Trafficking Hotline Aims To Rescue Thousands Of Kids Who Disappear In South Asia

Trafficking Hotline Aims To Rescue Thousands Of Kids Who Disappear In South Asia:

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla. Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Florida teacher in Belize child-sex sting faces life - Orlando Sentinel

TAMPA — Trying to persuade a 13-year-old girl in Belize to have sex with him, Pasco County middle school teacher David Wendel Thompson used a tactic officials say is common among adults wanting to exploit impoverished children.

"But u need help," he said in an online conversation last December. I want u to have a better life."


Read more:

Florida teacher in Belize child-sex sting faces life - Orlando Sentinel:

Cambodia Grows as Sex Tourism Destination, Heroin Conduit | The Cambodia Daily

Cambodia is expanding as a destination for sex tourists and human trafficking and has become a major source of heroin sent to Australia, according to a new report released in Sydney on Tuesday by the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).


TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE, GO TO:
Cambodia Grows as Sex Tourism Destination, Heroin Conduit | The Cambodia Daily


SEE ALSO:

UNODC publishes the first comprehensive study on transnational organized crime threats in East Asia and the Pacific

http://www.unodc.org/southeastasiaandpacific/en/2013/04/tocta/story.html

Global BC | Asian girls harmed by Canadian sex tourists find refuge, but abuses continue

http://www.globaltvbc.com/asian+girls+harmed+by+canadian+sex+tourists+find+refuge+but+abuses+continue/6442778986/story.html

Source: Global BC
Tamsyn Burgmann,  Thursday, December 27, 2012 5:44 PM

A young girl at a sanctuary for children rescued from a Cambodian brothels writes a letter of forgiveness to her mother, who knowingly sold her to be sexually abused, in a photo released by Ratanak International. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO

VANCOUVER - At a non-nondescript, discreet compound in Cambodia, young girls form an orderly queue to be served noodles in the NewSong centre.

Routine lapses when the newest among them, a seven-year-old nicknamed Srey, barges past the line, grabs fistfuls of the slippery food and bolts out the door. She's spotted in the backyard, furtively stuffing her face like an animal.

Her adult caregivers don't bat an eye. It's one of the child's first meals since being rescued from a backstreet brothel where she was forced into sex with adult men — many of them westerners and almost certainly Canadians among them.

"When she wasn't actually being abused by customers, they kept her chained below a table," said Brian McConaghy, the Vancouver-based former Mountie and co-founder of the rehabilitation centre for sexually abused and exploited girls.

The brothel owners would scrape their leftovers onto the floor when they were done eating. Srey's every meal was a competition with their dogs.

"Every scrap of food she ever got, she fought for," McConaghy said.

In early January, McConaghy will fly again to the Southeast Asian country for a post-Christmas visit with the NewSong girls, including now ten-year-old Srey and several teens who were the victims of Canada's first prosecuted child sex tourist, Donald Bakker.

The Vancouver man was arrested nearly a decade ago, largely as a result of the then-RCMP forensics investigator McConaghy, who had unique know-how from running a Cambodian medical charity. Each time he returns to the sanctuary, which he set-up after leaving the police force to devote himself to victims, he sees tell-tale signs indicating Canadians are still committing "grotesque" crimes against the country's most defenceless.

Such predators travel abroad to have sex with children because they believe themselves immune to consequences, and critics argue Canada's record doesn't contradict the notion: Only five men have been punished under Canadian laws against child sex tourism over the past 15 years.

McConaghy and other children's advocates — including politicians, senators and frontline police officers — want more Canadians prosecuted. Yet despite the federal Conservatives' tough-on-crime approach, the laws' infrequent use appears unlikely to rise quickly. Domestic problems remain highest on the public radar, and there's only a finite envelope of money available for policing.

Awareness of the true horrors inflicted is low and almost beyond comprehension, the advocates say, resulting in little social momentum to trigger a complaints-driven system that would compel police to get more aggressive.

It's a massive challenge that's prompted those calling for change to take their own small steps, while allies like on-the-ground officers are left to tackle the stomach-turning scourge with the best they can muster.

Winnipeg Tory MP Joy Smith has been propelling the legislation that helps police go after bad guys abroad ever since she watched her police officer son's hair turn "grey literally overnight" while working in Manitoba's child exploitation unit.

"No, absolutely not," is her reply when asked whether the quantity of child sex tourist prosecutions has been enough. "Nobody ever really believed this happened, that Canadians went to other countries."

