Big business holds the key to eradicating modern-day slavery

Source: theguardian

Andrew Wallis: 
"Only business has the resources and the ability to eradicate modern slavery. This may not be a popular opinion within parts of the NGO community and sections of the government, but it's a reality – because for business, ultimately, the impact of modern slavery is economic."

Read Andrew Wallis' full article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/aug/29/big-business-modern-slavery

YouTube - Erin Kamler | Human Trafficking in Thailand and Cambodia

Uploaded by binaladotorg on Jan 27, 2011

The trafficking of humans for purposes of sexual slavery has reached epidemic proportions. The International Organization for Migration recently estimated that 200-225,000 women and children from Southeast Asia are trafficked to other countries annually, making this region the largest source of trafficked women in the world, and in 2003 prostitution and sex trafficking comprised three percent of Thailand's economy. While NGOs (Non Government Organizations) are actively working to combat human trafficking in this region, little research has been conducted addressing how NGO communications processes contribute to their organizational impact. Based on fieldwork in Thailand and Cambodia, Erin Kamler's talk addresses the rhetoric used by NGOs working to combat human trafficking, and asks us to assess how this rhetoric situates these institutions in the global public sphere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESL3CCC0yms

The Human Trafficking Project: Walking Merchandise: Child Smuggling and the Snakehead Trade

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Last Spring, Rob Nguyen and Ethan Downing decided that they wanted to raise awareness about a lesser-known division of human trafficking. In the following year they tracked down lawyers, journalists, social workers, and trafficked individuals in order to create an informative and startling documentary about Chinese human traffickers known as snakeheads. The film, Walking Merchandise: Child Smuggling and the Snakehead Trade, examines the intricacies of this specific trafficking method from China to the United States.
“We got involved with the topic because last Spring, Ethan Downing, the director of the film, was completing a Master's in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, at Columbia University,” said Rob Nguyen, the producer of Walking Merchandise. “He had been aware of Lauren A. Burke's work at The Door, a youth services center here in New York. She had been working with young Chinese persons who had been smuggled and trafficked into the U.S. and often working in restaurants around the U.S.”

Snakeheads solicit individuals to travel from China into the United States, using illegal means to transport them across borders and charging fees as high as $80,000, according to Walking Merchandise. Many of these individuals are children being sent by their own families. These individuals are subjected to cruelty, and extortion during their journey to America. After arriving they are forced into labor, and their well-being, as well as their families’, are threatened should they not pay back the impossible debt.

The interviews between the filmmakers and victims are an enlightening glimpse into one specific subclass of human trafficking, which as a whole, has become an estimated $31.6 billion industry, according to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking.

Finding professionals who had knowledge of human trafficking, and more specifically, the Snakehead Trade proved easy. However, finding young individuals to tell their stories was much more difficult. “Many of them still owe money to either the snakeheads who brought them here, or persons from whom they borrowed money to pay the snakeheads,” said Nguyen.

Current involvement in the industry posed challenges for the filmmakers. Many of these individuals would be traveling to New York City only to find their next job on the restaurant circuit. This offered the individuals a chance to tell their story to, but the filmmakers extremely short notice to meet with them.

“During that brief window of time is when we'd meet with them, so this would be often last minute, with just a day or two's notice,” said Nguyen. “We just tried to be as flexible as possible in order to make ourselves available to meet with them.”

Another important part of production was maintaining anonymity of the trafficked individuals’ identities. “So as you may see in the trailer for the film we've either obscured the young persons' faces through silhouette lighting and post-processing, or otherwise simply not including their faces in the shot when we filmed the interview,” said Nguyen.

Many of the interviews they conducted were through a professional referral, and “They would take great pains to make sure that the young person was choosing to be interviewed of their own free will, and that's something that we would ask them again once we sat down and met with them,” said Nguyen.

Nguyen was surprised to find that while most of the young victims spoke with a “matter-of-fact perspective” about their ordeal, others were particularly eager to share. These few were able to realize the scope of the film, and a larger purpose in telling what had happened to them.

“They felt that they themselves had not been told the full story when their parents sent them to the U.S., and they really wanted other kids to know about it,” Nguyen said. “This was really impressive, as was their ability to articulate their experiences and their hopes for other young persons considering making the same journey.”

