficked for non-sex work and cases of men and boys are also being reported in the region."

Reed said many trafficking cases in Asia "end up in situations of forced begging, delinquency, adoption, false marriage, or most recently, as victims of the thriving trade in human organs".

He said trafficking for organs was on the rise in China and in many impoverished states in Southeast Asia, like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Although rising, the number of those being trafficked for organs was dwarfed by those being smuggled for sex, Reed said, saying there was constant demand from the entertainment and hospitality industry.

Chinese migrants apply for jobs at a job fair

The IOM said there could be 30 million Asians living outside their country, making them more susceptible to sexual and labor exploitation.

"Due to globalization, improved communications, more accessible travel and high technology, people are traveling like never before, substantially increasing the numbers of persons exposed to the influence of traffickers and criminal networks," Reed said.

Children in Iraq

This article is from Al Jazeera from last month, but I was prompted to look deeper into the subject of human trafficking in Iraq after listening to a free netcast from Yale University featuring Yanar Mohammed, founder of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (available on iTunes under iTunes U). The article deals specifically with the problem of Iraqi children and how the conflict is worsening their chances of becoming victims of trafficking:

Local officials and aid workers have expressed concern over the alarming rate at which children are disappearing countrywide in Iraq's current unstable environment.

Omar Khalif, vice-president of the Iraqi Families Association (IFA), an NGO established in 2004 to register cases of those missing and trafficked, said that at least two children are sold by their parents every week.

Another four are reported missing every week.

He said: "[The] numbers are alarming. There is an increase of 20 per cent in the reported cases of missing children compared to last year."

"In previous years, children were reported missing on their way home from schools or after playing with friends outside their homes. However, police investigations have revealed that many have been sold by their parents to foreign couples or specialised gangs."

According to police investigations and an independent IFA study, Iraqi children are being sold to families in many European countries- particularly the Netherlands and Sweden - Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

"Taking advantage of the desperate situation of many families living under poverty conditions in Iraq, foreigners offer a good amount of money in exchange of children as young as one-month old and up to five years of age, " Khalif said.

He said there are fears children are being trafficked for the sex trade and the organ transplant black market.

Children drugged

Hassan Alaa, a senior ministry official, said that while it has been difficult to precisely trace where the missing children are taken, government forces have captured 15 human trafficking gangs operating in Iraq in the past nine months.

"Many were carrying false documents prepared to take some children out from the country."

"During their confessions, they said many children are sold for as little as $3,000 and for very young babies, the price could reach $30,000," Alaa said.

The interior ministry has stepped up its security at checkpoints and border posts throughout Iraq.

He said that the child traffickers resort to drugging children with powerful sedatives during the trip out of Iraq. When they drive up to a checkpoint, the police are told the children are merely sleeping.

"All the children leaving Iraq now have to be woken up and interviewed by the police and border patrols, except those who are infants and unable to speak," Alaa said.

Extreme poverty

Mahmoud Saeed, a senior official at the ministry of labour and social affairs, says extreme poverty and nationwide unemployment have pushed parents to the edge, forcing them to make decisions once believed unthinkable.

"Desperate seeing their families without food and hygiene, parents prefer to give their children for adoption, to save their lives," he said.

Saeed said the ministry was making employment a national crisis issue in 2008, hoping to find immediate work for the poor. He is hoping international aid agencies and NGOs will increase their participation and investments in projects geared towards helping children. 

But for many parents, help will inevitably come too late. 

Iraq is on the Special Cases list of the State Department's 2007 TIP Report as it states, "Iraq was in political transition during the reporting period and is therefore not ranked in this Report [meaning the country's efforts are not placed into the tier system]." It has been on the Special Cases list since 2003. Although in 2007, it reported that there was credible evidence that this problem was getting worse and that legislation is severely lagging behind international standards.

UNICEF also painted a grim picture for the current state of the children in Iraq. Among their findings:

• Almost a million children of primary school age are now out of school indefinitely,
• Almost 75,000 children have resorted to living in temporary camps or shelters by the end of 2007,
• Almost 25,000 children were internally displaced per month throughout the year,
• Approximately 1,350 children were detained by police for "security reasons."

While the report also details good things UNICEF has been able to see accomplished in the time period, the violence and instability is obviously still affecting children. The displaced children and children living in temporary housing and refugee camps are especially vulnerable according to information on the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict:

Evidence indicates that refugee and internally displaced persons' camps are often recruiting grounds for child soldiers because of the convenient concentrations of children in these zones. These children also face severe protection risks during flight as well as outside camp boundaries that can include killing or maiming, sexual violence, abduction and trafficking.

