Nick Kristof is doing a Google+ Hangout with leaders in the global fight against modern slavery.
Continue here:
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/google-hangout-on-human-trafficking/?_r=0
Showing posts with label Not For Sale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Not For Sale. Show all posts
Friday, January 10, 2014
Google+ Hangout on Human Trafficking - NYTimes.com
Source: NYTimes.com
Nick Kristof is doing a Google+ Hangout with leaders in the global fight against modern slavery.
Continue here:
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/google-hangout-on-human-trafficking/?_r=0
Nick Kristof is doing a Google+ Hangout with leaders in the global fight against modern slavery.
Continue here:
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/google-hangout-on-human-trafficking/?_r=0
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Meet The Nonprofit Helping the White House Stop Human Trafficking - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/10/09/meet-the-nonprofit-helping-the-white-house-stop-human-trafficking
Source: Washington Whispers (usnews.com)
October 9, 2012
A screenshot of the Free2Work iPhone app.
Source: Washington Whispers (usnews.com)
October 9, 2012
A screenshot of the Free2Work iPhone app.
When President Barack Obama unveiled major actions to fight human trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative late last month, he acknowledged that the White House couldn't do it alone.
In part, that's because the new executive order announced by the president, which bans government contractors from engaging in human trafficking-related practices, was meant to encourage all American corporations to follow suit. That's where Not For Sale comes in.
The Obama administration has confirmed that the California-based nonprofit has been tapped to participate in an upcoming forum at the White House, along with Obama's Faith-Based Advisory Council, to talk to major corporations about how their electronics, apparel and food can be produced without the use of "slaves."
In his September speech, Obama said it was time to call victims of human trafficking—the illegal trade of human beings for labor or sex—"modern slavery." The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency that handles labor issues, estimates there are nearly 21 million slaves globally today.
"We help companies source differently, we say 'here's some great Cacao providers' [that don't use human trafficking]. ... Washington is very interested in those kind of incentives," David Batstone, president and co-founder of Not For Sale, tells Whispers. "There's also a strong demographic under the age of 35 who care about how products are made, so that's a market reward for corporations."
Not For Sale says it will also work with the White House toward a possible new federal law inspired by California's Transparency In Supply Chains Act, which requires every company making $100 million in revenue or more to report where their products were made. The White House declined to comment on the possible new law, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Whispers the president's remarks made clear that the administration will be "working with the Congress and private sector and others [on this issue], because a whole-of-nation approach is needed."
The Global Business Coalition Against Trafficking, a separate coalition of eight major corporations including ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft, will meanwhile work to eliminate potential human trafficking links within their businesses.
Other companies will be targeted by Not For Sale's Free2work rankings, which assign over 600 brands grades from A to F based on what the nonprofit sees as child and forced labor in their supply chain. Zales Jewelry, for example, was awarded a D- by Not For Sale, while Ghiradelli Chocolate received a C-, and Adidas sports equipment a B+.
Click the image above to use the interactive map.
Consumers can also apply pressure on companies through a Free2Worksmartphone app. The app allows users to scan the barcode of a product and see whether that product or the product's brand employs human slaves, according to Not For Sale's research. The nonprofit says the app has 65,000 active users, but is likely to see a spike after Obama's announcement.
The State Department is also working with a number of other anti-human trafficking nonprofits, including FAIR Girls, which focuses on preventing exploitation of young women, Slavery Footprint, which tracks everyday household item the group believes are made with the help of slave labor, and Safe Horizon, which provides assistance to victims of labor and sex trafficking.
"With the help of the bully pulpit of the president, corporations are now starting to get it," says Batstone. Since Obama's speech, "things have already changed in terms of the [human trafficking] debate."
- President Obama Unveils Landmark Actions to Fight Human Trafficking
- Passive Obama Debate Performance 'a Case Study of What Not to Do'
- 5 Things the Government Spends More on Than PBS
Elizabeth Flock is a staff writer for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter or Facebook or reach her at eflock@usnews.com.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
You’re invited to help us launch a company!
You’re invited to help us launch a company!:
Welcome to the movement to end slavery.
Long before I finished writing Not For Sale, I realized that we had a problem: Ending slavery and preventing trafficking would be harder than I thought.
We had been working down the line in the slave trade, rescuing survivors and providing aftercare, but only really helping those who had already been bought and sold. That’s when we realized that we needed to go to the root of the problem. Why were traffickers so successful in the first place? It was beginning to look like poverty and lack of access to market were the real villains here. And this called for a new way of thinking.
So what is REBBL, and why would we start a company? Join us on Causes to be a part of the solution.