The film, which is currently in post-production, is expected to be finished in May of this year. The filmmakers hope that they will be able to screen the film at festivals, as well as for non-profits and NGO’s who specialize in human trafficking, through May of 2012.

“After that, we'll release the film online for free streaming and download,” said Nguyen. “We'll also try to complement that with a number of smaller online videos, similar to those on our website presently, so that the site, as well as the film itself, can be a resource for people wanting to learn more about this issue.”

Funding for the documentary was provided through a graduate fellowship from Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity that Downing had been awarded. Later, additional capital was raised through a fundraiser for the film, known as the Kickstarter Campaign.

Nguyen, Downing and the rest of the team who worked on the film, including Vincent DeLuca, Director of Photography, Drew Downing, Production Assistant, Annie Sheng, Translator, and Michael Nguyen, Publicity Coordinator, are extremely grateful for the additional encouragement that pushed them to finish the film.

“As with many small films, we are also heavily indebted to countless family and friends for their support and help with the film,” said Nguyen.

Posted by Lauren Hutton at 6:49 AM

Source: The Human Trafficking Projec
The Human Trafficking Project: Walking Merchandise: Child Smuggling and the Snakehead Trade

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NGOs to religious educators: Combat human trafficking

By RUTH EGLASH
01/14/2011 04:35

Photo by: Bloomberg

25-30% of sex-trade customers are religiously observant; task force says many of 20,000 women in Israel's sex industry are victims of trafficking.

Religious educators helping victims of human trafficking might seem like an unlikely pairing, but encouraging influential figures in the observant community to become involved in tackling the shadowy phenomenon behind the illegal sex trade was the goal of a two-day workshop at Kibbutz Ma’aleh Hahamisha near Jerusalem this week organized by the Task Force on Human Trafficking.

“There has been no concerted effort in which the religious community has been approached about this topic or in which it has organized itself to fight against human trafficking,” said Rabbi Levi Lauer, founding executive director of ATZUM-Justice Works and co-founder of the task force, which campaigns against trafficking in humans, especially in women for the sex industry.

According to Lauer, CREATE – Conference of Religious Educators Against Trafficking and Exploitation, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday to mark International Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, is just the beginning of steps designed to push the religious community to address the “flourishing” sex trade and other forms of modern-day slavery and exploitation in Israel.

Figures shared by the Task Force, which was founded in 2003 as a joint effort by ATZUM and law firm Kabiri-Nevo-Keidar, suggest that a high percentage of the estimated 20,000 women working in Israel’s sex industry are victims of international and local human trafficking rings.

While exact figures do not exist as to who utilizes the services of these women, NGOs believe that roughly 10 percent of the customers are migrant workers, 20-25% are men from the Arab community, 25-30% are religiously observant Jews and the rest are drawn from a broad spectrum of society.

“Even though there seems to be a disproportionate number of religious men who are clients in brothels, there is still little inclination by that community to address this problem because it involves women and sex,” Lauer explained to The Jerusalem Post. “It’s an ugly business that is much easier to ignore.”

The goal of this week’s workshop, he said, was to give religious educators the information and tools to raise awareness and teach students about the problem of human trafficking, emphasizing the exploitation and slavery aspects.

While the conference attracted Jewish educators and speakers from a variety of religious institutions, including the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and Kolech – Jewish Women’s Voices, most of those who attended already had some understanding of the issue and sensitivity toward it, Lauer said. “Ideally, we would like to reach more religious institutions,” he said.

“This is a very taboo subject,” said Ori Keidar, cofounder of the Task Force on Human Trafficking and a partner at Kabiri-Nevo-Keidar. “When we organized this conference, we wanted to include people from the haredi community too, but it was difficult to get support on an issue that involves sex and feminism.”

However, he added, “We are starting at the root of the problem and trying to make advances in this world. We hope that through these conferences we will learn how to do so.

“[Religious educators] are role models and those who listen and learn from them do so out of their own choice,” Keidar said, adding that this is something almost unique to the religious population and is less prevalent in secular Israeli society.

