LEBANON: Plight of the trafficked domestic worker

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BEIRUT, 30 September 2009 (IRIN) - Abbey was a nurse at a French hospital in Madagascar when a recruitment agency suggested to her boss that she travel to Lebanon for three years to work and learn Arabic so she could better care for the Arab sailors whose ships docked at the Indian Ocean island.


Abbey, not her real name, was presented by the recruitment agent with a three-year contract, which included transport to the Lebanese hospital, and a salary of US$1,000 per month.
On arrival there, however, she was put in a house with another Madagascan domestic worker where she was forced to cook, clean and care for three children and a newborn.
"We didn't sleep day or night; we had to be up whenever the baby cried. We didn't even have time to shower or eat during the day because we were always rocking him so he didn't cry. It was like that for two and a half years," Abbey told IRIN.
From her salary of just $150 a month, Abbey said she had to give her Lebanese employer money to buy food for her: "So basically, we were working for free."
 
Cases like Abbey's are not uncommon in Lebanon, which is a country of destination for women trafficked from Africa, Sri Lanka and the Philippines for the purpose of domestic labour.
In June, Lebanon was added to the US State Department's human trafficking tier 2 watch list [http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009/123132.htm] for its failure to protect victims of trafficking or to prosecute those responsible.
Inclusion on the list, which includes neighbouring Syria on tier 3 (the worst category), [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82686] for a second year could mean Lebanon faces US sanctions on non-humanitarian and trade-related aid and US opposition to loans and credits from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
 
Deception, exploitation
Being deceived about the job she was brought to Lebanon to perform makes Abbey's case one of trafficking under the established UN definition [http://www.unescap.org/esid/Gad/Issues/Trafficking/index.asp] of the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force".
However, the US State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report [http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009/] makes clear it considers trafficking to include the conditions a worker is kept in, including forced labour and debt bondage. That makes not only Abbey's life after arriving in Lebanon a case of trafficking but means the situation of many of Lebanon's estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78865] can also be considered trafficking.
"Women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Ethiopia who travel to Lebanon legally to work as household servants often find themselves in conditions of forced labour through withholding of passports, [http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=83948] non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement, threats, and physical or sexual assault," said the TIP report.
'
Local rights activists praised the recognition of exploitative labour conditions as trafficking.
"Working on trafficking is very difficult because of the definition set by the UN, but if you simplify it you see that there are three main components: the recruitment; deception or coercion; and then that the purpose of recruitment is exploitative. This is considered trafficking," said Ghada Jabbour, gender and trafficking specialist at Lebanese NGO KAFA.
The TIP report said that exploitation includes the specific crimes of "involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery".
 
After escaping from the home she was forced to work in, Abbey has spent the past 10 years working as a freelance domestic worker, facing jail if she is caught by police without the identification papers she was never issued with, and owing $5,000 in fines to the General Security Directorate, a Lebanese intelligence agency, for overstaying her visa.
 
Little protection
Domestic workers remain outside Lebanon's Labour Law and its protection.
Last year, according to the 2009 TIP report, the Lebanese government reported no criminal prosecutions, convictions, or punishments for trafficking offences, a significant decrease from the 17 prosecutions reported in 2007.
The Lebanese Penal Code does not specifically prohibit forced labour or trafficking, but Article 569's prohibition against the deprivation of an individual's liberty to perform a task could be used to prosecute forced labour. Commercial sexual exploitation, deprivation of freedom and use of false documents are also criminalized in Lebanese law.
The TIP report urges authorities to investigate and prosecute claims by domestic workers who have escaped abusive employers, and implement the new unified contract for domestic workers [http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=83948] created in March this year, but which rights groups say remains largely unimplemented.
 
Valuable trade
Activists believe the value of the trade in domestic workers is such that the political will to comply with international regulations against trafficking remains lacking.
"The money that is collected through domestic workers coming to Lebanon is millions of dollars per year. You have the residency fees, the visa and recruitment fees on both sides for the worker and the employer," said KAFA's Jabbour.
"The government takes a lot of money in the process by regulating domestic workers and there are a lot of stakeholders. Politicians are also involved in this issue and it goes underground, which is why it's difficult to get laws to protect these women."

http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/en-US/128988024720725404.htm#

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Retail Takes on Slavery: The Body Shop Fights Child Sex Trafficking

By Katherine Gustafson | Monday, September 28, 2009 9:00 AM ET

Think slavery is over? Think our children are safe? A courageous corporate campaign tells us all to think again.
Growing up during the heyday of the Body Shop, I rarely entered a shopping mall without seeing the cosmetics retailer's familiar "No Animal Testing" signs. And no youthful spree was complete without bagging one of the mango shampoos or pomegranate body lotions that lined the shop's walls like shining, aromatic jewels.
Back then, the company was the only game on the block for ethical consumerism; under the direction of co-founder Anita Roddick, the Body Shop pioneered the idea that businesses can do well by doing good. The concept gained so much traction that angry customers just about stampeded when Roddick sold her share of the company to French cosmetic giant L'Oréal, not known for an animal-kindness stance, in 2006. But Roddick saw the move as a pragmatic one that would take the gospel of socially responsible business to new horizons.
And indeed, two years after her death, the company is taking its advocacy work to a whole new level with the launch of the three-year "Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People" campaign, kicked off eight weeks ago in partnership with the organization ECPAT International (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). The campaign aims to make sure that children's rights are secure, and that governments are held accountable for their contributions toward that goal.
"A lot of people do not realize the extent of the problem," Sophie Gasperment, Body Shop's Global CEO told me last week in a quiet moment after she spent a hectic day discussing this issue with other anti-sex-trafficking activists and advocates at the at the fifth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).
The extent of the problem? According to UNICEF, millions (let me say that again, in case you missed it - millions) of children are bought and sold for use as sex slaves each year.
And yes, I did indeed just say "slaves." At one of CGI's many discussion sessions, Luis C. de Baca, Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. State Department, told the assembled business, government and philanthropic leaders that we are still working on the project started by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
"We are delivering on a promise made 146 years ago by President Lincoln," he said. "The 13th Amendment is a living responsibility that all of us share."
He noted that last year there were only 3,000 trafficking prosecutions worldwide, despite the fact that millions of people are enslaved. Grave under the bright lights of the conference room, he said, "This has to shame all of us."