Men Forced to Marry Pt II

From the BBC:

The UK's first male-only refuge for those who have been forced into marriage is being considered. One victim tells of the dramatic effect the experience had on his life - and how he has come through it.

When Imran Rehman was 10, he was taken to Pakistan and found himself in the middle of an enormous family party. He remembers being told to sit next to a little girl in a fine dress. He did not understand why, but he and the little girl were, jointly, the centre of attention. They were showered with money and presents and they had garlands cast around their necks. Imran said: "I was just paying attention to the food and the money. I didn't know what was happening. I just thought it was a party."

It was not until five years later that he was shown a photograph of that celebration - and he finally understood its significance. It had been his own engagement party. The little girl was his five-year-old first cousin. She was also to be his wife - whether he liked it or not.

"It made me feel sick, knowing that was my engagement. I went off the rails. I got into the wrong crowd, I got into fights, I got expelled from two schools," he said. To get him to behave, his parents took measures that many people might see as extreme. They sent him to Pakistan, telling him it was so he could see the area where they had been born. For a while, he says, "it was nice to be on holiday". Then, one morning, he says, he was drugged, taken to a mosque in a deserted village, and imprisoned. Once there, he had shackles locked around his feet. "I was kept in a room, locked up. I had to sleep like that. I even had to eat, go to the bath, toilet, shackled like that, for 15 days."

With the help of friends, he was eventually able to find his way back to the UK. When he got home, the only explanation he got from his family was it was his "rehabilitation". The pressure continued, perhaps to a lesser degree, for years, until something happened that finally made up his mind up that he had to get married.

He said: "I was 24. I was working at Birmingham airport. I got a phone call to say one of my close relatives was extremely ill. I was the first person there, by their bedside. I said: 'What can I do to help?'" His poorly relative told him that if anything was to happen to her, it would be his fault, for not going to Pakistan to get married. He says he was emotionally blackmailed, and he felt that he had no choice. "So I went to Pakistan. I didn't want that on my head, you know," he said.

He married his cousin. But the marriage only lasted a month before Imran told his family it was over. He was told he had just two choices: "Stay with your wife, buy a house, have kids, live your life. Or get disowned." "So I left home," he said.

It was the beginning of a seven-year severance from his family. He says he drifted from job to job, drank too much and struggled to deal with his trauma. "My family had disowned me. I just thought: 'I've got to stand on my own two feet and try and battle it out'. Which I couldn't understand how to do."

He eventually found a support organisation called Karma Nirvana. At the time, this Derby-based self-help group was only for women. But they realised, through their dealings with Imran, that men were also vulnerable to becoming victims of honour-based violence. Now, Imran works with Karma Nirvana as a support worker for men who suffer in the same way he did.

He says it is harder for men to seek help than women because men are not allowed to be open about their feelings. He said: "You're a man, you don't cry. If you cry, you're not supposed to show your tears. It really stressed me out. "I knew there was no support for me to go anywhere. Now, there is support out there for men. I encourage men to come forward. "What I tend to do is I tell my personal experiences to the men I work with, male victims. And believe me, they do open up."

Imran now supports 36 men who have been victims of forced marriage or honour-based violence. He says helping them get over their problems is a way to help himself to stay positive. "It makes me feel good, you know? I know I'm not alone any more. Before, when I was alone, I used to feel like I was the only man who was going through it," he said. Now he knows there are others who have gone through what he has been through. And he hopes they will all get the kind of support that will help keep them safe from their families.

Men Forced to Marry

Big Ben & the houses of Parliament

From the BBC:

UK- The government has agreed to look into funding the UK's first male-only refuge for victims of forced marriage. It has emerged that 15% of the people who seek help about being forced into wedlock are men or boys.

A man taken to Pakistan as a child and forcibly engaged to his five-year-old cousin has called for a men's refuge. Foreign Office minister Meg Munn said authorities must talk to those affected to "listen to their experiences" and "learn directly from them." She said: "Generally people expect men to be able to look after themselves, to manage situations, so men subject to domestic violence, men subject to forced marriage are likely to find it much, much more difficult." She added "there could well be" a need for a male shelter.

The British High Commission in Pakistan said that the issue of boys and men being forced is a problem that it is aware of. Spokesman Theepan Selparatnum said: "Sixty per cent of our case load is forced marriage work and between 10 to 15% of that are male. Our workload is increasing yearly and that's probably attributed to increased publicity and increased knowledge of what we can do."