She urged more "proactive" measures, noting she herself has had to take one step at a time because it's impossible to divorce action from economic realities.

"We have to do it in such a way that we have it out there every day and we do something every day," she said.

Options she said merit consideration include seizing passports from child predators so they can't travel, designating funding solely for child sex tourism investigations and "targeting the market," by creating stricter mechanisms to specifically take down those who want to buy sex. That would include registering child-sex customers, educating about how they operate and teaching police about what really happens to victims, so blame is actually put on perpetrators.

About 38 countries have laws allowing authorities to hunt their own citizens for crimes committed away from home.

Canada's sex-tourism law, with seven arrests and a handful of convictions to its credit, was enacted in 1997.

Contrast that with the arrests of 93 men in the U.S. since 2003, and about 34 prosecutions in Australia since 1994. While not all those cases have concluded with convictions, more than 1,200 Aussie sex offenders were known to have travelled overseas for sex last year.

"I doubt the figures are that different in Canada," said Bernadette McMenamin, executive officer of the child protection charity Child Wise, based in Melbourne.

About one-quarter of sex tourists abusing children outside of North America are American and Canadian, says ECPAT USA, part of a global organization devoted to eliminating child prostitution and trafficking. Its Canadian counterpart, Beyond Borders, calls efforts by law enforcement here "largely reactionary."

Documents released by Foreign Affairs show 73 Canadians were arrested in a foreign country for abusing or molesting children or possessing child pornography between 2009 and 2011. That figure only accounts for people who requested consular assistance after they were detained.

Sometimes Canadians are prosecuted overseas instead of at home, like the infamous case of the man dubbed "Swirl Face," Christopher Neil. The former English teacher from B.C. distributed videos online in which he sexually assaulted young boys. He was sent back to Canada in early October after five years in a Thai prison.

Canadian senators have also highlighted the dearth of convictions.

At a hearing earlier this year by a committee examining a bill pertaining to human trafficking, Sen. Joan Fraser noted the precedent of the sex tourism bill "which we all felt so good about, but nothing much has changed."

Sen. Mobina Jaffer concurred with her colleague that five convictions has been too few: "Most of them have been fortuitous; it has not been due to the police investigation or anything," she said, according to minutes of the June 7 meeting.

Jaffer went on to question why Canada doesn't have investigations officers embedded in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia.

McConaghy has seen the complexities of a child sex tourism file first-hand, and how the investigations get bogged down. While Canada does have liaison officers covering every country of the world, they have wide-ranging responsibilities and in the sex tourism regions, their expertise is usually in drugs.

It was because of his special skill set the 22-year cop was able to leverage overseas relationships to clinch the Bakker case. He assisted the Vancouver Police Department after they found videotapes depicting vicious sex attacks on Vietnamese children while investigating the hotel worker in the ghastly assaults of local prostitutes.

McConaghy said he doesn't know any on-the-ground officers who aren't willing and eager to go after predators, but "police don't have the resources to be aware of, track and actually work on the files overseas."

He said the U.S. takes a harder line, staffing embassies to work with foreign governments in hot spots, while Canada is still just building up a federal team with expertise.

He called for a scheme to fight child sex tourists in the same vein as the $25 million national action plan devoted to human traffickers, as well as a mechanism to warn other countries if known offenders will be travelling abroad and for an online repository of images where sex attacks have occurred (without showing victims) that the public can access to provide tips.

McConaghy believes he could spur action overnight, simply by filling a theatre on Parliament Hill with politicians and showing them 20 seconds of any child sex assault video shot by homegrown pedophiles.

"North Americans scare them the most," he said of the girls living in the NewSong centre, who've described their experiences to trained counsellors. "It's brutality — it's not just sexual. It's beatings and violence included."

Canadian police chase child sex tourists only after receiving a complaint or a request from another force for assistance, said Insp. Sergio Pasin, who heads the Ottawa-based national co-ordination centre for child exploitation investigations. Each agency decides how many resources it requires.

Investigations of overseas crimes requires evidence to be gathered in the foreign jurisdiction, and that can be very expensive, Pasin said. He couldn't provide an average cost, noting factors vary from the number of investigators, to witnesses needing to be identified and interviewed, to the ambiguous time frame itself.

In British Columbia, there are 12 staff comprising its integrated child exploitation unit, which conducts investigations on its own as well as works with 131 provincial detachments. Its budget is more than $2 million annually, including salaries. About 70 per cent is provincial dollars.