Soft Hands Kind Heart
A few days before she died, Anita Roddick made clear to the Body Shop's leadership that she was keen to see the business take on the challenge of addressing child sex trafficking. It's a tall order in a world so in denial that we usually use euphemisms to talk about the issue. "Euphemisms," Mr. de Baca said, "give us an excuse to look away."
However, Ms. Gasperment was not intimidated. "It's not the first time that the Body Shop has tried to tackle a difficult issue, or a sensitive issue," she told me. "We've just campaigned for three years on domestic violence, and that was not very easy either."
But come on, child sex slavery? I'd say that's a bit more than just a "difficult issue." Then again, its very extremity could be its strength as a cause. Shelley Simmons, the Body Shop's director of brand communications and values, is sure that once people engage with the issue, "there's no going back for them. They want to learn and know more and they want to know how they can support it. The level of awareness is so low that I think people think it just doesn't happen. And that's a fundamental problem. That's why we're so excited to be launching the campaign."
The initiative is a robust endeavor that respects the high stakes of the situation. At a press conference last week at CGI, Gasperment unveiled the initial element of the three-year effort. The Body Shop will collaborate with ECPAT on creating "Progress Cards," country-by-country reports that identify gaps in each state's apparatus for protecting children from trafficking and sexual exploitation. ECPAT will collect and validate data on key indicators from its extensive global network of organizations and individuals working to eliminate child sex trafficking and from UN reports and other sources.
The Body Shop staff will distribtute the cards to customers through the company's network of 2,500 stores in over 60 markets around the world, along with leaflets, info packets and other campaign materials. Posters featuring the campaign's "No No Hand" logo will hang in store windows and behind checkout counters. Customers will be invited to join the campaign's Facebook page. And best of all for us lotion-inclined individuals, a special "Soft Hands Kind Heart" hand cream (which smells great, incidentally) will be on sale, all proceeds of which support ECPAT's efforts.

Child vs. Cow
As the campaign progresses, customers can keep up on how countries are doing and take action to urge things in the right direction. Carman Madriñán, Executive Director of ECPAT International appreciates that partnering with a business amplifies her organization's message. "As an NGO specialized in the field, we work with a completely different population," she told me during a break from the CGI whirlwind. "We work with grassroots organizations. We have a network of children who have survived sexual exploitation with whom we work directly. But we don't have the reach to the public that the Body Shop has, the ordinary Main Street public."
And Main Street desperately needs education on this issue. At the press conference on human trafficking shortly after I spoke to Madriñán, a reporter (from the moon, apparently) asked a question about the difference between illegal and "legal slavery." On the stage, actress Julia Ormond, a prominent anti-trafficking activist, looked like she had swallowed a frog, and de Baca leapt to the microphone to set the guy straight.
I had already heard the shpeal from Madriñán: "According to international law, there is absolutely no way a child can consent under any circumstances to being exploited, even if they're deceived, even if there's some perception that they have agreed."
Unfortunately, however, in today's world it is all too easy to abscond with children. "If you have an adult crossing a border, usually there is some element of checking," Madriñán said. "There may be some vetting of the credentials of that person. Whereas if it's a child with an adult, oftentimes the assumption is that the adult is a responsible adult for that child. In many parts of that world, the way we conceptualize children as belonging to the adult allows for an easy transition for children to disappear and to be trafficked with much greater ease."
The scale of the problem is reflected in how cheaply one can procure such a kidnapped child. At the anti-trafficking discussion session, Kailash Satiyarthi, Chairman of the Global March Against Child Labor, related an incident that occurred earlier this month during a march for children's rights in Nepal. There were child survivors of trafficking marching with him, and he overheard one ask the other how much she was sold for. The little girl responded that her price had been $40. Someone asked the kids if they knew how much a cow costs in Nepal. They didn't. The answer? $200 to $250.
"I was almost crying, listening to this," Satiyarthi said. "I was so ashamed."

The Bravest Thing You Can Do
Experts worry that the global economic crisis is spurring an increase in trafficking, especially concerning society's most vulnerable, children.
"We're in a very serious economic crisis, which is extremely worrying," Madriñán told me. "Much of the impact of that is that the most vulnerable who were on the margin and barely surviving are now pushed beyond that margin."
And the more children are involved in the system, the more behind the global community gets in its efforts to mount an appropriate response. Madriñán mentioned that the U.S. has only three facilities dedicated to addressing the needs of child survivors of sex trafficking. "You can imagine what it's like in other countries if that's the case here," she said.
These are children, however, who have very special needs. Madriñán described how kids in these "criminal environments" become tough, angry and difficult to manage and relate to.
They are usually psychologically and physically traumatized, maladjusted and distrustful. "Survival from sexual exploitation is probably one of the bravest things you do as a human being," she said.
One of the other brave things one can do, of course, is stand up for those - like these children - who desperately need someone to speak on their behalf. Good thing we've got the Body Shop to help us pluck up our courage.
Gasperment, like any good CEO, knows her customers and is certain they will respond to the campaign. "It's not the only reason that people shop with us, but certainly when people shop there they do expect that we have that edge," she said. As of Wednesday night, the company had already sold 165,000 "Soft Hands Kind Heart" hand creams.
Gasperment sees her own role as a facilitator of others' activism. "The key thing is that you use your skills to make a difference," she said. "I think that's what magical. I'm not an NGO person, I'm not an activist, but I know how to run a business. And if I can do that well, it helps. So I think that's wonderful."

Photos courtesy of The Body Shop.

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background as a professional fundraiser, journal editor, document developer, and project administrator for international nonprofit org


http://www.tonic.com/article/the-body-shop-fights-sex-trafficking/

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Court of Women

Unprecedented Court of Women hears testimonies from the trafficked and sexually exploited

Nusa Dua, Bali (Indonesia), August 7

The jury deliberating on a most unusual trial - the first South East Asia Court of Women on HIV and Human Trafficking in South East Asia - here have urged the governments, UN agencies, civil society organizations and others to urgently to address the vulnerabilities of women to trafficking and HIV.

