Google+ Hangout on Human Trafficking - NYTimes.com

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Nick Kristof is doing a Google+ Hangout with leaders in the global fight against modern slavery. 

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http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/google-hangout-on-human-trafficking/?_r=0

Human Trafficking Domestic and Abroad

By Eryn-Ashlei Bailey | Published: March 9, 2010

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Somaly Mam is a Women’s Herstory Heroine that we covered earlier in the series. Yesterday, she spoke at the Levin Institute in New York City at an event hosted by the United Nations Association of New York. The UNA has established human trafficking as the main initiative of their advocacy committee. There is a sense of urgency, recognized by the UNA advocacy committee as reports from the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that human trafficking is a business worth 4 billion dollars annually. According to this study, there are 4 million victims of human trafficking each year.

There are numerous misconceptions surrounding this new focus on human trafficking. Some of these misconceptions include that girls are exploited by men for sex. But, brothel owners that are exploiting women are often owned and operated by women. The second misconception is that human trafficking is a foreign problem but it is something that takes place right in New York City. Forced prostitution is not only imposed on women of Eastern Europe but on young girls and boys on every continent, in every country, in every city.

Carol Smolenski, the Executive Director of ECPAT, was the first of five panelists to speak at last night’s engagement. Her discussion focused primarily on American children who are trafficked and forced into sexual slavery. There are very few reliable sources of statistics on human trafficking, but she cited a study by UPENN that said 4,000 children in New York City are exploited by sex trafficking each year. Carol spoke about the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. This law is significant in the fight against human trafficking because it treats children forced into prostitution not as criminals, but as victims. Before this act, there was a widely held belief that young women on the street that were sold for sex were just “bad kids”. But, this new act ensures that these young women are entitled to services and treated as victims.

Carol also mentioned the ECPAT report entitled: Who is there to help us? This report discusses the fact that children are criminalized and punished when they are found prostituting themselves when in fact, they should be treated as victims. The road to prostitution of young girls is usually paved with some form of sexual abuse and neglect by the child’s family. There is also a “silence” around sexual abuse as mentioned by Carol. The abuse is unaddressed. Pimps prey on these young women and often use this line of reasoning: “You’ll give it up for free at home but you won’t accept money to get paid for it?” Pimps are mass manipulators and they pervert young children while preying off of their needs for love and affection. Carol referenced the wonderful organization G.E.M.S. based out of NYC and their film Very Young Girls as a source of information on domestic human trafficking and forced prostitution. Carol continued with mentioning the significance of the New York Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act which was the first law of its kind to treat children under the age of 16 as victims and make them eligible for services.

The second panelist to speak was Jennifer Dreher from Safe Horizon. Jennifer’s contribution to the panel included an emphasis on victims of forced labor. Jennifer explained that New York City is one of the top three destinations for human trafficking in the U.S. There are 100,000 to 3 million people domestically trafficked each year. Reports show that up to 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. yearly. As mentioned by previous panelist Carol Smolenski, there are few accurate statistics on how many people are actually trafficked because of the clandestine nature of these operations.

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Jennifer’s organization focuses on foreign born survivors trafficked in the U.S., explaining that human trafficking is so hard to identify and address because there are so many conflicting definitions of what human trafficking actually is. There is are various definitions under international law, a federal definition, individual state definitions– if parties can’t agree on what human trafficking actually is, how can they adequately address it? She continued to point out that the media “sensationalizes cases of human trafficking”. Most often, movies and documentaries may focus on one particular group of exploited people such as women from Eastern Europe who are held as sex slaves. Jennifer’s unique work at Safe Horizon exposes her to work with the 60% of women who are trafficked into the U.S. as labor servants. These victims of forced labor are also subjected to sexual violence and physical torture on top of forced labor. Jennifer’s question to the attendees was: “How can you say if victims of sex trafficking have it worse than victims of labor trafficking if both groups are treated inhumanely?” Jennifer pointed out that service providers need to be focused in their outreach because human trafficking covers so many different issues, and organizations should be prepared to deal with each issue in a comprehensive manner. Also, Jennifer discussed the widely unaddressed issue of transgendered individuals in NYC who are forced to perform sex acts for survival.

Celhia de Lavarene, President of STOP, was the third panelist. Celhia is a French-born woman who worked in Bosnia as a political journalist. There she discovered two young girls tied to a bed with tape over their mouths. These two young girls had been missing from their parents for six months. Celhia gave a heart-felt speech about why human trafficking is such an important issue that requires a global response. Celhia explained that many children who are forced to work in brothels have been kidnapped by their parents. But, when men frequent the brothels, they just assume that these young children want to be there.