“Religious leaders and educators have a unique role in preventing trafficking and it is important for them to understand how potential victims fall prey to trafficking, because they could be the ones to help the victims to rehabilitate and return to society,” said Giulia Falzoi, director of the Migration Management Unit at the International Organization for Migration, which works with governments worldwide to promote humane and orderly migration for all.

The Rome-based Falzoi was in Israel for the first time this week to share her experiences in involving religious leaders in combating trafficking. “It is common for male religious leaders to turn away from this problem because they think it is a woman’s issue about sex, but in many cases victims of trafficking are looking for someone to talk to them on a spiritual level. This is where religious leaders can be helpful,” she said.

In addition to engaging the religious community in its battle against prostitution and trafficking, the Task Force on Human Trafficking said on Wednesday that it is currently focusing most of its efforts on advancing legislation to criminalize those who use prostitution services.

The bill is being sponsored by MK Orit Zuaretz (Kadima), chairwoman of the Knesset Sub-Committee on Human Trafficking, and 25 other lawmakers from across the political spectrum.

Source: jpost.com
NGOs to religious educators: Combat human trafficking

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State laws sought on human trafficking | al.com

Image via Wikipedia

By Erin Stock -- The Birmingham News
February 24, 2010, 11:48AM

Alabama has seen a hand­ful of high-profile cases of human trafficking within state lines in recent years -- from a 2007 raid on a brothel at an Albertville mo­bile home to the arrest last year of a Florence man charged with coercing a mi­nor to perform a sex act for money.

While federal prosecutors have moved on those cases, they can't pursue them all, say some victims' advocates and state lawmakers. They're pushing for a state law against human traffick­ing that supporters say would lead to more pros­ecutions in Alabama of what's considered modern­day slavery.

"Right now we've only got one arm of government that's involved, and we're depending on the federal government to take care of everything in Alabama," said state Rep. Jack Wil­liams, R-Vestavia Hills.

Williams and Sen. Wen­dell Mitchell, D-Luverne, in­troduced bills this session that would criminalize hu­man trafficking. Mitchell's version passed the Senate on Tuesday and now must go to a House committee, while Williams' bill passed a House committee earlier this month. Such a law would bring Alabama in line with 43 other states, accord­ing to the Polaris Project, a national organization that supports the legislation.

"The federal government just cannot prosecute all the cases of human trafficking in the states," said Kristin Fortin, the group's policy counsel.

Beyond criminalizing hu­man trafficking, the pro­posed law would provide mandatory restitution for victims and give them a means to bring civil cases against traffickers. The crime of human trafficking in the first degree would be punishable by 10 years to life in prison, as a Class A felony. In addition, anyone who interferes with an investigation into trafficking could be charged with a Class C felony and be sen­tenced to one to 10 years behind bars.

Now, such acts must be prosecuted on the state level under charges such as "pro­moting prostitution" or kid­napping, said Barry Matson, deputy director of the Ala­bama District Attorney's As­sociation.

"We as prosecutors and law enforcement need to be able to have every tool we can to make those cases," he said. "This gives us another means to protect people who need protecting."

A state law gives local law enforcement an incentive to focus on trafficking cases, Fortin said. Ultimately, it will empower state and local officials to root out more of these crimes, Williams said.

It's difficult to estimate the number of human traf­ficking victims in Alabama, or anywhere, because vic­tims are hidden and often moved regularly, said Sara Jane Camacho, executive di­rector of Freedom to Thrive. The Birmingham-based nonprofit organization seeks to raise awareness about human trafficking.

Traffickers likely pass through Alabama, she said: "We're on the routes from Atlanta down to Texas and Florida, which are huge pockets for sex trafficking."

One gauge of human traf­ficking in the state is the Po­laris Project's hotline, which has received 13 calls about potential human traf­ficking in Alabama since De­cember 2007, Fortin said. She guessed the number would be higher if the hotline were better publicized.

Another indicator of the problem, Camacho said, is the presence of runaways. One of every three teenagers on the street will face sexual exploitation for money or other economic reasons within 48 hours of leaving home, she said, citing Na­tional Runaway Switch­board statistics.