This is the Road to REBBL. CLICK HERE to learn more.
On July 10, 2012, Not For Sale will become the first Cause to launch a company. REBBL Tea, the new social enterprise, is an international beverage company projected to reduce slavery worldwide in the communities that help produce it. Join the movement at causes.com/notforsale
Welcome to the movement to end slavery.Long before I finished writing Not For Sale, I realized that we had a problem: Ending slavery and preventing trafficking would be harder than I thought.
We had been working down the line in the slave trade, rescuing survivors and providing aftercare, but only really helping those who had already been bought and sold. That’s when we realized that we needed to go to the root of the problem. Why were traffickers so successful in the first place? It was beginning to look like poverty and lack of access to market were the real villains here. And this called for a new way of thinking.
So what is REBBL, and why would we start a company? Join us on Causes to be a part of the solution.
This is the Road to REBBL. CLICK HERE to learn more.
On July 10, 2012, Not For Sale will become the first Cause to launch a company. REBBL Tea, the new social enterprise, is an international beverage company projected to reduce slavery worldwide in the communities that help produce it. Join the movement at causes.com/notforsale
Monday, February 7, 2011
Romania a global center for human trafficking - CNN.com
February 7, 2011 1:21 p.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- David Batstone: Romania is major center for buying, selling slaves for EU nations
- People promised jobs but sold into prostitution, factory working, begging, he writes
- Police turn a blind eye to the trade, he says, nonprofits can't solve problem alone
- Along with a just rule of law must come an effort to create jobs in Romania, he writes
Editor's note: David Batstone is a professor of business at the University of San Francisco and the co-founder and president of Not For Sale, which fights human trafficking and slavery.
(CNN) -- Romania has become a major transit for the sale of people into the European Union. Victims as young as 12 years old are trafficked into Romania from destinations as far-reaching as Honduras, Afghanistan, the Congo, and China. Once they reach Romania, many of these victims are assigned for passage beyond into Western Europe.
While Romanian law officially prohibits all forms of human trafficking, the country's strategic geographic location -- a crossroads between East and West -- makes it a source, transit and destination country for the people trade. The country's 2007 admission into the European Union brought more relaxed border regulations and enhanced its attraction for international human traffickers.
The U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report of 2010 found that organized crime networks also target Romanian citizens for export to other European countries. Traffickers commonly use fake identifications and bribe border personnel to bring victims into the country. They then force the victims to work in agricultural and factory production, prostitution, modeling for pornography and street begging.
The agency I run, Not For Sale, has identified Romania as an international hot spot for modern slavery. Our team operating on the ground in this Eastern European country intervened in nearly 140 trafficking cases last year alone.
It's tragic to see young girls sold in an Amsterdam street and then follow their journey back to a humble village in Romania.
--David Batstone
--David Batstone
Romanian authorities say that during the past two years, a Lebanese businessman, Hassan Awdi, persuaded 13 Honduran men and women to travel to Romania under the auspices of helping them find a job. Upon entering the country, officials say, Awdi confiscated their passports and forced them to work without pay for a factory of which he is part owner. The Hondurans eventually managed to escape their trafficker, yet found themselves in a foreign country without identification, resources, or shelter. Not For Sale intervened and helped the victims receive favorable treatment from the Romanian courts and government. The victims recently were repatriated home to Honduras. Awdi was charged with multiple offenses, including human trafficking, but has not yet gone to trial.
By and large, local police turn a blind eye to these crimes and social services for the victims are practically nonexistent. In 2009, the Romanian government minimized the role of the country's principal anti-trafficking arm -- the National Agency Against Trafficking in Persons -- and allocated scant federal funding to provide victim services and anti-trafficking prevention programs.
The burden for addressing human trafficking therefore falls mostly on poorly funded nonprofits. Not For Sale Romania, for example, provides survivors with shelter, medical and psychological services, as well as educational and vocational opportunities. In the best-case scenario, our team reintegrates the survivors into their families, as long as they are not exposed to the risk of being re-trafficked.
Local police turn a blind eye to these crimes and social services for the victims are practically nonexistent.
--David Batstone
--David Batstone
Last month I personally tracked the slave trade across Europe. I started my investigation with the women for sale in the showroom windows of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. It's tragic to see young girls sold in plain sight in an Amsterdam street and then follow their journey back to a humble village in Romania.
My key source on the ground was the Scarlet Cord, a nonprofit that has been building relationships with sex workers in the red-light districts of the Netherlands since 1987. Their field research reveals that 75% of the sex workers in the Netherlands at the moment originate from the Eastern European countries of Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Hungary is also one of the more recent member states of the European Union.