However, these responses should be rights and gender-responsive and should not "re-victimise" the women who have been trafficked, they said. What is required are joint-efforts based on human rights principles rather than inappropriate law enforcement.

This was no typical court proceeding, but was instead a symbolic court held in conjunction with the 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which opens here on 9 August.

"The vulnerabilities of women to trafficking and HIV are rooted in the disproportionate human insecurity, poverty, illiteracy and disempowerment that they face in their daily lives," the Jury said in a statement issued at the end of the Court. In several countries, women who are trafficked are chased by the same law that is meant to protect them: they are treated as "illegal migrants" and "criminals" and are often denied their rights and choices.

The jury of six eminent legal and human rights experts heard real-life testimonies in the Women's Court, including harrowing stories of trafficking, violence and exploitation. The Court provided a forum for women across SE Asia to share their personal survival stories and to create further awareness about trafficking, sexual exploitation, bonded labour, and HIV in the region.

Alongside the powerful and poignant testimonies of women who suffered at the hands of traffickers, "expert witnesses" presented data and powerful analyses to highlight the intense violation of dignity and rights of thousands of other women from South East Asia. The Court brought together leaders, politicians, activists and communities who are working to make a difference to empower women and reduce their vulnerability to trafficking and HIV in the South East Asia region.

The event was organised by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Asian Women's Human Rights Council (AWHRC), and Yakeba, a Balinese NGO , with financial support from the Japanese Government and in partnership with UNODC and others.

Opening the court, Ms. Meutia Hatta, Minister for Women's Empowerment of Indonesia, said: "of the total number of people trafficked globally, one-third is from South East Asia and gender inequality and unequal power relations are the main fuelling factors for this phenomenon." In view of the seriousness of the issue, the Government of Indonesia enacted the anti-trafficking law in 2008. The spread of HIV in the region is increasingly impacting women 2-3 times more at risk of contracting HIV than men in the same age group.

In her key note address, Dr. Nafis Sadik, UN Secretary General's Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific region, said that trafficking was matter of legislation alone, though laws were essential. They should be drafted with due respect for human rights and there must be even-handed enforcement. "Too often, we find double or triple standards at work." She added: "the sex workers are endowed with the same rights as other human beings; and that coercion in all its forms, including trafficking, has no part to play".

Image via Wikipedia

The testimonies heard by the Court included:

* Wanta, a young Cambodian woman selling sugar care juice on the streets of Phnom Penh couldn't resist the lure of an overseas job that promised her a decent salary. Smuggled out of her country through the Cambodia-Thai border, she ended up in Malaysia as a bonded sex worker. After months in several brothels and a jail, she is now back in Phnom Penh, thanks to the intervention of an NGO. But with a battered past and HIV, life is a daunting struggle for her.

* Nitha from Indonesia took a job in the Middle East as a domestic worker, but faced extreme hardship and escaped, ending up in a detention centre in Jakarta. Unable to make both the ends meet, she tried for another job in another country. This time, the working conditions were worse. "They forced me to work without a break and withheld my pay frequently. I fell unconscious often. I was raped several times."

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. El Mostafa Benlamlih, UN Resident Coordinator for Indonesia and UNDP Resident Representative, said: "there are no borders between human trafficking, violence and HIV/AIDS as there are no borders between nation states. When human insecurity and poverty thrive; migration, human trafficking, violence against women and HIV breed on each other." "Behind the voices of the testifiers at the Court, there is suffering of human beings, men, women and children; misunderstood, victimized, exploited, raped, infected, imprisoned, blamed and thrown at the margins of society."

"The timing of the Court is significant in that the current economic crisis has narrowed the opportunities for formal migration, making women in particular vulnerable to various forms of exploitation including trafficking. What is needed is collective and inclusive responses, given the diversity of views that exist on the issue," said Mr. Jeff O'Malley, Director, HIV/AIDS Practice, UNDP, New York said. The Court has brought together these critical views and has made an affirmative move towards joint efforts against trafficking and HIV that build on human rights principles and empowerment strategies, rather than inappropriately using only law enforcement, he added.

"In addressing the dual challenges of human trafficking and HIV, we need to ensure that the voices of women who are most affected are heard. The Regional Court of Women in attempting to bring such unheard voices to the public domain is laudable," said Christian Kroll, Global Coordinator of HIV/AIDS, UNODC.

"We need to urgently shift the deeply embedded norms, attitudes and behaviours that socially sanction unspeakable forms of violence against women. Rampant human rights violations, gender inequality, severe deprivation and unsafe migration; which create a fertile environment for trafficking of women are the same factors that increase their vulnerability to HIV, Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, Regional HIV Practice Leader, Asia Pacific, UNDP, said.

Ms. Corinne Kumar, International Coordinator, Courts of Women, said: "in its experience of a new imaginary, the Courts of Women are finding different ways of speaking truth to power; but also speaking truth to the powerless, seeking the conscience of the world, creating other reference points than that of the rule of law, returning ethics to politics."

The eminent jury included Hon. Mieke Komar Kantaatmadja (Supreme Court Justice, Indonesia), Prof. Vitit Muntarbhorn (Prof. of Law and Former UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Thailand), Marina Mahathir (Steering Committee Member, Asia Pacific Leadership Forum on HIV/AIDS and Development, Malaysia), Annette Sykes (Lawyer, New Zealand), Sylvia Marcos (Director, Center for Psycho-ethnological Research, Mexico), and Esperanza I. Cabral (Secretary, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Philippines).