'Abducted' Imran Rehman, from Derby, said his family took some extreme measures to get him back in line when he resisted the marriage, explaining that he was abducted and taken to Pakistan. He said a relative shackled his legs together and he was imprisoned for 15 days.

Mr Rehman has now urged the government to take action. "What I'm calling on the government to do would be set up a male refuge," he told BBC 5 Live. He went on: "There are no male refuges at all for Asian men. We have 165 women's refuges. What about the men? "We know it's happening, and I have a caseload of 36 men. We definitely require male refuge."

Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, told BBC Radio 5 Live a male refuge was a good idea. "We have even heard of bounty hunters chasing people," he said. "It exists, all these things, so I think people do need solid support."

CNN Special on UK Sex Trafficking

CNN Special on UK Sex Trafficking

This video report completely speaks for itself. The special looks into the sex industry in the UK and even posts a fake website that advertises sex with women that represent a large community of trafficking victims in the UK: young, Eastern European girls. The sex advertised is unprotected sex and it shows just how quickly responses come and how much money can be made.

The special also goes to Romania where this reporter is able to find areas of known sex trafficking rings, and is able to even get a price on the permanent sale of a young Romanian woman.

A Twisted Circle of Violence and Exploitation

From the International Herald Tribune:

ATHENS: Sex traffickers in Greece have found a way to increase their illegal trade while avoiding detection: They are using their female victims as predators to find new recruits in the Balkans, Russia and former Soviet states.

"We are seeing more and more victims turn into perpetrators," said Evangelia Vamvakaki, head of the Greek police's sex-trafficking unit. "It's a recent, and escalating, phenomenon."

The unit detained 39 female trafficking suspects last year, a 24 percent increase from 2006, compared with 83 male suspects, a 53 percent drop. The female suspects are almost exclusively former prostitutes and chiefly from Russia, Bulgaria and Ukraine.

Three years ago female suspects were so rare that they were not distinguished in Greek police statistics. Now they account for 30 percent of suspects.

In Italy, which has a similar problem with sex trafficking, the anti-organized-crime national directorate said 19 percent of suspected traffickers currently under investigation were women but could not say what proportion were former victims.

In Greece, the emergence of more women as trafficking suspects is the result of a change in strategy by organized crime, migrant protection groups say.

"Traffickers are always one step ahead of the police - their latest trick is to use their victims for recruitment," said Daniel Esdras, director of the Athens office of the International Organization of Migration.

As the tactic relies on psychological exploitation rather than violence, it is perversely referred to as "happy trafficking," Esdras said.

Women are offered incentives: a way out of the sex trade, a visit to their homeland - but always at a price.

"The traffickers say, 'O.K., go home but come back with a new girl,' " said Vera Gracheva, an expert on former Soviet states at the countertrafficking office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, based in Vienna. "They do it - they are scared of what will happen if they don't."

Well-dressed and with full wallets, they return to their hometowns to lure girls - usually poor and desperate - with promises of easy cash.

"There are many cases they even approach relatives," said Mariana Yevsyukova of La Strada, a support group for trafficking victims in Ukraine. She said only a fraction of cases reach police attention as women rarely testify. Once the recruits have been convinced, forged documents are issued and travel arrangements made with the help of local ring members.

The quote from Daniel Esdras is sad, but becoming ever more apparent. Traffickers continue to find even more underhanded ways of conducting their work. Already aware of their victims' vulnerability, the traffickers manipulate the victims and striking fear into them to recruit new victims so that the trafficker's hands appear clean. Also from the same article:

"Many victims start identifying with their aggressors and even seeing them as potential saviors," said Stavros Boufidis, who runs a hostel for former trafficking victims in the northern port of Thessaloniki.

The traffickers build a complicated web of abuse and violence that bring victims into submission. And of course, as the victims become deeper involved into the process, the more afraid they become of coming to police. I was pleasantly surprised to see Mariana Yevsyukova quoted in the article. She's an incredibly smart, capable coworker.

Child Trafficking in Mozambique

From allAfrica.com:

A truck packed with 40 children was intercepted in the central Mozambican province of Manica this week, sparking concern over increased child trafficking and the urgent need for effective legislation to address the problem.

"All the children are now in the protective custody of social welfare authorities in Chimoio [in Manica Province]. While investigations are underway, authorities have been trying to contact their parents," the UN Children Fund's (UNICEF) Thierry Delvigne-Jean told IRIN. "They have arrested a number of adults," he added. According to a statement released by the UN in Mozambique on Thursday, the truck was stopped by police on Monday in Inchope and the case is being investigated.



