Trafficking Monitor is a blog I created and curate. It offers posts highlighting the multifaceted nature of human trafficking and forced/indentured labour. I draw on a diversity of sources for my posts. You are invited to recommend materials for posting.
Showing posts with label Save the Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Save the Children. Show all posts
PATNA: Human trafficking and rehabilitation of the rescued have emerged as major concerns for the state government. Though Bihar is one of the few states to have prepared an action plan named 'Astitva' to deal with the issue, it largely remains unimplemented.
'Astitva', the state plan of action with a vision of "Trafficking-Free Bihar," was approved by the state cabinet in 2008.
Indo-Nepal border that has emerged as one major area prone to trafficking of both women and children, poses an alarming situation. Surprisingly, a large number of aged women are illegally slipped out through this border for the purpose of breast feeding.
Since many of those rescued are physically and mentally challenged, whose rehabilitation poses a major problem, a demand to device a mechanism to ensure their rehabilitation was raised by various NGOs during a daylong workshop organized here at a posh hotel jointly by the department of social welfare and Save The Children, an NGO.
A suggestion to involve the religious groups and spiritual heads in dissemination of relevant information and awareness generation among masses was also mooted at the workshop. Trafficking in the state has mainly been attributed to commercial sexual exploitation of girls and women, said Nikhat Quasim, state consultant, child protection, adding "mistreatment of trafficked women lodged in brothels is common knowledge."
Suman Lal of Prayas Bharati Trust, working for the implementation of Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, noted that a major shift in approach has now come about with respect to trafficked victims in brothels, who are now treated as victims and not as accused. "This makes them entitled for rehabilitation and not liable for punishment," Lal said.
During the workshop, district programme officers, district welfare officers, assistant director, social security of all these districts were trained along with different stake holders from police, prosecution, NGOs and government departments for effective coordination and smooth implementation of 'Astitva'.
Image via WikipediaINQUIRER.net First Posted 17:45:00 10/26/2010
BANGKOK, Thailand – Thirty youth leaders from Mekong have gathered here to discuss the problem of child trafficking and migration in the Asian sub-region and tell their governments what needs to be done, organizers said.
The youth delegates from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan province of China tackle the vulnerabilities faced by children and youth in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.
“As we are all aware, human trafficking is a modern form of slavery and a severe problem worldwide. It is one of the worst violations of human rights,” according to the Ministry of Social, Development and Human Security in Thailand.
With a robust economy, Thailand is a favorite destination country for trafficked persons in Mekong, said Brian Jungwiwattanaporn, Regional Cross-border Program information coordinator of Save the Children-UK. Thailand hosts about two million documented and undocumented migrants, he added.
“Trafficked persons are deceived, sold or subjected to slavery-like conditions, under different forms and various sectors such as construction, agriculture, domestic service, prostitution, pornography, sexual tourism, and organ removal, among others,” the Thai ministry said.
The 2010 Mekong Youth Forum is the third such forum in the region. The Philippine Educational Theater Association helps facilitate the workshops.
On the last day of the forum Friday, senior government officials from the six Mekong countries will listen to the issues the youth delegates will raise in a bid to influence state policies to better protect children in the region, said Jungwiwattanaporn.
“The Mekong Youth Forum 3 is a time for them to speak and be listened to. It is also a time for them to listen more closely to each of us adults, especially those in government,” said Edelweiss F. Silan of Save the Children Regional Cross-Border Programme.
“There are expectations that after this forum, there will be joint actions between children and adults to bring about true changes that will curb the human trafficking and risky migration situations in our region,” Silan said.
The 2010 forum, which began on October 24 and will run until October 29, is also meant to institutionalize child and youth participation in local, national and regional anti-trafficking processes.
Tens of thousands of children in India are trafficked every year. Poor families are most vulnerable after the floods when families become separated. With the rainy season about to begin, what do the elections mean for these children at risk
Rebecca Winthrop, Co-Director, Center for Universal Education
The Brookings Institution
February 24, 2010 —
The January 12 earthquake that shook Haiti was a huge blow to the country’s delicate social and political balance. Like other large-scale natural disasters, the aftermath saw massive aid efforts mobilized from large and small nations, nonprofits and religious groups, all intending to help the ravished country. Despite the positive work many of these groups are doing, the recent media focus has been on the American missionaries accused of child kidnapping.