For more information, please contact: G. Pramod Kumar ( pramod.kumar@undp.org); Kazuyuki Uji ( kazuyuki.uji@undp.org) Ph: +94114526400

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/court-of-women.html

Working Group Challenges Prominent Participants to Work Together to End Human Trafficking

NEW YORK, Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) announced today that President of Corporate and Government Affairs David Arkless will lead a working session on ending human trafficking at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative Thursday in New York City.
"It's an honor to be a part of convening some of the world's leading thinkers to consider how we can work together to end human trafficking," Arkless said. "As Manpower stands for the dignity of work and employment opportunities for all, we must lead the way in stopping human trafficking through our own actions, as well as by lobbying, generating awareness and reaching out to our peers."
Manpower Inc. was the first company to sign the Athens Ethical Principles, which declare a "zero tolerance" policy for working with any entity, which benefits in any way, from human trafficking. This includes Manpower clients, vendors and business partners. Manpower's effort to engage more companies in support of the Principles has resulted in more than 12,000 organizations signing up directly, or through the commitment of their industry federations.
The purpose of Arkless' working group is to identify practical solutions for partnerships between different sectors to end human trafficking and forced labor. Participants in this session will include l, Ambassador and Director of the US Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons; Swanee Hunt; Ambassador and Harvard University academic; Sophie Gasperment, Global CEO of The Body Shop; Ndioro Ndiaye; President of the Alliance for Migration, Leadership and Development; Julia Ormond, Founder & President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET) and Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson, Global March Against Child Labour.
Ricky Martin, Goodwill Ambassador to UNICEF, will also make a presentation during the discussion, followed by break-out sessions led by anti-trafficking practitioners from around the world. These experts include Dan Viederman, CEO of Verite; Mark Lagon, CEO of POLARIS; Kellie McElhaney, Former Director, Center for Corporate Responsibility of the Haas Business School at the University of California - Berkeley; Alison Warhurst, Founder of MapleCroft and David Batstone, President of the Not for Sale Campaign.
Batstone, a journalist and anti-trafficking leader, has called Manpower a "super corporate ally." He says, "David Arkless is in an elite group of individuals who truly understand how the laws regulating each country's labor recruiting can create ambiguity where coercive and manipulative labor recruiters find opportunity to thrive. In order to solve this problem, we are going to need more individuals and partners like Manpower, who understand what the global talent pool looks like today: the industries that need it, the recruiters that find it, and the regulations that police it. "
Since its founding in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton, more than 80 current and former heads of state; hundreds of leading CEOs, philanthropists, and NGO leaders; and 10 of the last 16 Nobel Peace Prize laureates have attended CGI. This year, US President Barack Obama and leading voices from every sector are taking action on solving four major global challenges: innovation, infrastructure, human capital and the global economy.
Through programs initiated by its local operations throughout the world, Manpower provides people from all walks of life with sustainable livelihoods and helps the disadvantaged and disenfranchised survive and thrive by linking them to work. Manpower's role as an agent of positive social change, particularly in the area of workforce development, forms the cornerstone of the company's corporate citizenship program. Manpower also recently introduced a new global procurement procedure designed to ensure that all its vendors adhere to the company's strict guidelines to eliminate forced labor, human trafficking and corrupt business practices.
About Manpower Inc.
Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) is a world leader in the employment services industry; creating and delivering services that enable its clients to win in the changing world of work. With over 60 years' experience, the $22 billion company offers employers a range of services for the entire employment and business cycle including permanent, temporary and contract recruitment; employee assessment and selection; training; outplacement; outsourcing and consulting. Manpower's worldwide network of 4,100 offices in 82 countries and territories enables the company to meet the needs of its 400,000 clients per year, including small and medium size enterprises in all industry sectors, as well as the world's largest multinational corporations. The focus of Manpower's work is on raising productivity through improved quality, efficiency and cost-reduction across their total workforce, enabling clients to concentrate on their core business activities. Manpower Inc. operates under five brands: Manpower, Manpower Professional, Elan, Jefferson Wells and Right Management. More information on Manpower Inc. is available at www.manpower.com.


SOURCE Manpower Inc.

AllGov - News - Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons: Who Is Luis C. de Baca?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

President Obama turned to a career prosecutor with many years of experience in fighting human trafficking when he nominated Luis C de Baca to be the next Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the Department of State. Confirmed May 6, 2009, de Baca holds the rank of Ambassador-at-Large and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State. The Trafficking Office is statutorily mandated to coordinate U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery, including forced labor in factories, fields, homes and sweatshops, and the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. Worldwide, there are estimated to be as many as 27 million persons living in slavery today.

De Baca’s great-great-grandfather, Ezequiel C de Baca, was New Mexico’s first elected Hispanic governor. Born in New Mexico, Luis C de Baca was one of three children born to Dr. Robert C de Baca, an animal scientist known as the “Father of the Iowa Beef Improvement Association,” and Mary (Marchino) de Baca. He grew up on a cattle ranch in Huxley, Iowa, where he was active in the local 4-H Club and graduated from Ballard High School. He earned a B.A. in political science from Iowa State University in 1990, and a law degree in 1993 from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was President of the Hispanic Law Students Association and an editor of the Michigan Law Review.

Straight out of law school, de Baca was hired by the Department of Justice to be involuntary servitude and slavery coordinator, a position he held until 2000, when he was named chief counsel of DOJ’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. In that position, he tried more than 100 cases, including several high profile ones, such as U.S. v. Kil Soo Lee, which involved the enslavement of more than 200 Vietnamese and Chinese workers in a garment factory in American Samoa; the so-called “Deaf Mexican” slavery case, which involved scores of hearing impaired Mexicans who were lured to the U.S. with promises of employment and then forced to sell cheap trinkets on the streets of New York City, Chicago and other large cities; and U.S. v. Cadena, a path-setting prostitution slavery case in Florida. He was also instrumental in developing the victim-centered approach to combating modern slavery, which means that former slaves are assisted in establishing normal lives, rather than deported or otherwise treated as criminals. In 2007, de Baca was named counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, working for Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), where his portfolio included national security, intelligence, immigration, civil rights, and modern slavery issues.

A Democrat, de Baca donated $2,250 to Democratic candidates and causes between 2001 and 2004.