The influx of young girls from Eastern Europe can be directly attributed to the lack of job opportunities at home and the easy access to wealthier European markets. That formula makes young girls an easy target for traffickers who promise lucrative jobs in London, Rome or Amsterdam. The lack of government and police priority on human trafficking across Europe also allows the trade to flourish.
For government and police authorities in Europe to start identifying trafficking victims for who they are -- no longer labeled as illegal immigrants or prostitutes -- will be a necessary step forward. Whenever the poor and vulnerable do not have access to legal justice, they will be exploited. That's a maxim as true in Europe and the United States as it is in India and Kenya.
Hand in hand with a just rule of law must come an entrepreneurial effort to generate real job opportunities in Romania. That economic stimulation is unlikely to come from a top-down grant of financial aid to the national government. More sustained results will be achieved by investments in small- and medium-sized enterprises that can demonstrate a credible business model and generate real jobs for Romanians.
Romania's human trafficking problem does not stay home; it is Europe's crisis as well. The same people who run the people trade are likely candidates for other forms of nefarious crimes that threaten national security. Indeed, the security of all of Europe depends on innovative solutions to what may seem as intractable problems. As long as we keep repeating the same protocols, we are sure to get the same dire results.
The opinions in this commentary are solely those of David Batstone.
| Source: CNN.COM |
Monday, December 7, 2009
Human trafficking: 'A dirty little secret' | GoUpstate.com | Spartanburg Herald-Journal | Spartanburg SC
Image by Elliottng via Flickr
By Robert W. Dalton
bob.dalton@shj.com
Published: Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 12:40 a.m.
It's a multibillion-dollar industry with thousands of units sold each year.
By the numbers
- It is estimated that at least 27 million people are enslaved around the world.
- About 800,000 people annually are trafficked across national borders. About 80 percent of these victims are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors. The majority of females are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.
- It is estimated that human trafficking is a $32 billion-a-year industry, making it the second most lucrative crime in the world, behind only the sale of drugs.
Every 10 minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the U.S.
- Forced labor is most prevalent in five sectors of the U.S. economy: prostitution and sex services (46 percent); domestic service (27 percent); agriculture (10 percent); sweatshop/factory work (5 percent); and restaurant and hotel work (4 percent).
Source: Not for Sale
ON THE WEB
Not for Sale South Carolina: www.notforsalesc.org
The Polaris Project:
www.polarisproject.org
But it's not houses or cars that are being moved. The products are human beings.
Human trafficking victims are most often forced into prostitution. But they also are a source of cheap labor for sweat shops, farms and restaurants.
"There's a market, and that's the sad thing about it," state Rep. Harold Mitchell said. "A lot of people don't realize it's a problem, but it's something we need to nip quickly. We don't need to let it grow."
Mitchell, D-Spartanburg, has introduced a bill he hopes will do just that. If approved, the legislation would require a minimum sentence of five years and raise the maximum penalty to 30 years -- up from the current maximum of 15 years -- for anyone convicted of human trafficking.
Mitchell learned about the scope of the problem while attending the Clinton Global Initiative's annual conference in September. Founded by former President Bill Clinton in 2005, the initiative's goal is to partner governments with private-sector groups to confront pressing issues worldwide.
One of CGI's "commitments to action" is to halt human trafficking. Mitchell said he was happy to get on board.
"You can spend money and create programs, but I wanted to deal with it from a policy standpoint and see if we could make a dent in it," he said.
Mitchell's bill still might not be enough. The current law has been on the books since 2006, and the next human trafficking case tried in state court will be the first.
Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy said the problem of charging someone with human trafficking is twofold. First, law enforcement might not be aware that such a charge is an option. Second, suspects might be charged with other crimes, such as kidnapping, because the penalties are greater.
"If all (Mitchell's bill) does is raise awareness that it is either an issue or a potential issue and puts law enforcement on notice that while considering charges they have an additional arrow in their quiver, then it's a good thing," Gowdy said.
Maryse Gartner, the state director of Not For Sale South Carolina -- an organization whose mission is to raise awareness and assist law enforcement and victim's groups in combating human trafficking -- said the crime is largely underreported because people don't know what to watch for.
"People may see something fishy going on, but they don't know how to identify it or who to call," she said.
Gartner said the ribbon of interstates 26 and 85 that made the area a popular route for running drugs and guns between New York and Miami also make it attractive for human traffickers.
"It's just blossomed in the state because of where we are located," she said.
Gartner said many victims are Hispanic or Asian, but authorities are starting to see more Eastern Europeans.