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Celhia highlighted that human beings are mobile and victims are stationed in countries like Liberia only for a short time to be sent to places like the Philippines, Ukraine, and Egypt, going on to mention that human trafficking yields a 7 billion dollar profit annually in Bosnia. Because women can be sold over and over again, they are more profitable than guns and drugs, which can only be sold once. It is a more lucrative business than selling arms or other illicit substances. Shockingly, Celhia unveiled the reality that UN peacekeepers are sometimes clientele at these brothels that victimize young girls. UN peacekeepers have a certain level of immunity from the law. Hence, they go to brothels for sex with children and go unpunished for their actions. Her talk was ended with a sincere charge for all attendees to get involved in the fight of human trafficking in any way that they could.

Guy Jacobson was the fourth panelist in the evening’s discussion. He works very closely with Somaly Mam and has produced several documentaries, written books, and speaks with Somaly on panels across the world. Guy is currently a film maker but in his previous profession, he was an investment banker and attorney. While in Cambodia filming a documentary on child sex trafficking with Somaly Mam, Guy relieved phone calls from intelligence personnel warning him that there were death threats on his life from the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodian mafia. Making movies in Cambodia exposing their most lucrative business is not a wise move, Guy was warned. In order to continue with his documentary, Guy and Somaly had 4o armed body guards with machine guns.

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Guy, like Somaly, emphasizes that because there is a demand for sex with children, there is a supply for this industry. Guy discussed his action in attacking the clientele of these brothels, who are sometimes prominent Western businessmen. Guy suggested making the industry of sex with children more expensive, making the punishments more severe for offenders who rape children, and he also suggested clarifying the law in regards to child trafficking.

As an attendee, the most moving part of Guys’ delivery was his use of the word “rape”. In most cases that I’ve witnessed in discussing child sexploitation, words such as trafficking and forced prostitution are used. When Guy used the word “rape”, it added a new bone-chilling element to what is happening across the world. Guy mentioned that if a child was a prisoner of war and was raped by military personal, it would be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention. Guy continued to say that our governments would be taking serious action against these crimes. He stressed the need for the same reaction to be had when we learn that children in foreign countries are raped. Some of these children are raped 50 times in a day explained Guy.

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After hearing all the panelists and eventually the words of Somaly Mam, I was evermore inspired to work with initiatives to stop this horrendous crime against humanity and these very young adults. Last to speak was Somaly Mam who has saved 6,000 children from brothels and has established the Somaly Mam Foundation. In the previous article on Somaly Mam, you can find the wise and life changing words of this woman. She encourages people everyone to get involved in the fight against human trafficking and to “empower victims” whenever we can.

Next month, the United Nations Association with be filming Guy Jacobsons’ documentary “Holly”. Tickets are $10.00 and you will need to R.S.V.P. on-line prior to the showing.

Human Trafficking Domestic and Abroad

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Human Trafficking in Houston, Texas: Part Two | FSRN - Free Speech Radio News

Tue, 12/29/2009 - 13:23

[TRAFFICKING MONITOR: GOO TO TEH FOLLOWIG URL TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO FILE
http://www.fsrn.org/audio/human-trafficking-houston-texas-part-two/5968]
* Length: 6:33 minutes (6 MB)
* Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

In yesterday's newscast, we looked at the issue of transnational human trafficking in Houston, Texas. Human trafficking is a term that encompasses both modern-day slavery and sexual exploitation by force, fraud or coercion. Media coverage often focuses on the effects of human trafficking on immigrants, while the issue of domestic trafficking remains largely ignored or misunderstood. Shannon Young brings us the second part of a special FSRN series on human trafficking by focusing on the domestic side of the world's second most profitable illicit business.

[TRANSCRIPT]

No one knows just how many victims of human trafficking exist in the United States, but government estimates show the overwhelming majority are US citizens. Stereotypes, stigma, and misunderstanding often cause their victim status to be mis-categorized as criminal behavior. Most trafficked US citizens are found in the sex industry and they are often under the age of 18.

Rachel Lloyd is the Director of GEMS, a New York based survivor-led program for sexually exploited youth.

RACHEL LLOYD: "The reality that I see in my work every day is children that are victimized again by systems. Not just by the individual primary abusers, but by the systems that they reach out to, whether that's law enforcement, prosecutors, even service providers often who don't perceive them as fitting into a nice little victim box."

Academic and clinical studies of prostituted women consistently show a vast majority were sexually abused as children. The trauma profoundly impacts its victims and can often lead to severe substance abuse.

Kathryn Griffin-Townsend runs a program in Houston called “We've Been There, Done That” to help rehabilitate women who have lived through sex trafficking, prostitution, and associated drug addiction.