The group, which was associated with two Idaho-based Baptist churches, was caught with 33 Haitian children, attempting to take them to the Dominican Republic on January 29 without proper paperwork. Questions were raised about the children’s status and whether they were truly orphans or just separated from their families. As of today, eight of the 10 Americans have been released by the Haitian judge overseeing the case; however, the group’s leader and one other member are still being held for questioning. This case highlights the important issue of child protection in humanitarian crisis. Where is the line between good intentions and human trafficking?
Human trafficking is at once a horrific crime and a global phenomenon. Virtually every country in the world sends or receives human beings for exploitative purposes through global trafficking networks. The United Nations estimates that at any given moment 2.5 million people are in forced labor, including sexual exploitation, as a result of trafficking and that these people come from 127 countries and reside in 137 countries. The majority of people trafficked are children and youth with 1.2 million children under the age of 18 estimated to be trafficked each year. The United Nations defines human trafficking as the use of force, fraud, or other coercive methods, including abusing a position of vulnerability, to recruit, transfer or receive people for exploitative purposes.
Tragically, calamitous events such as Haiti’s earthquake are breeding grounds for child traffickers, seeking to take advantage of chaos and weakened government law enforcement. Accusations of child kidnapping and trafficking were widespread following the 2004 tsunami in South Asia, where Indonesian officials took action to protect children from trafficking by posting guards around camps sheltering displaced people.
It is often difficult to quickly discern the difference between well-intentioned but completely uniformed voluntary groups and child traffickers. In 2007, members of the French group, Zoe’s Ark, were accused of child abduction after attempting to fly 103 children out of Chad. At the time, U.N. officials said it was not clear that the children were actually orphans or that they were from the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, as the group claimed; but rather they were Chadian children with living parents and relatives. The organization appears to be made up of well-intentioned volunteers wanting to assist needy children. But they were not professionally trained or experienced workers; nor did they have familiarity with the issues and an understanding of the best practices associated with supporting children’s needs in the midst of conflict and disasters in developing countries.
In these difficult contexts, good intentions are not enough. These incidents overshadow the positive work many volunteers and aid groups do to help children in disaster situations, and highlight the importance of professional humanitarian workers who are especially trained to assess and respond to children’s needs without doing harm. Most importantly, these good intentions can cause serious emotional and psychological damage to the innocent children that just survived a major crisis by removing them from their families and communities. Research and past experience in helping children of humanitarian crises has shown that by far the best way to assist the majority of children, even orphans, is to ensure that they are living with extended relatives or caring adults in their own communities. In such humanitarian crises, where children’s well-being is at stake, aid agencies and volunteer groups are best advised by the principles set forth in the Inter-agency Guiding Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated Children, which was created in 2004 by a group of international United Nations and civil society humanitarian agencies. These guidelines address situations in which children are separated from their families, whether orphaned or accidentally lost, in the wake of crises and disaster. They articulate clear steps, including supporting family unity, to ensure that each child’s best interests are followed.
Haiti’s recovery will take years. The desire to help children left without proper care is both noble and necessary; however, the urge to volunteer is best channeled through raising funds to support professional organizations with expertise in disaster response and child protection, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Rescue Committee, or Save the Children. Otherwise, well-intentioned volunteers can risk doing more harm than good.
{PHOTO}Haitian orphans rest on mattresses in a truck this week at the Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage in Port-au-Prince.
Haitian orphans rest on mattresses in a truck this week at the Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage in Port-au-Prince.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- The images of Haitian children crying or injured or wandering the streets alone are heartbreaking. It's no surprise there has been a flood of well-intentioned people who want to adopt those children.
But that's not always the best immediate move, aid groups caution.
Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said the "vast majority" of children on their own in Haiti are not orphans, but were simply separated from their families in the chaos.
Their family members may still be alive, she said, and "will be desperate to be reunited with them."
"Taking children out of the country would permanently separate thousands of children from their families -- a separation that would compound the acute trauma they are already suffering and inflict long-term damage on their chances of recovery," Whitbread said.