But it's not just people from other countries who are victims of trafficking. U.S. citizens, especially runaways, also are susceptible. Anyone younger than 18 who is forced into prostitution is, according to the law, a trafficking victim.
Karen Stauss, legal counsel for the Polaris Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that provides direct services to human trafficking survivors and assists law enforcement, said an estimated 100,000 children become trafficking victims in the U.S. each year. The hidden nature of the crime makes hard numbers difficult to come by, but she said trafficking has increased over the past 10 to 15 years because of globalization.
"People have the ability to cross borders," Stauss said. "They are seeking a better life, but it makes them more vulnerable. They don't know where to turn for help when people are exploiting them."
Stauss said more than 40 states have laws specifically dealing with human trafficking. About 95 percent of all trafficking cases are prosecuted at the state level.
"Local law enforcement are the eyes and ears," Stauss said. "For them to be engaged and understand what the crime is, we need to have that law on the books in states."
Gartner said it's important to raise awareness of trafficking "in all constituencies," including law enforcement.
"It's kind of like a dirty little secret," she said. "It's awful, and people don't want to think about it. But we have to make the general public aware."
Mitchell's bill is a good start, Gartner said.
"We're thrilled that he's realizing how important it is to increase the penalties. We're not going to be able to abate the problem without the traffickers realizing that we're not going to put up with it in this state," she said.
U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins has prosecuted two human trafficking cases in South Carolina, one in Columbia and one in Greenville. Wilkins said the cases were "casually" connected.
Wilkins said putting together a trafficking case that results in a successful prosecution requires a great deal of law enforcement resources. Undercover work is nearly impossible because of language barriers and the tight ranks of the traffickers.
"Unless there's a tip, law enforcement is not going to know about it," Wilkins said. "It's very clandestine."
In the Columbia case, a 16-year-old Mexican girl was forced into prostitution. She was moved around to different brothels in several states and forced to see about 10 men a day.
She was able to slip away from her captors and call family in Mexico. Her family got in touch with authorities, who were able to find her by using a series of informants.
In the Greenville case, a john contracted a sexually transmitted disease. He told the nurse treating him the locations he had frequented and the nurse reported it. Law enforcement interviewed the john, who was willing to help.
Wilkins said another issue is what to do with the victims, who are breaking the law.
"If they are truly human trafficking victims, you don't want to incarcerate them," he said. "But you have to do something with them."
Gartner said trafficking victims often blame themselves for their circumstances.
"When law enforcement goes in to investigate, the victim will not identify as a trafficking victim," she said. "They may think they are responsible and may not understand that they've been abused and battered until after a conversation with a victim's advocate."
Wilkins has put together a coalition of victim's assistance groups -- Gartner is one of the members -- and law enforcement officials. Their goal is to have a process in place to deal with all aspects of a trafficking case.
"This is really a strong group that has gotten together," Wilkins said. "If another case comes along, we'll be prepared to handle all the issues that come up."
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20091206/ARTICLES/912061062/1083/ARTICLES?Title=Human-trafficking-A-dirty-little-secret-
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0e96de4f-df3c-442c-bd40-36d4e805d538)
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Modern-day abolitionists battle global slave trade, human trafficking
October 28th, 2009
By Michael Vick
Slavery. For most Americans, the word evokes thoughts of an ancient institution abolished in this country in the 19th century. But while slaves are no longer found in the cotton and tobacco fields of the South, more insidious forms of modern-day slavery continue unabated globally, even in the land of the free.
An estimated 27 million people now are enslaved worldwide, half of them children under the age of 18. Roughly 80 percent are women. Tens of thousands labor daily in the United States with little or no pay under threat of violence, a threat all too often made real. Human trafficking generates $31 billion annually, making it the third-most lucrative criminal activity behind narcotics and weapons trade.
And while they fight an uphill battle, a growing cadre of modern-day abolitionists fights to end slavery for good. Among them is the Not for Sale Campaign – an organization founded by University of San Francisco professor David Batstone.
“This is a crisis that I didn’t go looking for,” Batstone said. “It found me.”
The professor and his family regularly dined at the Pasand Madras Indian restaurant in Berkeley for years until reading a series of reports in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000 exposing the owner as a labor and sex trafficker.
“I’d been working in social justice and human rights ever since I was in college,” Batstone said. “But this idea of slavery, I thought that was in the history books. What do you do when you find slavery in your own backyard?”
Batstone’s answer was to research the issue as thoroughly as possible, eventually enlisting the help of his students. From those humble beginnings, Not for Sale grew into an international organization with regional centers around the country and operations in South America, Asia and Africa.