KATHRYN GRIFFIN-TOWNSEND: "Once you've been traumatized, you've gotta address that issue first before you send somebody out to try to find a job. I mean because if they still have those issues of...of...and those secrets and haven't been opened and dealt with, you can function, but it's easy to slip back in once those depressions and those memories hit you.'Well, let me medicate this so I can get rid of this feeling.' But if we deal with it, get rid of them and get used to knowing that and understanding 'this is a done deal, I don't have to go back to that, now I can work on the new me', then you've got something to work with."

Teenage runaways have a particularly high risk of falling prey to sex traffickers. Many runaways are escaping abusive situations at home...but once they're out on the streets, find it near impossible to secure shelter and work. Pimps often recruit girls by providing a mixture of security, affection, and generosity prior to commercializing their victims.

STEPHANIE HENDERSON: “Let's call it brainwashing.”

Stephanie Henderson was 22 when she met a charismatic man who played the part of the boyfriend and made false promises to lure her into prostitution. He turned out to be a physically abusive pimp who would take all of her earnings, which she said typically reached $1000 a night.

TEPHANIE HENDERSON: “With a pimp, you gotta give him all of your pay or get the [bleep] beat out of you.”

Coercing someone into selling sex and then using brute force to take that person's pay meets the legal criteria for a trafficking case, but pressing charges can be difficult due to the emotional bond that's often present between a prostituted woman and her pimp. Researchers compare this bond to that of a battered woman and her abuser.

But prosecutors don't need to prove the elements of force, fraud, or coercion when the victim is under 18 years of age. Ed Gallagher from the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas says, despite the tougher penalties, police often find minors when they bust prostitution rings.

ED GALLAGHER: "Often we find that there's a mix. There's generally a majority of adults, but we're always able to come up with someone in that 14-17 year range that they're willing to put on the street at much greater risk because there's apparently a demand among the patrons for these younger girls."

Psychologists and social scientists analyzing the sex industry have mainly focused their studies on prostitutes. Sex industry survivor and counselor Kathryn Griffin-Townsend says to get at the heart of the issue, more needs to be understood about the psychology and backgrounds of the abusers in the prostitution arena – from pimps to Johns to corrupt street police.

KATHRYN GRIFFIN-TOWNSEND: "That same mentality applies across the board when you find people who want to dominate and rule over people. What happened to them that made them have that frame of mentality and fall into those patterns of why they have a need and a hunger to show dominion over somebody?... Let's study the whole ball, not just take sections, because as long as we're doing sections, it's just getting worse! Let's look at the overall picture of what the real deal is on all of this.”

Another ignored aspect of the big picture is the lack of emergency shelter. Houston has no transitional housing specifically for US citizens escaping trafficking situations. Maria Trujillo is the Executive Director of the Houston Rescue and Restore Coalition:

MARIA TRUJILLO: "A lot of these victims come out of their situations with the clothes on their backs and that's it. And they have a lot of trauma and things to deal with and they're a very special case and they can't just be put into a homeless shelter or a domestic violence shelter. They need more than just the services that are available there."

And what about teen runaways? Calls placed to multiple Houston shelters could not find a single one that provides bed space to unaccompanied minors on a walk-in basis. Young runaways have the choice between sleeping at a friend's house or in the street, going to child protective services, getting put into the juvenile detention system...or taking up the offer of shelter from a stranger who may become their sex trafficker.

Shannon Young, FSRN.

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Trafficking Victims at U.N. Highlight Need for Recognition

By Theresa Braine

WeNews correspondent

Monday, November 2, 2009

Survivors of human trafficking spoke at the U.N. recently as part of a new institutional effort to have their input on policymaking. Panelists said a major problem was not being seen as trafficking victims when they suffered their ordeals.

UNITED NATIONS (WOMENSENEWS)--The U.N. has held hearings and sessions on human trafficking many times before, where professional advocates and police authorities have offered evidence.

But an Oct. 22 gathering before an audience of several dozen, which included U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was different.

For the first time trafficking victims were invited to speak, reflecting the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights' effort to promote a victim-centered approach.

One of the victims was Rachel Lloyd, who grew up in the United Kingdom. She survived forced sexual exploitation, which began after she quit school at 13 to care for her alcoholic mother. It led to a cycle of sexual abuse, drugs and prostitution that lasted through her teenage years.

After moving to New York, she founded GEMS: Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which she said helped 279 young women escape prostitution last year. She also actively lobbied for New York State's Safe Harbor Act for Sexually Exploited Youth, the country's first law to end the persecution of child sex-trafficking victims.

"This is a big and significant step for the U.N., and my hope is that this is the beginning of some real and substantive action on this issue," Lloyd told Women's eNews after delivering her testimony.
Three other survivors also spoke at the gathering--each from different corners of the globe, each with a very different ordeal to recount.