It is not exactly known where the children were being taken. "The details surrounding the case remain vague - there is a lot of contradicting information," said Carmen Ramos, Country Director for Save the Children Norway."

The driver said he was taking the children to schools in Tete [a province in western Mozambique] and Maputo [the county's capital] to study the Koran, and that he had made the same trip with children 10 times before," she said.

It seemed the children had not been kidnapped because the parents had given their consent, "but the parents don't know where these schools are," Ramos added, which suggested that the children might have been in the truck for reasons other than schooling."



This incident calls attention to the serious problem of child trafficking and the urgent need for the adoption of legal instruments to enforce the protection of children against abuse and exploitation," UN Resident Coordinator Ndolamb Ngokwey said in the statement.

Let Down By the Law
Mozambican law makes no provision for prosecuting alleged human traffickers; consequently, no suspected trafficker has ever been tried for the crime, even though the practice is illegal under international law.

Nevertheless, suspected human traffickers have been prosecuted by the state and Rede Came, a Mozambican child protection non-governmental organisation, under laws covering kidnapping, the corruption of minors and hijacking, but these carry much milder penalties than violations of the trafficking laws in other countries.

A proposed Children's Act was approved by the Council of Ministers in March 2007 but has not yet become law. "The Act is pending with parliament and is expected to be adopted early this year," the UN statement said. "A specific law against human trafficking was also approved by the Council of Ministers in 2007 and is pending parliament's approval."



When it became law, the Act would cover child rights and include an article directing the state to adopt special legal and administrative measures to stop the kidnapping, sale and trafficking of minors."The UN urges Parliament to place this legislation on the agenda of the legislative session due to commence in March," said UNICEF Representative Leila Pakkala."

Once passed by parliament, the Children's Act and the Anti-Trafficking Laws will strengthen the legal and protective framework for children, including victims of trafficking and abuse."

Growing Concern
Although there are no recent figures on human trafficking in Mozambique the practice is believed to be growing. A 2003 study on trafficking in the region by the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) estimated that 1,000 Mozambican woman and children were being trafficked to South Africa every year, mainly for sexual exploitation.

The capital, Maputo, is the main destination for internal trafficking, while South Africa is the main destination for children trafficked outside of Mozambique"Studies have found that Mozambique is both a country of origin and transit for child trafficking. The capital, Maputo, is the main destination for internal trafficking, while South Africa is the main destination for children trafficked outside of Mozambique and from neighbouring countries," the UN statement read.



Most children who fall prey to traffickers are aged between 13 and 18. "Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to exploitation due to their age and dependency," UNICEF said.

Mozambique's 19.8 million people are desperately poor: 40 percent live on less than US$1 a day, and recovery from a 16-year civil war that ended in 1992 has been slow. According to UNICEF, there are 1.6 million orphans, 380,000 of whom have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.

Amnesty International stated in a 2005 report that trafficking in the former Portuguese colony was also thought to be linked to the extraction of human organs for ritual and witchcraft purposes, with allegations that the practice was taking place in the northern provinces of Nampula and Niassa.

Trade Unions Welcome Entry into Force of CoE Convention

This release came from ITUC website:

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) have welcomed the entry into force of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. The Convention becomes legally binding on the first ten countries to have ratified it (Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Georgia, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia), on 1 February, with Bosnia-Herzegovina, France and Norway following on 1 May. Most European countries have taken the first steps to ratify the Convention, with the UK having already announced its intention to complete the ratification by the end of 2008.

“Human trafficking is an appalling reality which exists in much of Europe. Putting this Convention into place, alongside the relevant International Labour Organisation Conventions, will help ensure that Europe plays its part in tackling this worldwide scourge. It is the first legally binding European instrument on this issue”, said John Monks, General Secretary of the ETUC and of the ITUC’s Pan-European Regional Council (PERC).

Trade union organisations throughout Europe are active in the fight against human trafficking, and will form part of a Global Trade Union Alliance to combat forced labour and human trafficking. The alliance is being established by the ITUC with support from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO estimates that some 2.45 million people, most of them women and children, are victims of trafficking around the world. Around 43% of the total are trapped in commercial sexual exploitation, while around one-third are exploited in agriculture, sweatshops and private households.

“We are encouraging our member organisations in Europe to push their governments to ratify this Convention and to make sure it is fully enforced. The criminal gangs and the recruiters who organise this trade in human beings must be stopped and punished, and the factors which make people vulnerable to this exploitation must be dealt with”, said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder...