In his global quest for answers, Batstone encountered a wide variety of circumstances that lead to slavery. Impoverished families sell their children to be house servants, often with the promise of an education, a ruse many traffickers use to obtain child sex slaves. A guerrilla army attacks an African village and kidnaps children to serve as soldiers. A man or woman is offered advance salary payment for a job, only to find upon accepting the job that the pay is low, the interest on the loan high, and escape impossible.
In the United States, victims are trafficked from at least 35 different countries, though most originate from China, Mexico and Vietnam. States with large port cities or along international borders – California, Florida, Texas and New York – have the highest incidence of modern-day slavery.
Slavery can also go largely unnoticed by law enforcement and the public because slaves typically occupy positions in the black market sex industry or in industries where cheap labor and poor working conditions are the norm – agriculture, domestic service, factory work, and restaurant and hotel work.
While acknowledging the abolitionist’s task is gargantuan, Batstone does not believe it to be impossible.
“I don’t ask people to become Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglas or William Wilberforce,” Batstone said. “I ask them to be themselves.”
To that end, Batstone encourages consumers to become educated about their purchases. For example, he notes that tens of thousands of children labor in slave-like conditions in West Africa to produce chocolate, much of which is consumed in industrialized countries like the United States. By purchasing fair trade chocolate and other fair trade products, consumers ensure their money does not go to fund slavery.
Batstone’s group also researches massage parlors in San Francisco, many of which the group has found are fronts for prostitution and human trafficking. Often brought to the United States with the promise of a job as a model, hostess or restaurant worker, once in country young women and girls are instead forced to work in the sex industry. Far from home, often without passports and fearful of arrest or the threat of violence against themselves and their families, they are repeatedly sexually exploited.
A pair of measures enacted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in June and sponsored by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Carmen Chu, respectively, aims to crack down on the parlors. Chu’s measure makes it more difficult to obtain a license to open a massage parlor and makes it easier to revoke the license, while Newsom’s measure increases fines for those who violate their permits and requires the parlors to close by 10 p.m.
Catholic San Francisco accompanied Not for Sale researchers Killian Moote and Christiana Hebets on a drive-by tour of San Francisco massage parlors the group monitors for illegal activity. Moote said the group has conducted both 12- and 24-hour surveillance on multiple locations in the city, and found that many are open at all hours of the day and night.
One additional tool in the abolitionist’s arsenal thanks to the Newsom-Chu measures is a regulation requiring massage parlors to have a window facing the street through which the public can view the business.
“Does that solve this problem? No,” Moote said. “But it creates a transparent window into an industry that’s non-transparent.”
Hebets said the group is careful to do background research on the establishments before conducting surveillance, and once it has sufficient evidence to warrant what Moote and Hebets called “high-probability of trafficking,” they turn the evidence over to law enforcement. The group also distributes posters in the neighborhood with resources for victims, always mindful not to get too specific regarding their targets of investigation.
“If the traffickers knew or had a suspicion that people were watching them, it would only push their business further underground and put victims in further danger,” Hebets said.
Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who studies prostitution and keynote speaker at an Oct. 24 forum on human trafficking at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Berkeley, said women and girls like those Not for Sale tries to help are caught up in a system of sexual exploitation frequently dismissed by a permissive culture as a “victimless crime.”
Farley said the shift in focus from treating prostitutes as criminals to treating them as victims of a crime has been the most positive development in stemming the tide of sex trafficking worldwide.
“Sex trafficking is demand driven,” Farley said. “Women and girls are the supply. For a long time, all we’ve been looking at is the supply. We’re beginning to look at the buyer, because without him, the whole industry would collapse.”
While researchers like Moote, Hebets and Farley gather evidence, policymakers and activists alike continue to push for action to combat slavery. Not for Sale held its first “Global Forum on Human Trafficking” in Carlsbad, Calif. Oct. 8-9, with speakers including Luis de Baca, United States ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons.
In the U.S. State Department’s ninth annual “Trafficking in Persons” report, released in 2009, De Baca wrote that the peril trafficked victims face is a “debasement of our common humanity.”
“Globally, there are countless persons who labor in bondage and suffer in silence, feeling that they are trapped and alone,” De Baca wrote. “It is on their behalf, and in the spirit of a common humanity, that we seek a global partnership for the abolition of modern slavery.”
For more information, visit www.notforsalecampaign.org.
From October 30, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=&id=56529
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b6401462-4ba4-4a87-a3da-a3764c4917e3)
By Michael Vick
Slavery. For most Americans, the word evokes thoughts of an ancient institution abolished in this country in the 19th century. But while slaves are no longer found in the cotton and tobacco fields of the South, more insidious forms of modern-day slavery continue unabated globally, even in the land of the free.