E-MAIL: estock@bhamnews.com

State laws sought on human trafficking | al.com

Informational session planned in Reading center on human trafficking

Originally Published: 12/29/2009

The Bernardine Franciscan Sisters will hold an informational session on human trafficking Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. in the Bernardine Franciscan Conference Center, 460 St. Bernardine St.

Members of the public are welcome to attend the event being held in conjunction with national Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Speakers will include Sister Winifred Doherty, who has worked on the issue internationally as a member of a nongovernmental organization associated with the United Nations.

Through her Sisters of the Good Shepherd Congregation, she ministers in cities considered to be hotbeds of human trafficking.

Also speaking will be Pamela Pillsbury, co-director of the Pennsylvania Regional Center for Public Safety Innovation. She trains agencies and groups, such as the Berks County Anti-Trafficking Coalition, to identify and help victims and prosecute perpetrators.

The program will include interactive learning activities designed to raise public knowledge about the problem of human trafficking in which victims are kidnapped, sold or lured by false promises then forced into prostitution or hard labor.

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=181943

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Secretary Napolitano’s Discussion on Human Trafficking at the Danish Institute for International Studies

Image via Wikipedia

Release Date: November 3, 2009

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

Copenhagen, Denmark—Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today delivered remarks about expanding international coordination to combat human trafficking at a forum hosted by Humanity in Action and the Danish Institute for International Studies.

“Human trafficking is a global problem that requires a global solution.” said Secretary Napolitano. “The United States, Denmark and all our international partners must continue to work together to better identify and dismantle criminal trafficking organizations.”

During the forum, Secretary Napolitano highlighted the efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dismantle global human trafficking infrastructure through close cooperation with the Danish National Police and international law enforcement partners and more than 300 ICE Victim Assistance Coordinators worldwide who work with non-governmental organizations to help provide long-term assistance efforts.

Secretary Napolitano discussed the critical role played by border officials in recognizing potential trafficking victims and criminals and highlighted U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s international Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign—designed to enhance transnational collaboration, educate the public and empower victims.

Secretary Napolitano also emphasized the shared public responsibility in remaining vigilant and aware about the prevalence of human trafficking. ICE recently unveiled the “Hidden in Plain Sight” campaign in the United States—designed to raise public awareness of trafficking victims in communities nationwide.

While in Copenhagen, Secretary Napolitano also held meetings with Danish Justice Minister Brian Mikkelson and Transportation Minister Lars Barfoed to discuss ongoing multinational efforts to address human trafficking and other criminal activity, as well as transportation security and bilateral criminal information sharing partnerships.

Later this week, Secretary Napolitano will travel to Belgium, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom to meet with her international counterparts to discuss information sharing and privacy protection; collaborative efforts to secure cyber networks worldwide; international response to the H1N1 global pandemic; and coordination to combat transnational criminal activity and the global threat of terrorism.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1257263394677.shtm

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Cops rescue two women from human traffickers

Image via Wikipedia

KUALA LUMPUR: Police scored their second success in two weeks against human traffickers when they rescued two women who were forced to be sex slaves and arrested two men.

Federal CID director Comm Datuk Seri Bakri Zinin said the women, both in their 20s and believed to be from Vietnam, had arrived in the country by valid means two months ago, under the pretence of finding jobs.

It all turned into a nightmare for the women as they were whisked away by a human trafficking syndicate to a house in Taman Usahawan in Kepong.

There, they were locked up befo-re being taken to various locations within the Klang Valley to work against their will as prostitutes.

“We were tipped off by a non-governmental organisation and acted quickly to rescue them,” he said.

At 11.45pm on Monday, a police team from Bukit Aman raided the house and rescued the women, while arresting two men in their 40s.

“We believe this may just be the tip of the iceberg and that many more women may have been conned by this syndicate,” he said.

Comm Bakri was speaking to reporters after closing the two-day workshop on “Reporting on Trafficking in Persons” held here.

He said since the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act came into effect last year, police have investigated a total of 110 cases, rescued 404 victims and made four convictions. Another 20 cases are still pending in court.

On Oct 31, police arrested six men, believed to be part of an international kidnapping syndicate, after they released a 16-year-old boy held captive for five days.

The suspects, comprising five Sri Lankan and a local, were arrested in a house in Kepong.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/12/nation/5094668&sec=nation