The “C” in de Baca’s is part of his surname and stands for Cabeza.
- Matt Bewig

State Department Biography
Interview with Diana Scimone
From Christy Hall to the Halls in Washington DC (by Carolyn Manning, Nevada, Iowa Journal)
Moderated Discussion on Human Trafficking with Luis C. de Baca
Statement before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (PDF)
Obama’s Abolitionist (by E. Benjamin Skinner, Huffington Post)
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (AllGov)

Antislavery Efforts Must Focus on Demand | TakePart Social Action Network™

Posted by Siddharth Kara on May 20, 2009 at 5:25 pm

In the course of talks at universities, NGO’s, and even bookstore readings, I have often been asked the following question: “How can we end slavery without ending poverty, corruption, and social injustices against women, children, and minorities?” Good question, and many of you may be wondering the same. Fortunately, I have an answer.
As I argued in my last blog on takepart.com, understanding contemporary slavery as a business is crucial if we are to design a more effective abolitionist response. This business and economic analysis reveals many crucial pieces of information, including the immense profits generated by human exploitation as well as the business models of various modes of slavery, which can reveal vulnerable points that can and must be exploited if we are to rid the world of these crimes.
Each mode of slavery is governed by distinct manifestations of two forces – supply and demand. As an example, let’s take a look at sex trafficking, the most profitable and fastest growing component of modern-day slavery. The supply-side of this barbaric industry is driven by immense and longstanding forces relating to poverty, lawlessness, social instability, corruption, military conflict, and acute bias against female gender and minority ethnicities. Remedying these forces will require considerable long term efforts, which is why so many people ask – how can we solve slavery without solving these problems? For many forms of slavery, like trafficked sex slaves, we do not have to rely on the attenuation of these supply-side forces in order to make a significant dent in the business of slavery. Fortunately, the demand side of this industry is far more vulnerable to intervention.
The demand-side drivers of the global sex trafficking industry are:
1) male demand for commercial sex
2) slave exploiter demand to maximize profit, and
3) consumer demand for lower retail prices, or the price elasticity of demand.

These latter two elements are economic drivers of demand, and I argue in my book that they present the most effective way to virtually abolish, if not eradicate, the global sex trafficking industry. I won’t burden this blog with the details, but for now I can share the following essential thesis – the enormity and pervasiveness of the global sex trafficking industry is driven by its ability to generate immense profits ($36 billion in 2007) at almost no real risk. The absence of real risk is largely due to poorly enforced laws, very low prosecution and conviction levels, systemic corruption, poor victim-witness protections, and insufficient economic penalties in the law.
Remember, slaves provide a virtually nil cost of labor. Labor is almost always the highest cost component to any business. When operating costs are substantially reduced, slave exploiters can in turn reduce the retail price of the products or services they are selling, which then elevates consumer demand for those products or services (price elasticity), which then feeds additional slave exploiter demand to acquire more slaves. This aggregate demand among slave exploiters and consumers is the most deadly driver of the global sex trafficking industry. Accordingly, the most effective efforts to eradicate sex trafficking are those that reduce aggregate demand by drastically increasing the costs and risks associated with the exploitation of trafficked sex slaves (thereby inverting the thesis I described above). There are specific tactics that can achieve these ends, including several that can be undertaken by individual citizens. Here are a few:
1. Initiate media and outreach campaigns to lawmakers demanding a more aggressive demand-side approach to contemporary slavery (details of what this means are in my book);
2. Initiate media and outreach campaigns to corporations whose products you purchase demanding they certify their supply chains are free of slave labor, under threat of migrating your consumption to competitors who do;
3. Liaise with local law enforcement through a system of community vigilance committees (CVC’s) to seek out signs of slave exploitation for the purpose of proactive, human-rights intervention in such establishments;
4. Support NGO’s with victim-witness shelters or empowerment programs through financial or volunteer contributions. For example: Free the Slaves, Polaris Project, International Justice Mission, and ASSET
There are many more tactics that must be undertaken by governments, international organizations, and NGO’s to provide a comprehensive demand-side response to slavery. Also, some modes of contemporary slavery are not as amenable to a demand side approach. Fortunately, those that are amenable are invariably the most profitable segments of slavery, so this is as good a place as any to start. Given the limited impact of supply-side efforts across the last decade, the time for a more tactical, resource-driven, business-analysis informed demand-side antislavery campaign is long overdue!
http://www.takepart.com/blog/2009/05/20/antislavery-efforts-must-focus-on-demand/

Modern abolitionism

From Columbia Spectator

By Briana Wong
Published Monday 7 September 2009 07:14pm EST.