An estimated 27 million people now are enslaved worldwide, half of them children under the age of 18. Roughly 80 percent are women. Tens of thousands labor daily in the United States with little or no pay under threat of violence, a threat all too often made real. Human trafficking generates $31 billion annually, making it the third-most lucrative criminal activity behind narcotics and weapons trade.
And while they fight an uphill battle, a growing cadre of modern-day abolitionists fights to end slavery for good. Among them is the Not for Sale Campaign – an organization founded by University of San Francisco professor David Batstone.
“This is a crisis that I didn’t go looking for,” Batstone said. “It found me.”
The professor and his family regularly dined at the Pasand Madras Indian restaurant in Berkeley for years until reading a series of reports in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000 exposing the owner as a labor and sex trafficker.
“I’d been working in social justice and human rights ever since I was in college,” Batstone said. “But this idea of slavery, I thought that was in the history books. What do you do when you find slavery in your own backyard?”
Batstone’s answer was to research the issue as thoroughly as possible, eventually enlisting the help of his students. From those humble beginnings, Not for Sale grew into an international organization with regional centers around the country and operations in South America, Asia and Africa.
In his global quest for answers, Batstone encountered a wide variety of circumstances that lead to slavery. Impoverished families sell their children to be house servants, often with the promise of an education, a ruse many traffickers use to obtain child sex slaves. A guerrilla army attacks an African village and kidnaps children to serve as soldiers. A man or woman is offered advance salary payment for a job, only to find upon accepting the job that the pay is low, the interest on the loan high, and escape impossible.
In the United States, victims are trafficked from at least 35 different countries, though most originate from China, Mexico and Vietnam. States with large port cities or along international borders – California, Florida, Texas and New York – have the highest incidence of modern-day slavery.
Slavery can also go largely unnoticed by law enforcement and the public because slaves typically occupy positions in the black market sex industry or in industries where cheap labor and poor working conditions are the norm – agriculture, domestic service, factory work, and restaurant and hotel work.
While acknowledging the abolitionist’s task is gargantuan, Batstone does not believe it to be impossible.
“I don’t ask people to become Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglas or William Wilberforce,” Batstone said. “I ask them to be themselves.”
To that end, Batstone encourages consumers to become educated about their purchases. For example, he notes that tens of thousands of children labor in slave-like conditions in West Africa to produce chocolate, much of which is consumed in industrialized countries like the United States. By purchasing fair trade chocolate and other fair trade products, consumers ensure their money does not go to fund slavery.
Batstone’s group also researches massage parlors in San Francisco, many of which the group has found are fronts for prostitution and human trafficking. Often brought to the United States with the promise of a job as a model, hostess or restaurant worker, once in country young women and girls are instead forced to work in the sex industry. Far from home, often without passports and fearful of arrest or the threat of violence against themselves and their families, they are repeatedly sexually exploited.
A pair of measures enacted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in June and sponsored by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Carmen Chu, respectively, aims to crack down on the parlors. Chu’s measure makes it more difficult to obtain a license to open a massage parlor and makes it easier to revoke the license, while Newsom’s measure increases fines for those who violate their permits and requires the parlors to close by 10 p.m.
Catholic San Francisco accompanied Not for Sale researchers Killian Moote and Christiana Hebets on a drive-by tour of San Francisco massage parlors the group monitors for illegal activity. Moote said the group has conducted both 12- and 24-hour surveillance on multiple locations in the city, and found that many are open at all hours of the day and night.
One additional tool in the abolitionist’s arsenal thanks to the Newsom-Chu measures is a regulation requiring massage parlors to have a window facing the street through which the public can view the business.
“Does that solve this problem? No,” Moote said. “But it creates a transparent window into an industry that’s non-transparent.”
Hebets said the group is careful to do background research on the establishments before conducting surveillance, and once it has sufficient evidence to warrant what Moote and Hebets called “high-probability of trafficking,” they turn the evidence over to law enforcement. The group also distributes posters in the neighborhood with resources for victims, always mindful not to get too specific regarding their targets of investigation.
“If the traffickers knew or had a suspicion that people were watching them, it would only push their business further underground and put victims in further danger,” Hebets said.
Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who studies prostitution and keynote speaker at an Oct. 24 forum on human trafficking at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Berkeley, said women and girls like those Not for Sale tries to help are caught up in a system of sexual exploitation frequently dismissed by a permissive culture as a “victimless crime.”
Farley said the shift in focus from treating prostitutes as criminals to treating them as victims of a crime has been the most positive development in stemming the tide of sex trafficking worldwide.