The B.C. officer heading two teams that track sexual predators at home and abroad said she's never had a situation where she didn't get outside co-operation or was forced to put an investigation on hold.

"You only have to listen to a child suffer once and you're permanently changed," said Staff Sgt. Bev Csikos.

In one recent case, Csikos and her team were set to chase a Canadian in Africa when the whole thing was called off.

"Before we resolved the case, someone in that other country took it into their own hands to stop him from sexually abusing other kids."

But Csikos noted crimes in foreign countries can be difficult to bring to prosecution based on the high standards required in Canada for evidence. She said difficulty mounts for officers to first locate and then gain trust of young victims when they have just been abused by westerners.

"We want to save all of the children, but we can only save one at a time," she said.

When McConaghy arrives in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in January, he knows he'll see the usual cast of characters: "aged, scabby, fat, sweaty white guys," sitting alone at tables in restaurants with no equivalent wives, waiting for night to fall.

He's spoken to travel agents in Vancouver who've realized they have clients who fits the M.O. — men who travel abroad to Southeast Asia about the same time each year, on their own, without business reasons or extended family to visit.

But he'll compartmentalize his disgust in order to share the joy of freedom with the girls at the sanctuary, funded by his charity Ratanak International. It currently houses 39 girls from age five to late teens — it has a capacity of 58 girls — who are under the care of more than 60 staff. Many of those who grow older move to half-way houses to continue their healing.

He and the staff will take the group out for a treat, perhaps pizza, and he expects to be jokingly chastised like daughters might do with a father figure when he brings them Christmas gifts like scarves or T-shirts.

"I acknowledge I know who they are, I know their background, I love them anyway," he said, noting they've been rejected by society. "So that is the best gift I can give them, let them know they are absolutely special."

© The Canadian Press, 2012

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Health News - Analyzing anti-trafficking activism: Researcher studies the globalization of sex trafficking and the organizations that work to stop it

http://www.healthcanal.com/public-health-safety/24477-Analyzing-anti-trafficking-activism-Researcher-studies-the-globalization-sex-trafficking-and-the-organizations-that-work-stop.html

12/12/2011 03:11:00

MANHATTAN -- In today's world, human trafficking is not an isolated problem, but a growing global issue. A Kansas State University professor is studying ways that anti-trafficking groups are fighting back.

"The focus of my research is not just to say how much sex trafficking is occurring, but how forms of it are changing," said Nadia Shapkina, assistant professor of sociology, who is looking at the geography, history and economic impact of trafficking. "The sex trade has been a global industry for a long time. But now, with the globalization of technology and transportation, it is becoming even more transnationalized."

One form of the sex trade that has evolved in recent years is sex tourism, which combines aspects of tourism with the purchase of sexual services, particularly of young women. About 95 percent of sex tourists are men from wealthy countries who come to tourist destinations -- such as Greece, Thailand or Australia -- for both entertainment and sex.

"Sex trafficking delivers women to customers, but sex tourism delivers customers to the place of consumption," Shapkina said. "Sex tourism becomes a very lucrative business. Technology, communication and transportation all allow that and they enable the trafficking of women as well."

Sex tourism operations are often led by skilled businessmen who know how to appeal and advertise to middle- and upper-class men with money and resources to travel and consume sexual services. Their messages have spread worldwide, Shapkina said, pointing to the United States, where multiple cases of labor and sex trafficking have been investigated.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that the market has increased, but it might mean that authorities have started detecting this criminal practice," Shapkina said. "It is hard to estimate the size of the sex trade because it is so underground. But what we can say is that it is very transnationalized and even the U.S. is affected by this negative aspect of globalization."

The globalization of human trafficking has also led to a rise in anti-trafficking activism. Shapkina is looking at how governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations and celebrity activists are collaborating to combat trafficking. She is mapping out organizations to understand what kind of resources they have, how successful they are and what they can achieve.

In the process, she has noticed challenges that many activist groups face. It is often difficult to coordinate actions across national borders because legal systems and cultures vary across countries. For instance, some countries such as Saudi Arabia penalize female victims of human trafficking, while countries such as Germany take a more humanistic approach by providing services for the victims.

Similarly, Shapkina is finding that many activist organizations turn to the government for help. Sometimes the governments respond and sometimes they don't, especially if the country has a strong sex tourism presence and governments benefit from the revenues from the sex trade.