“New York Times” journalist Nicholas Kristof deems human trafficking “the big emerging human rights issue for the 21st century.” He also calls it “a convoluted euphemism.” What Kristof is intimating here is that human trafficking—that is, “the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit a person for profit,” according to the U.S. State Department’s 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report—cannot rightfully be called anything other than slavery. As the global slave trade reemerges, this time tied with arms dealing as the second largest organized crime pursuit in the world, a budding abolitionist movement is scrambling to muster enough strength to combat it.
When I first heard about the human trafficking problem, I was overwhelmed by the stories of young women sold into prostitution in brothels in Cambodia, families forced into debt bondage in India, and children abducted by rebel armies and forced to fight in the ongoing Ugandan civil war. It was only recently, thanks to Justin Dillon’s new documentary “Call + Response,” that I learned that the United States, and New York City, in particular, is also plagued by this evil that has once again reared its ugly head. Approximately 15,000 to 18,000 people, according to an FBI estimate, are smuggled into the United States every year for forced labor, with John F. Kennedy Airport emerging as a major point of entry.
This summer, I had the opportunity to serve as an intern at Restore NYC, a nonprofit dedicated to the fight against human trafficking in New York. Restore focuses on reintegrating the victims of international sex trafficking into society. The organization currently works through the court systems in New York City to offer counseling services to women enslaved by the sex industry, and it plans, in the next twelve months, to open New York’s first residential facility for internationally trafficked victims of the sex trade.
My internship involved conducting extensive research on human trafficking in the city, searching for grants that will be used to open Restore’s safe house next year, facilitating networking among the various abolitionist groups in New York, and connecting law enforcement with anti-trafficking organizations that help victims get back on their feet.
One of the highlights of the summer was reporting incidents of forced labor in New York using the Slavery Map Web site created by David Batstone, a human rights activist and professor of ethics at the University of San Francisco. Slavery Map allows modern abolitionists to alert society to the cries of the oppressed. It provides a way for the public to gauge the sheer magnitude of this evil that plagues the city and the world. Taking advantage of public information made available by the “New York Times,” the Department of Justice, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, I contributed to the collection of local human trafficking reports stored on the Web site.
Through my research, I learned to recognize the red flags sent up by human trafficking, and I was appalled when I discovered how many there are in New York City. Massage parlors and escort services that offer sexual services, that frequently change names, addresses, or both, that are located in ethnic-specific communities, that advertise as “outcall only,” and that are staffed by recent, possibly undocumented immigrants are often places where desperate women are forced, deceived, or coerced into sex work. Five such establishments were featured in a “Time Out New York” article entitled “Best Happy-Ending Massage Parlors in NYC,” in which one of the magazine’s reporters was paid to seek out the best places to pay for sex (that is, brothels) in the city. My concern upon reading the article did not arise solely from the fact that engaging in sex trafficking is a class B felony in New York State (for which the penalty is a maximum of 25 years in prison), but also from the fact that sex trafficking is a gross injustice committed against voiceless and the powerless people in our society.
My first foray into abolition work gave me a new awareness of the gravity of the issue of human trafficking and the relevance it has to our country and our city. Although my internship with Restore NYC is finished, I plan to commit to the long-term battle against modern slavery. For those of you interested in learning more about human trafficking or in contributing to the fight against it, I recommend reading “Not For Sale” by David Batstone or watching the documentary “Very Young Girls” by Girlss Education and Mentoring Services, an organization that offers relief to trafficked minors in New York. Several campus clubs, such as Amnesty International, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Hillel, the African Students Association, and the Veritas Forum, have hosted events designed to raise awareness about the issue last semester. Furthermore, a series of events about human trafficking will take place at Columbia from Sept. 21-27. The following Web site offers more information about the upcoming events: http://freedomweeknyc.com/calendar.html.
Human trafficking affects every nation, every culture, and every society, including our own. As students of Columbia University, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to educate ourselves about this infringement on human rights in the city we call home.
The author is a Columbia College sophomore. She is a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and co-coordinator of Mentoring Youth in New York City (MyNYC), a Community Impact program. “Modern abolitionism” is an installment of Summer Dispatches, an opinion feature series that seeks to showcase the diverse summer experiences of members of the Columbia community.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/09/07/modern-abolitionism

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Approachable abolitionism

From the Columbia Spectator

By Lucy Herz and Hei-Yue Pang
Published Monday 21 September 2009 07:16pm EST.

Economics is the primary force behind the thriving existence of modern day slavery, or human trafficking. As a crime driven by supply and demand, trafficking requires a continual demand from consumers and a supply of available victims to sustain the cycle. At a Columbia event that kicked off Freedom Week this past Sunday, author and researcher Siddharth Kara, Business ’01, illuminated the highly lucrative nature of sex trafficking and the economic reasons behind the appeal of the industry, which stem from its ability to generate immense profits at almost no real risk.
The rise of globalization has only further increased the potential benefits to be reaped by those involved, and the growth in this illicit business means that there are millions of people trafficked around the world. The severity of abuse endured by the trafficked victims has brought human trafficking to the forefront of the agendas of human rights and social justice activists, creating a massive outpouring of generosity and birthing hundreds of organizations, mainly governmental and nonprofit, that claim the issue as their own.

While the ever-growing number of anti-trafficking organizations is no doubt a sign of an increasing dedication to the eradication of this crime, slavery is still a growing problem. The demand for sex slaves has risen as a result of the diminished costs of their acquisition via trafficking, which taps directly into the underlying economics of the issue. In spite of a well intentioned abolitionist movement at large, the rate of substantial change is still questionable. This lack of success among anti-trafficking organizations is largely due to the misdirection of efforts. A successful abolitionist movement must address the economic nature of modern-day slavery.
It is only logical that in order to effectively fight a crime that is essentially economic, one must employ economic tools. Nomi Network, an anti-trafficking organization in New York, understands and fills that gap by offering a sustainable and approachable method of fighting slavery. Nomi accomplishes this by building partnerships between the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Through its unique business model, Nomi aims to leverage the marketplace in order to provide economic and educational empowerment to trafficking survivors and at-risk women. In so doing, Nomi fights the powerful economics of supply and demand in the sex industry with its own sustainable model by offering employment to survivors and creating a market for their products.
Nomi’s model provides the missing link in the emancipation cycle, a holistic approach to fighting trafficking. The cycle outlines the method by which organizations can intercede on behalf of the victims through prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, reintegration, and empowerment. Yet while the emancipation cycle attacks the issue from multiple angles, it still lacks sources of revenue to sustain it. Nomi goes beyond the boundaries of charity and generates revenue through the sales of fashion-conscious products that appeal to a global market. This model, based on the economics of supply and demand, creates an effective counter-cycle to the one that fuels slavery today.
Furthermore, Nomi Network offers each person the opportunity to actively fight this complicated global issue on an everyday level. Nomi’s model is founded upon the idea that everybody can be an abolitionist by tapping into basic consumer tendencies. Rather than soliciting large donations or extensive amounts of time, Nomi leverages the power of the consumer dollar and facilitates the demand for slave-free products. Thanks to the widespread use of the Internet and social networking tools such as Twitter, Nomi offers easy access to its socially conscious products, giving hope to the abolitionist movement at large.
Nomi’s model of “approachable abolitionism” offers a revolutionary tactic against trafficking. By employing an economic strategy to fight an economic crime, Nomi Network provides a remarkably hopeful message for what can be a daunting and overwhelming mission, and it represents the future of the abolitionist movement.
Lucy Herz is a Columbia College junior majoring in philosophy. Hei-Yue Pang is a Barnard College senior majoring in political economy.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/09/21/approachable-abolitionism

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Modern slaves | Salon Books

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/27/slavery/print.html

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Modern slaves

Hardly a thing of the past, slavery thrives in our world. Investigative reporter Benjamin Skinner tells Salon the shocking truth about human trafficking.
By Hannah Wallace