Different Stories, Common Theme

But there was one common theme: The official world often failed to see them as trafficking victims.
"One of the largest challenges that we have . . . is the lack of identification and the lack of recognition of our victim status," Lloyd told the gathering.

Charlotte Awino of Uganda told the panel about her eight-year imprisonment at the hands of Ugandan rebels, who kidnapped her and three dozen others from a boarding school when she was 14. Forced to march for days, she and other prisoners were "traumatized and often near death from beating and starvation."

Awino escaped at 22, having borne two children. She pointed out that often people in her position are viewed by authorities as being there voluntarily, mistaken for complicit terrorists rather than prisoners.

Buddhi Gurung of Nepal--the only male in the group--said his passport was confiscated when he answered a recruitment ad for work abroad. Instead, he was held for about a month in Amman, Jordan, then told by his supposed recruiters that he was going to work on a military base in Iraq. On the way there, a van in front of him carrying other trafficked Nepalis was ambushed and his 12 countrymen abducted. They were later killed, their beheadings broadcast over the Internet.

After serving 15 months at a U.S. base in Iraq, he was given his passport and sent home. He is currently suing the U.S. government. Although he may have looked like any immigrant worker, his circumstances did not match those of a voluntary worker. Instead of being sent to work in the U.S. for $500 per month as his recruiters had promised, he was brought to a war zone, paid a pittance and fed even less, he said.

Gurung and the families of the murdered Nepalis have taken the Houston-based defense contractor KBR, Inc. and Daoud and Partners, a Jordanian subcontractor, to federal court on human trafficking charges.

Forced Into Prostitution

Kikka Cerpa of Venezuela said that in 1992 she followed her boyfriend to New York City expecting a job as a nanny. Instead, he and his cousin forced her to "work off" her debt to the boyfriend by prostituting herself in his family's brothel.

"The first night was the worst. I had to service 19 men. They lined up for the new girl," Cerpa told the panel. She said her "boyfriend" told her that if she turned to authorities for help she would be arrested and deported.

She said that police sometimes raided the brothel and demanded sex. At other times, police arrested her. But either way, no officer ever seemed to look at Cerpa as a potential crime victim.

Cerpa eventually escaped by marrying a customer. When he started beating her she sought refuge in a shelter for abused women, which steered her toward Sanctuary for Families, a New York nonprofit that assists abused women and their children. In 2007, Cerpa received the annual Susan B. Anthony Award from the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women for her victim-advocacy work, which she continues to do while earning a living as a housekeeper.

Ruchira Gupta, a former BBC reporter who has spent the past 20 years working with prostitutes in India, many of whom are trafficked, moderated the panel.



In opening the session she offered her own example of public officials not recognizing trafficking victims as people in need of their help.



She said public health workers in Bombay try to prevent disease within brothels by giving out condoms, when official efforts would be better focused on helping to free the women in the brothels.



Gupta was struck by the plight of these women when she first met them in the 1980s, women who had been sold into sex slavery in their teens or earlier. Her work has helped bring the issue to the forefront globally, and in September she received the 2009 Clinton Global Citizen Award from former President Bill Clinton's Global Initiative foundation for her work.

More Concern Over Protecting Men

"Some of them actually told me, 'If the brothel didn't exist, where would we distribute the condoms?'" said Gupta, referring to the public health workers in Bombay. "They are more interested in protecting men from disease than protecting women and girls from the men."

The Office of the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons presented a report on trafficking to the General Assembly on Oct. 23, the day after the hearings.


Human trafficking, it said, encompasses slavery, debt bondage, forced labor and sexual exploitation.
The Geneva-based International Labour Organization, or ILO, estimates that at least 12.3 million adults and children are being trafficked at any given time.
The majority of these people are women and girls forced into sexual slavery, according to the ILO and other agencies.

"There are millions out there who are still victims, many of whom have not been discovered," U.N. Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons Joy Ngozi Ezeilo told the panel.
The key, she said, is giving visibility to victims, keeping track of those who go missing, offering them assistance once they're rescued and making a commitment to eliminate trafficking in the first place.
Countries, she said, must also levy harsher punishment on traffickers and compensate victims for the time lost.

"It will be irresponsible if we fail to act. We are humans and we should not support inhuman action," Ezeilo said. "The slave trade has been abolished and we can't accept that in our world today."
Journalist Theresa Braine covers international issues from her base in New York City.

For more information:

Girls Educational and Mentoring Services
http://www.gems-girls.org/
Sanctuary for Families
http://www.sanctuaryforfamilies.org
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, presented to the General Assembly on 23 October 2009 (pdf)
http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/1739807.html
2009 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-traffic...

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