Allegiances also play a role in a country's willingness to criminalize human trafficking. For instance, Turkey had no presence of active anti-trafficking organizations, but when the country wanted to join the European Union it began involving nonprofit organizations to work on the problem. A similar situation is happening in Ukraine as it tries to join the European Union and has to satisfy human rights and gender equality standard policies of the union.

"I have focused on Eastern Europe because the trafficking of women has become a problem in the region," said Shapkina, who is originally from Russia. "Many nongovernmental organizations have been forming in that area, and they want to focus on human trafficking. That is very new and we need to explain what is going on there."

Shapkina is also following human trafficking in the United States, where many initial anti-trafficking campaigns focused on foreign-born populations and immigrants as victims. That led to a realization of domestic exploitation, and prompted activists to focus on domestic trafficking, especially of minors.

"Clearly, the sex trade is a social problem, especially a gender inequality problem," Shapkina said. "This is what makes this trade possible, which involves the economic disempowerment of women. That's why we need to empower women economically and politically."

Shapkina recently gave a presentation, "Gendered Commodity Chains: Bringing Households and Women into Global Commodity Chain Analysis," about the global sex trade at an international conference at Binghamton University, which is part of the State University of New York. An article based on the conference presentation will be published in 2012. Shapkina has also written a chapter about sex tourism in Ukraine. The chapter will be published in 2012 in the book "Sex Tourism in Ukraine: A Social Problem."

Source: Nadia Shapkina, 785-532-6865, shapkina@k-state.edu
Photo available: http://www.k-state.edu/media/images/dec11/shapkina121211.jpg
News release prepared by: Jennifer Tidball, 785-532-0847, jtorline@k-state.edu

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Sex Tourism and Trafficking: Not one and the same - Stabroek News - Guyana

by Stabroek staff
Published - November 1, 2010

Megan Rivers-Moore did her doctoral work on sex tourism in Costa Rica. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto

By Megan Rivers-Moore

Latin America and the Caribbean are characterised by a long history of migration into, out of, and within the region. The Caribbean diaspora is surely one of the most significant in the world, marked by complex ties across nations and within families.

This is the case of those who would be included under the ‘free movement of skilled nationals’ provisions, as well as the working class and poor men, women, and children who move in search of survival and improved life chances. It is within this context of migration and diaspora that we must place discussions of trafficking, a much talked about but often poorly understood topic that is at the forefront of concerns about migration, labour, and sexuality.

A key problem in so many discussions of trafficking was reproduced in an October 15th article in the Stabroek News, titled ‘Sex tourism growing in favoured destinations in Caribbean’, namely, that sex tourism and trafficking are conflated, as if they were one and the same.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) co-ordinator of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Unit in the Department of Public Security, Fernando Garcia-Robles, reportedly noted that several tourist destination countries in the Caribbean have a growing sex tourism industry, and acknowledged “concerns that the Free Movement of Skilled Nationals in Caricom could result in increased human trafficking.”

Tourists travel to the Caribbean for many reasons, including in search of sexual experiences with local people, sometimes explicitly commercial, sometimes a much more ambiguous exchange of gifts, affection, and sex.

This complex phenomenon is made possible by a variety of factors, including tourism dependent economies, global inequalities of wealth and mobility, and problematic ideas about the race and sexuality of people in the Caribbean.

Sex tourism is not, however, the same as trafficking. Trafficking refers to the use of violence, coercion and exploitation to recruit and transport workers across borders to carry out various kinds of work.

Most crucially, trafficking does not just include sex work, but rather all kinds of labour, including domestic and agricultural, for example. Yet trafficking is often simplistically equated with commercial sex and sexual ‘slavery.’ The use of the term ‘slavery’ so loosely should give us pause, as it is a concept fraught with history and emotion, especially in the Caribbean and Latin America, where it calls to mind the brutalities of the middle passage, plantation economies, and the outright ownership of human beings.

In fact, the little reliable research that has been done suggests that trafficking more often resembles debt bondage, and unfair and exploitative contact labour. There is of course a long history of these kinds of labour practices in the Caribbean as well, but this is an important distinction in terms of how this work takes place within labour markets and their relationships to the global economy.

As last week’s article attests, men, women, boys and girls are all trafficked for many ends to, through, and from the Caribbean region and around the world. Significant numbers of women are indeed coerced into the sex industry, but the conditions of their lives are similar in many ways to the lives of other migrant women who struggle to get by in a world where racialized and gendered inequalities help to structure a lack of viable options and opportunities.
Because of the ways in which trafficking is often mistakenly assumed to mean sexual slavery across border, it is crucial to acknowledge that not all migrant sex workers are trafficking victims.