Mar. 27, 2008 | During the four years that Benjamin Skinner researched modern-day slavery for his new book, "A Crime So Monstrous," he posed as a buyer at illegal brothels on several continents, interviewed convicted human traffickers in a Romanian prison and endured giardia, malaria, dengue and a bad motorcycle accident. But Skinner, an investigative journalist, is most haunted by his experience in a seedy brothel in Bucharest, Romania, where he was offered a young woman with Down syndrome in exchange for a used car.
"There are more slaves today than at any point in human history," writes Skinner, citing a recent estimate that there are currently 27 million worldwide. One hundred and forty-three years after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1865 and 60 years after the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned the slave trade worldwide, slavery -- or, as it is euphemistically called, human trafficking -- is actually thriving. It is, as Hillary Clinton has said, "the dark underbelly of globalization."
That slavery in its many forms -- debt bondage, forced domestic servitude and forced prostitution -- still exists is, indeed, shocking, mostly because it is invisible to those of us who don't know where to look for it. Skinner's great achievement is that he shines a light on the international slave trade, exposing the horrors of bondage not only through assiduous reporting and interviews with modern-day abolitionists and government officials, but by sharing the stories of several survivors. These poignant tales -- of people like Muong, a 12-year-old Dinka boy from southern Sudan, who is abducted (with his brother and mother) by an Arab slave driver; Tatiana, an Eastern European woman who is tricked into slavery when her boyfriend of six months finds her an "au pair" job in Amsterdam; and Gonoo, an Indian man in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh who inherits a debt from his father and spends his days working it off at a stone quarry -- illustrate the harsh realities of slavery while also offering some hope that former slaves can rebuild their lives.
Salon sat down with Skinner to talk about modern-day abolitionists, what's wrong with redemptions (also called "buy backs"), and why he's optimistic that slavery can be eradicated.
You infiltrated many dangerous underworlds to get these stories, often putting your life at risk by chatting up child slave brokers and negotiating to buy young women from a Russian mobster in Istanbul who'd just been released from prison. Which situation, in retrospect, was the most harrowing?
There were definitely some moments where I felt I'd made a mistake in terms of personal safety. At this point, though, I have to say that the people who are most in danger in these situations are the slaves themselves. My greatest concern going in was not "Am I going to come out whole?" but "Is there going to be some retaliation against the slaves if my cover is blown?"
I had a principle that I would not pay for a human life. You buy a human being and you can't just set them free and dump them on the economy with no resources, no support system, no rehabilitation.
When I was offered this young woman in trade for a used car at the Romani brothel in Bucharest, I could have done one of a few things: I could've paid to redeem her. I was with a couple of guys and I could've fought physically with the traffickers to get her out. Or I could've gone to the police the next day to tell them, which is what I did.
Very unsatisfying, that. You want to rip this guy's head off, right? I was shown this woman who had scars all over her arm -- she was clearly trying to kill herself to escape daily rape, and she had Down syndrome. I was so in shock. I was undercover and I had this moment where I thought, "What would my character be doing in this situation?" So I tried to smile. And I physically couldn't. I was so horrified. I looked at my translator, who had not done this kind of work before, and there was just sheer horror on his face as well. To see somebody who is in such a condition. They had put makeup on her and her makeup was running because she was crying so much.
Did the police do anything?
The response from the police was, "These are the Roma, they have their laws, they have their blood." The Roma are this incredibly oppressed and marginalized community within Romania -- and have been for centuries. That's why, I think, the major human traffickers in Romania over the past several years have been Roma.
I kept thinking of Samantha Power's book as I was reading this because you describe the reluctance of government officials to use the term "slavery" to describe what is obviously exactly that. (Power describes the same studied avoidance of the word "genocide" in "A Problem From Hell.") Colin Powell didn't use "slavery" in 2001 when he released the first Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. Even the major piece of U.S. anti-slavery legislation, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, doesn't use the word "slavery."
There are over a dozen universal conventions and over 300 international treaties that have been signed banning slavery and the slave trade. We've all agreed that this is a crime of universal concern and it requires a robust response to stop it.
The U.S. has actually gotten better at using the term "slavery" when it's appropriate. One group that has not gotten better in this regard -- they've taken baby steps -- has been the U.N. They are so tepid and afraid of offending member states. Even in a case like Sudan, which was as egregious a form of slavery and slave raiding as you've had in the late 20th century. In 1999, at the height of slave raiding, the U.N. Human Rights Commission said, "OK, we will no longer refer to slavery, we will refer to intertribal abductions." And if you talk to U.N. officials behind the scenes, they'll say that the logic behind this is that in order to move the issue forward, we had to be diplomatic and reach this middle ground. The problem with that logic is that you lose all leverage. Abduction is not a crime against humanity -- slavery is. If it's a crime against humanity, you get hit pretty hard.
How would you get hit very hard?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 4, says slavery and the slave trade are banned worldwide. But actually, you're bringing up a good point. In terms of enforcement, the U.N. doesn't have the kind of systems built into it which can really deal with this, and that's a problem.
The U.N., which has, as part of its original mandate, the eradication of slavery and the slave trade, finds itself now at a stage where there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. And it really makes you question the viability of the model and the strength of the system.
There are philosophical differences about how to combat slavery. Some people, such as Michael Horowitz (the neocon abolitionist), have focused exclusively on sex trafficking, hoping there will be a "ripple effect" with other forms of slavery such as debt bondage and forced domestic servitude.
Nonsense.
But how do you explain this myopia? You cite so much research that shows that the other forms of slavery are even more prevalent -- in the U.S., you say, less than half of American slaves are forced prostitutes.
I don't think enough reports have come out and the ones that have come out haven't been in the right places. I think when you start getting the 700 Club talking about how the slavery of a young man in a quarry in India -- or in a brick kiln or on a farm -- is equivalent to the slavery of the Israelites and you start quoting Bible verses, then maybe we'll be getting somewhere.
Another philosophical divide among modern-day abolitionists has to do with the role of poverty. The late Senator Wellstone, who co-sponsored the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, was adamant that poverty was a central factor but Horowitz disagreed, vehemently. Why do you think that is? It seems so obvious that poverty is the very reason so many people are forced and hoodwinked into slavery.