“Sex trafficking is demand driven,” Farley said. “Women and girls are the supply. For a long time, all we’ve been looking at is the supply. We’re beginning to look at the buyer, because without him, the whole industry would collapse.”
While researchers like Moote, Hebets and Farley gather evidence, policymakers and activists alike continue to push for action to combat slavery. Not for Sale held its first “Global Forum on Human Trafficking” in Carlsbad, Calif. Oct. 8-9, with speakers including Luis de Baca, United States ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons.
In the U.S. State Department’s ninth annual “Trafficking in Persons” report, released in 2009, De Baca wrote that the peril trafficked victims face is a “debasement of our common humanity.”
“Globally, there are countless persons who labor in bondage and suffer in silence, feeling that they are trapped and alone,” De Baca wrote. “It is on their behalf, and in the spirit of a common humanity, that we seek a global partnership for the abolition of modern slavery.”
For more information, visit www.notforsalecampaign.org.
From October 30, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=&id=56529
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Slavery Bigger Than Ever in America - NAM
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson , Posted: Oct 17, 2009
On October 13, the U.S. Coast Guard nabbed 18 persons off Mission Bay near San Diego. All 18 were foreign nationals being smuggled into the country. That story, like others that involve the trafficking in human cargo, drew scant press attention. But what made the capture of the 18 even more noteworthy was that they were captured at all.
Thousands more aren’t. They are part of the trade in human beings who work at forced jobs for subsistence or no wages and are held in virtual captivity. The modern day slave trade nearly equals the illicit drug and arms sale trade as one of the biggest criminal operations in the world. An International Labor Organization report estimates that some 2.5 million people are trafficked from one country to another yearly, and these forced laborers generate more than $30 billion in illicit profits annually, half of it in industrialized countries.
The captives work in plants, factories, farms, hotels and restaurants, as well as in prostitution and sex rings. The traffickers use coercion, fraud, physical abuse and even torture to prevent the captives from complaining to authorities, or demanding minimal pay. Language barriers, unfamiliarity with laws, and physical isolation are major obstacles that prevent many captives from complaining about their servitude.
Five years ago, the University of California Human Rights Center in conjunction with Washington, D.C.- based Free the Slave, an anti slavery advocacy group, released a landmark study, “Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States.” The center estimated there were 10,000 persons held as captive laborers in the country then.
According to federal figures, the number has soared to more than 20 times that since then. Not For Sale, a global anti-slavery advocacy group, estimates that nearly 20,000 forced laborers are brought into the United States every year. Long and porous borders, lax customs checks, open seas, and the insatiable demand of agribusiness, manufacturing and service industries for cheap labor make the United States a prime destination for the traffickers.
Human trafficking is a federal crime. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), passed in 2000 and reauthorized in 2003 and 2005 by Congress, increased penalties, broadened the definition and scope of what constitutes trafficking, and provided more aid and services to help trafficking victims. But short of nabbing truckloads of human cargo at the border, slave trafficking can be hard to detect, and relatively few of these cases ever wind up in court.
From 2001 to 2007, the justice department conducted fewer than 1,000 slave trafficking investigations. There were fewer than 100 convictions. In dozens of cases, the captives were held in bondage for years. While the penalties slapped on some traffickers have been stiff, they weren’t based solely on slave trafficking but for the physical assault, torture and rape of the captives. In many other cases, traffickers received hand-slap sentences such as home detention, probation and fines. Authorities generally acted only after they received specific complaints or tips they received about workplace abuses.
Local and state police and family service agencies in California and other states have established task forces to investigate and initiate prosecutions of human traffickers. Yet, given the magnitude of the problem, the number of those caught and prosecuted is still abysmally low.
The popular conception is that human trafficking is done by foreigners, who operate well-connected smuggling rings. That’s hardly the case. Many human traffickers work for domestic, farm and labor contractors, and many of those are Americans. Many more Americans unwittingly encourage the practice.
The flap over the scam of ACORN was a casebook example of that. Two filmmakers posing as a prostitute and pimp caught ACORN workers allegedly telling the pair how to set up a prostitution ring of underage girls from El Salvador and avoid taxes. The scam was aimed to politically embarrass President Obama. He was a onetime staff attorney for the group. However, the ACORN flap pointed up the wide extent and awareness of slave trafficking.
During the presidential campaign Obama and Republican rival John McCain said little about the scourge of human trafficking in the United States. Neither proposed new policy initiatives to combat the trade. In March, though, Obama appointed long time anti-slavery advocate Lou de Baca as an ambassador at large to raise public awareness about trafficking in the country. However, no mention was made about whether Congress would significantly boost funds and personnel to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons set up to combat slave trafficking.