Sex work is often one of many strategies that women engage in for economic survival and advancement. Because few countries classify sex work as work, women tend to migrate in other immigration categories (for example, on tourist or domestic work visas) and then make their way into the sex industry. Others pay smugglers, often agreeing to or finding themselves in situations of debt bondage or indentureship.

One of the consequences of seeing migrant women who work in the sex industry as trafficking victims is that concerns about trafficking can be used for immigration control. By conflating trafficking with sexual slavery, women can be ‘saved’ by deporting them. This allows governments to appear benevolent, it deals with xenophobic fears about immigration, but it also conveniently ignores the massive violations of the human and labour rights of sex workers that take place with impunity throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. One wonders, then, about the wisdom of the OAS focusing on strengthening the capacity of law enforcement officials, immigration officers, judges, and prosecutors. The relationship between sex workers and police has been notoriously difficult in much of the world, and indeed, a great deal of the violence that sex workers face comes from the state. Because of their experiences with state violence, sex workers are not likely to report abuse from clients or management, and most importantly in terms of trafficking, sex workers’ are cautious about voicing their concerns about the use of force or coercion against migrants in the sex industry. This is especially the case when migrant sex workers face deportation upon discovery. These women are unlikely to testify against those who transport undocumented workers, as many trafficking victims who have been ‘saved’ go on to use these same networks in order to cross borders undetected once again.

We must pay attention to the broader conditions that make men, women and children vulnerable to smuggling, deception, and coercion in migrating, including the ever increasing demand for cheap, exploitable labour and the dire economic contexts that make precarious and dangerous choices for survival attractive or unavoidable. By defining sex work as a form of labour, alongside other kinds of labour like domestic and agricultural work in which workers potentially face unjust and unsafe working conditions, we can begin to explore ways of addressing these issues without resorting to fear mongering, alarmist and largely unsubstantiated claims about sexual slavery.

Sex Tourism and Trafficking: Not one and the same - Stabroek News - Guyana

New campaign against child sex tourism in Cambodia

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

ASIA/CAMBODIA -

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Phnom Penh (Agenzia Fides) - Billboards at strategic points of the city, 4,000 booklets in English and Khmer on sex tourism, publishing the phone numbers dedicated to the protection of children, training for 50 managers of hotels and guest houses and 100 drivers of tuk tuk (typical of the area mostly used by tourists) on guidelines to combat sex tourism...

These are just some of the tools to end the silence over a drama lived out by hundreds of street children, orphaned or responsible for supporting their family economically. Thanks to the organization "Intervita," already working in Cambodia to help child victims of sexual exploitation, a new program of awareness and information is now underway.

In addition to strict local regulations, in fact, the most effective instrument in combatting this serious problem is the active involvement of tourists, local authorities, and the population. In 2010, in collaboration with ECPAT Cambodia, Intervita will raise awareness among 20% of international tourists visiting the country and 10% of Cambodians through a network of 100 drivers of tuk tuk, introducing into the Cambodian tourism industry a code of ethics against sexual exploitation, and strengthen the child protection tools that already exist in Cambodia, in particular the services of telephone "hotlines" to report cases of exploitation.

Moreover, in the city of Battambang, Intervita maintains a reception and recovery center for child victims of human trafficking and street children at risk for exploitation. Here, a safe haven is offered to around 120 children between the ages of 5 and 18, who are offered care and living conditions appropriate to their growth and, when the family is a safe place to reintegrate the children, the beneficiaries project also seeks to economically support parents, as well. In Svay Rieng, the organization provides professional training to youth over 16 years at risk of sexual exploitation, helping them to find a job or start a small business.

(AP) (Agenzia Fides 04/26/2010)

DEACON FOR LIFE: New campaign against child sex tourism in Cambodia

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The Human Trafficking Project: Child Trafficking

Monday, May 03, 2010

Introduction: Trafficking in children takes many different forms worldwide, from child soldiers to child sex tourism to forced child labor in brick factories to child camel jockeys to child sex slaves to child pornography to child domestic slaves to forced child begging. Ending child slavery and child exploitation will take committed, strategic effort based on understandings of the myriad forms of child trafficking and their interconnections.