Paul Wellstone's view of this was basically that you can't address slavery without having targeted anti-poverty programs. When I presented this to Horowitz, he slammed his desk and said something to the effect of "The Paul Krugmans of the world would love for this to be a means for me redistributing my income to Sri Lanka." And I'll give him this: I understand his point that the end of slavery cannot wait for the end of poverty. That's not what I'm calling for and I don't think that's what Senator Wellstone was calling for.
But if you don't recognize that the primary driver of slavery today is the nexus between withering poverty of extreme marginalized communities with unscrupulous criminals, and you don't address both sides of it -- the criminal side and the socioeconomic side -- you're not going to solve this problem. As long as there's a ready source of people who are so desperate for survival that they will sell their children into slavery, as long as you don't address that, you will always have slavery. And I fundamentally feel that slavery can be ended.
Do you think the TVPA's three-tiered anti-slavery system, which evaluates countries' efforts to eradicate slavery and imposes non-trade sanctions on those who don't do anything to abolish it, works?
I think it's a good thing, but I honesty feel it has outlived its usefulness. You can only slap a country lightly on its wrists so many times and have them notice. After a while it totally loses its effectiveness.
Let's talk about the practice of Redemptions. Are these still going on and is it a viable way to chip away at slavery, buying a slave's freedom one at a time?
There's a long history of it, and not all of it is bad. I find it a very imperfect and unjust way of freeing people. You are essentially acknowledging the right of property in man, by buying them. In recent history, I can't think of any instances where it has worked and been unproblematic.
It's mostly happening in Sudan, right?
New York Times columnist Nick Kristof did it, of course, in Cambodia where he went in and bought two girls in a brothel. And he went back a year later and found that one of the girls was back in the brothel and hooked on methamphetamines.
To take our own history, Lincoln had contemplated buying all slaves from their masters and then setting them free in either Haiti or Liberia. But I think at a certain point -- and I defer to civil war scholars on this -- he realized that this was very much an imperfect justice and what needed to happen was the remaking, through force, of a society that would acknowledge that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, which was the initial promise, of course, of the Declaration of Independence.
What you have in Sudan are these evangelicals coming over with tons of hard currency in the middle of a war zone, going to one of the combatants -- in particular, one small faction of the combatants -- and saying, "OK, here's a ton of money, now go get us some slaves."
Basically funding the militia.
Exactly. And even if every one of those people was a slave and everything was on the up and up ... the devil is in the details.
You'd think that the hardest part would be freeing slaves. But once they're free, their lives are never easy. At one point in the Sudan section you say "free, but free to starve." What seems to you the best solution for helping former slaves deal with their new-found freedom?
Giving them some access to credit, healthcare, property rights and education. And psychological help.
In many of these far-off places where I was, the arbiters of law -- the people who set the rules -- are people who are benefiting from a slave economy. As long as that's the situation, you need to break the grip of those people over the system.
In your epilogue, you say, "George W. Bush did more to free modern-day slaves than any other president." However, you also criticize the Bush administration for focusing on sex trafficking to the exclusion of other forms of bondage.
The bar isn't very high. Only at the end of the Clinton years was there a recognition on the part of the executive branch that this was really an issue. But Bush deserves credit. He did more to free slaves than any president in modern history. But history doesn't grade on a curve on the subject of abolition. And he could have and should have done much more -- there's no question. The fact that there was such a narrow focus really hamstrung his efficacy on this.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has called trafficking "the dark underbelly of globalization."
Which presidential candidate -- Clinton, Obama or McCain -- do you think is most passionate about abolishing modern-day slavery?
Listen, I'm not going to give Obama a pass on this. It's not clear to me that he cares about modern-day slavery -- he hasn't said a word about it. And Hillary has, certainly in the last couple of years. Though not on the trail.
But I think it is a mistake to make this a campaign issue. I think it has to be a big piece of our American foreign policy platform. It needs to be fundamentally a central piece of any meaningful new American foreign policy.
And what about John McCain?
Well, he blurbed my book. John McCain is very close with John Miller, the former head of the TIP office, which is a good sign. But no, he hasn't been a leader on this.
One of the things I found hopeful about the book is that while it's important to make policy changes and create tough anti-slavery laws, NGOs and individuals clearly play a vital role in exposing slavery. People like Rampal in India (the activist who runs Sankalp) and the Amsterdam taxi driver who helps Kayta, a sex slave, buy her freedom. So the role of the individual is important.
It is, it's extremely important. If there's a critical thing from that U.S. chapter that I was trying to get across, it's that this doesn't have to be some kind of neo-McCarthyism where you are spying on your neighbors, but just be aware of what's going on in your community.
I talk about three things that individuals can and should do. The first is becoming conscious of the reality of slavery -- becoming more attuned to the signs of what may be a trafficking or slavery situation. A key part of that is getting educated about slavery. The second thing is pressing elected officials and candidates for office on what they're going to do about it -- what creative approaches they have for combatting modern-day slavery and ending it within a generation. The third things is supporting groups like Free the Slaves (Kevin Bales' group) and Anti-Slavery International.
Abolishing slavery is clearly an all-consuming issue, something that often drives people who are involved with it to burn out or go crazy or both. How have you kept your sanity during the four years of researching this book?
The question is really how these people that operate at the pointed end of the spear keep their sanity. And the people who run trafficking shelters in Romania -- who have weekly or monthly threats from traffickers -- how they keep their sanity. For me it was much easier. You go into these situations and certainly it stays with you. When you meet somebody like this young woman in the Bucharest brothel or Gonoo or the trafficker in Haiti who offered to sell me a child for $50.
What drove you to take on this project?
You could say that abolition is in my blood. My great-great-grandfather fought with the Union Army in the Siege of Petersburg [Va.]. His uncle was a rabble-rousing abolitionist in Connecticut. And I was raised Quaker. The Quakers were the heart of the abolitionist movement in the late 18th century, early 19th century.
Fast-forward to 1999. I read Kevin Bales' "Disposable People," which is an incredibly good, earnest take on modern-day slavery worldwide. Bales' estimate of total number of slaves was 27 million -- a staggering number. The one thing that I wanted to do was to put a human face on that: to tell the stories of the slaves, the slave masters and the slave traders. And to tell the stories of those who try to free them.

-- By Hannah Wallace

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