“Our global alliance against forced labour and trafficking will mobilise increased trade union action around the world against this form of modern-day slavery”, said Ryder.

Yes, the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Human Trafficking has come into force now. Ukraine has still not ratified it. And as far as my research has shown me, it may still be a while before they are able to reach the point of ratification. A big hurdle Ukraine will have to overcome in order to ratify and meet the requirements of the Convention has to do with the protection of victims during and after the court process. A recent meeting with a representative of the Supreme Court of Ukraine revealed that things like witness and victim intimidation as well as the risks the victim is exposed to during the investigation are huge factors as to why victims often will not follow through with testifying and ultimately the traffickers end up not being prosecuted under anti-trafficking law. The CoE Convention will require all of that to change, which will require effort and funds from the government and law enforcement. The IOM has been working on joint projects to improve this situation for victims.

As far as trade unions are concerned,up until recently, they were not taking part in anti-trafficking activity (See page 43-44). This situation has improved a bit, but only a select few in Ukraine cooperate with intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations in the country to contribute to the fight against human trafficking: the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, among a couple others. IPEC has stated that this situation has improved over the last couple of years, and the involvement of trade unions is important for building a union-employer-government network to address the issue.

By the way, I am very excited to report that I will be attending the UN GIFT Vienna Forum in two weeks. I will be sure to update the site with information from the conference so please make sure to keep re-visiting the site!

Children for Sale: Cambodia

*This is an old report but it shows the grim reality of child brothels in Cambodia and those who frequent them and presents what some NGOs, the International Justice Mission in particular, are doing to stop child trafficking.

From MSNBC:

It's an exotic vacation destination, with ancient cities, bold colors, legendary temples, remarkable beauty — and horrendous crimes that go on behind closed doors. Children, some as young as 5 years old, are being sold as slaves for sex. It's a shameful secret that's now capturing the attention of the world and the White House, a secret that has been exposed by Dateline's hidden cameras. Dateline ventured into this dark place, where sexual predators can gain access to terrified children for a handful of cash. How could this be happening? And how can it be stopped?

Inside the world of child sex trafficking, each year, by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are bought, sold or kidnapped and then forced to have sex with grown men. Dateline’s investigation leads to the troubled and distant land of Cambodia. We reveal what “tourists,” like one American doctor, may be up to, and we'll take you inside a dramatic operation to rescue the children.

The night clubs of Bangkok and the windows of Amsterdam are among the most well-known destinations in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry: sex tourism. But the business is not all about adult prostitution. There are some places you might never have heard about, notorious places, the kind of places a sexual predator would be willing to travel halfway around the world to reach — destinations like a dusty village in Southeast Asia, where the prey is plentiful and easy to stalk.

A pimp gives a tour of Cambodian brothels



They are children born into poverty and sold for sex. And while the thousands of men who flock here each year — many of them Americans — may think that they're involved in nothing more than prostitution, by any definition it is rape.

The small Buddhist country of Cambodia has a rich cultural heritage, but it has become a magnet for people who prey on the young and innocent. To follow their trail, we'll have to infiltrate their perverted world and pretend we're predators ourselves. It’s the only way we'll be able to see first-hand how serious the problem really is — so serious that President Bush told the United Nations it has become a top priority for his administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell is leading the administration's efforts and has a special office dedicated to the problem.

Organ Trafficking Exposed in India

From the BBC:

Police in India have issued an alert for a doctor alleged to be involved in an organ trading racket.

Last week, police in Gurgaon, a suburb of the capital Delhi, raided a house which was used to carry out illegal kidney transplants. Hundreds of poor labourers were tricked into selling kidneys, officials says.

Trade in human organs is banned in India but many continue to sell their kidneys to clients, including Westerners, waiting for transplants.

Gurgaon is an affluent suburb of Delhi, home to high-rise apartment blocks and call centres. It is here, in a nondescript house, that many poor labourers were lured from across northern India and bribed into selling their kidneys, according to the police. For this they were allegedly paid up to $2,500.

The clients are said to be wealthy Indians, and even some foreign visitors, who were in urgent need of a kidney transplant and willing to pay large sums for it. Last week, the police raided the illegal clinic after being tipped-off by a victim. Four people were arrested but the main person alleged to be behind the racket, a doctor, is missing.

Gurgaon police commissioner Mohinder Lal told the BBC that an alert had been sounded at airports to prevent him from leaving the country. He said police also planned to approach Interpol to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Despite banning the trade in human organs, India continues to be one of the major centres of the trade.