Slavery is illegal in every country on the planet. The United Nations has passed countless resolutions condemning human trafficking. Politicians of all nations have denounced the practice. Yet, a century and a half after the formal abolition of slavery in the United States, modern day slavery still rears its ugly and shameful head in America. The United States must wage the same hard fight against it that it waged to end chattel slavery.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, "How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge," (Middle Passage Press) will be released next January.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=64956bc183231317a68f02f05e300de4
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3f2b4c9c-fcad-43c0-b5ab-0c2597ff58f5)
On October 13, the U.S. Coast Guard nabbed 18 persons off Mission Bay near San Diego. All 18 were foreign nationals being smuggled into the country. That story, like others that involve the trafficking in human cargo, drew scant press attention. But what made the capture of the 18 even more noteworthy was that they were captured at all.
Thousands more aren’t. They are part of the trade in human beings who work at forced jobs for subsistence or no wages and are held in virtual captivity. The modern day slave trade nearly equals the illicit drug and arms sale trade as one of the biggest criminal operations in the world. An International Labor Organization report estimates that some 2.5 million people are trafficked from one country to another yearly, and these forced laborers generate more than $30 billion in illicit profits annually, half of it in industrialized countries.
The captives work in plants, factories, farms, hotels and restaurants, as well as in prostitution and sex rings. The traffickers use coercion, fraud, physical abuse and even torture to prevent the captives from complaining to authorities, or demanding minimal pay. Language barriers, unfamiliarity with laws, and physical isolation are major obstacles that prevent many captives from complaining about their servitude.
Five years ago, the University of California Human Rights Center in conjunction with Washington, D.C.- based Free the Slave, an anti slavery advocacy group, released a landmark study, “Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States.” The center estimated there were 10,000 persons held as captive laborers in the country then.
According to federal figures, the number has soared to more than 20 times that since then. Not For Sale, a global anti-slavery advocacy group, estimates that nearly 20,000 forced laborers are brought into the United States every year. Long and porous borders, lax customs checks, open seas, and the insatiable demand of agribusiness, manufacturing and service industries for cheap labor make the United States a prime destination for the traffickers.
Human trafficking is a federal crime. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), passed in 2000 and reauthorized in 2003 and 2005 by Congress, increased penalties, broadened the definition and scope of what constitutes trafficking, and provided more aid and services to help trafficking victims. But short of nabbing truckloads of human cargo at the border, slave trafficking can be hard to detect, and relatively few of these cases ever wind up in court.
From 2001 to 2007, the justice department conducted fewer than 1,000 slave trafficking investigations. There were fewer than 100 convictions. In dozens of cases, the captives were held in bondage for years. While the penalties slapped on some traffickers have been stiff, they weren’t based solely on slave trafficking but for the physical assault, torture and rape of the captives. In many other cases, traffickers received hand-slap sentences such as home detention, probation and fines. Authorities generally acted only after they received specific complaints or tips they received about workplace abuses.
Local and state police and family service agencies in California and other states have established task forces to investigate and initiate prosecutions of human traffickers. Yet, given the magnitude of the problem, the number of those caught and prosecuted is still abysmally low.
The popular conception is that human trafficking is done by foreigners, who operate well-connected smuggling rings. That’s hardly the case. Many human traffickers work for domestic, farm and labor contractors, and many of those are Americans. Many more Americans unwittingly encourage the practice.
The flap over the scam of ACORN was a casebook example of that. Two filmmakers posing as a prostitute and pimp caught ACORN workers allegedly telling the pair how to set up a prostitution ring of underage girls from El Salvador and avoid taxes. The scam was aimed to politically embarrass President Obama. He was a onetime staff attorney for the group. However, the ACORN flap pointed up the wide extent and awareness of slave trafficking.
During the presidential campaign Obama and Republican rival John McCain said little about the scourge of human trafficking in the United States. Neither proposed new policy initiatives to combat the trade. In March, though, Obama appointed long time anti-slavery advocate Lou de Baca as an ambassador at large to raise public awareness about trafficking in the country. However, no mention was made about whether Congress would significantly boost funds and personnel to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons set up to combat slave trafficking.
Slavery is illegal in every country on the planet. The United Nations has passed countless resolutions condemning human trafficking. Politicians of all nations have denounced the practice. Yet, a century and a half after the formal abolition of slavery in the United States, modern day slavery still rears its ugly and shameful head in America. The United States must wage the same hard fight against it that it waged to end chattel slavery.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, "How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge," (Middle Passage Press) will be released next January.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=64956bc183231317a68f02f05e300de4
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