Hurriedly whisking unclassified children out of Haiti will not ensure the children are happy or safe in the long-term, experts said. Homes and potential parents must be reviewed by professional social workers and it's logistically impossible to do that in a short time. Allowing adoptions to proceed without thorough background checks can lead to child trafficking and other crimes.
The United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, does not facilitate adoptions, but it has been bombarded with calls from people who want a Haitian orphan, said Christopher de Bono, a UNICEF spokesman.
In 2007, UNICEF estimated that there were 380,000 orphans in Haiti, but de Bono said Thursday that he'd "hate to vouch for that figure" because that number -- any number -- is impossible to verify.
Between Haiti's "lousy [child welfare] oversight system," and all the challenges that Haitians have endured, it's not uncommon for Haitian parents to put their children in orphanages temporarily, de Bono said. This means knowing who is truly an orphan and who isn't requires great attention to detail and documents.
"Removing children who've just experienced a disaster from their environment, from where they're from is not necessarily good for them," he said. Haitian children must first be fed, sheltered, clothed and given medical attention; the next step is to register them and trace their relatives.
Diana Boni, who works with Port-au-Prince's BRESMA orphanage, is firmly against new adoptions out of Haiti. "Under no circumstances should we evacuate any child newly orphaned or displaced," she wrote in an e-mail to CNN.
"Imagine losing much of your family, only to discover that a surviving relative had been whisked off to the States to be adopted by strangers without your knowledge or consent! Adoptions without consent are child trafficking. Pure and simple."
She has been taking care of children who waited for years in the orphanage to be adopted. "It's a bit sad, as I have several wonderful children who waited literally for years for new families, and no one ever came," she said.
The disaster in Haiti has led to an outpouring of support around the world, with the United States alone donating more than $305 million as of Wednesday, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper covering nonprofit organizations.
Because Haiti's poverty already made it "extremely vulnerable" to exploitation and abuse, rushed adoptions could open the door to traffickers, said World Vision Chief Executive Justin Byworth.
"We are concerned not only about premature overseas adoption but also about children increasingly being sent unaccompanied to the Dominican Republic," he said.
Aid groups said adoptions that were already in progress before the January 12 earthquake should go ahead, as long as the right legal documents are in place and they meet Haitian and international law.
For those who want to help Haitian children, Whitbread said, they should donate to aid agencies that are working on reuniting children with their families.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has opened an office at the headquarters of the Haitian Red Cross in Crois de Prez to help people locate their relatives, said Pete Garratt, a disaster response manager at the British Red Cross.
The Red Cross also has set up a Web site to help people searching for relatives, he said.
[Photo] Haitian Red Cross volunteer Jean Zacharie helps one-month-old Deborah Fatima in Port-au-Prince, where her mother died in the 12 January earthquake. Amid the chaos and destruction, aid agencies fear children missing from hospital may have been stolen by child trafficking gangs. Photograph: Talia Frenkel/AFP/Getty Images
Aid agencies continued to warn against adopting children from Haiti today, amid unconfirmed reports that a number of children who had gone missing from hospitals in the devastated country may have been trafficked.
An adviser for Unicef told reporters that about 15 children had disappeared from hospitals, presumed taken.
Jean Luc Legrand was quoted as saying: "Unicef has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti which existed before, and unfortunately many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption 'market'."
A spokesman for the charity said it could not confirm the figures but had referred the reports to the Haitian government, which was investigating. It has stepped up its efforts to ensure all children under five are in a safe place and properly fed by this weekend.
Hannah Reichardt, emergencies adviser for Save the Children, said: "This is why child protection is utmost in our concern at the moment, particularly because we know that child trafficking was already a problem in Haiti before the quake."
She said tracing families was the "primary important thing that we do" at this stage in an emergency, alongside aid distribution. Save the Children is now co-ordinating all family tracing work in Haiti at the request of the UN. Twenty-nine agencies are currently pooling child protection resources in the country.
Both charities have joined other agencies which have warned would-be parents against hasty adoptions of children who would appear to have been orphaned.
Bethany Christian Services, a US adoption agency, said it had received more than 1,000 requests for adoption applications, while the Joint Council on International Children's Services, a US advocacy organisation, said it had received 150 enquiries about Haitian adoption in three days, compared with 10 a month normally.
It said that evacuating children from Haiti at present, even with altruistic motives, was "premature and dangerous".
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