Elise: Before the TVPA was ever enacted in the U.S., a case out of Texas showed the complexity that is often overlooked when we talk about children and trafficking. Given Kachepa, along with other boys from Zambia were brought to the U.S. under false pretenses offered to them by a Baptist minister claiming the young boys would come to the U.S. to perform in a boys choir and earn money for themselves and for a new school in Zambia. The reality the boys faced included forced performances, the withholding food and medical care if the boys resisted and the constant threat of deportation among other coercive and traumatic tactics used by Keith Grimes to keep the boys in their trafficking situation. A more detailed account of the case is given in The Slave Next Door by Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter. Years after his trafficking situation ended, Given has taken to advocating on behalf of trafficking victims. He has appeared on national TV and print media delivering his message and his story, and has contributed to the development of state-level legislation.

Youngbee: Among the many different forms of child trafficking, a particularly terrible kind is child trafficking involving child pornography. In Japan, for instance, Jake Adelstein, a public relations representative in Polaris Project in Japan, describes child pornography as "evidence that a crime has been committed[;] that people can derive sexual pleasure from that or profit on that is horrifying." These children are not only sexually exploited but also their humiliation is likely to be publicized on the internet forever. What is worse is that the internet access makes this evil an average Joe's concern in the United States. In fact, a British internet watchdog says that over the past ten years, 51% of such illegal child pornography websites were hosted in the United States. Currently, in Japan, possession of child pornography is not illegal though distribution and production are criminalized. As Japanese government is sensitive to its reputation before the international world, perhaps, US citizens calling their state representatives would pressure the country to fix its legislative loophole further.

Meg: One child trafficking topic that seems to have received a lot of attention recently is trafficking and international adoptions. The issue came to the forefront after the Haiti disaster, when it became suspected that children disappearing from hospitals were being taken by traffickers and sold off as orphans. Learning about this form of trafficking was disheartening to me, because apparently even those trying to do something positive can inadvertently contribute to child exploitation and human trafficking. Although there does not appear to be much in the way of statistics on this issue yet, it is easy to see how traffickers could exploit situations such as the disaster in Haiti to make a profit off of vulnerable children, not only through international adoption, but for sex trafficking and other forms of trafficking as well. One interesting potential solution to the adoption problem is the idea of using DNA databases to reunify parents with missing children, which is something that has begun to be implemented in Haiti. If the Haiti situation prompts development of an international adoption DNA system that can be used to prevent future trafficking, this may be one positive result of a tragic disaster.

Jenn K.: According to the 2009 Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking report by Shared Hope International, over 100,000 US children are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation each year. The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the United States Department of Justice reports that the average age for entering commercial sex in the US is 12-14. Despite progress in addressing this aspect of the United State's trafficking problem, such as programs targeting demand and increased attention to the issue, much remains to be done particularly in terms of services for victims and survivors. According to Gracehaven House, which will be opening a group home for child sex trafficking survivors in Ohio, there are only 39 shelter beds dedicated to minor sex trafficking victims in the US. Other organizations, such as Courtney's House in Washington DC, are also in the process of opening group homes for child victims. Both Gracehaven House and Courtney's House were founded by survivors of sex trafficking as minors, and plan to offer comprehensive services for survivors. Still, the shelter need greatly exceeds and is likely to continue to greatly exceed resources.

Posted by Buffalo Expat at 7:05 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Child Pornography, child slavery, Child Trafficking, CSEC, domestic minor trafficking, Haiti, United States, Zambia

The Human Trafficking Project

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STOP 2010 Human trafficking in South Africa

There is still so much human trafficking happening around the world, that it is absolutely incredible that people know so little about it.

Sex Tourism is when tourists, mostly men, engage in sex-trafficking by purposely traveling to known sex destinations (usually under-developed and poor nations), seeking anonymity in pornography or prostitution, or engaging in pederasty with young children and homosexuality with young and older adults. Many of these victims were either sold into the trade or kidnapped and forced into sex-slavery (this is called human-trafficking).

I would like to draw your attention to the following South African website, STOP.

According to STOP, “People are mainly trafficked and enslaved as sex workers but also as forced labourers, child brides and as soldiers. This is fact. Of the 600-800’000 people smuggled over international borders annually, 75% are used for sex trafficking.”

Keep your eyes and ears open, folks, and if you find out that someone has been kidnapped and is being used for human-trafficking, or hear rumours that someone is involved as a trafficker, or has been forced into sex-slavery or prostitution, please report it to the relevant authorities.

This following Animated Information Video was created by Firestorm Production for STOP Human Trafficking’s 2010 Human Traffic campaign. All performers are pupils of Jan van Riebeeck Primary School in Cape Town, South Africa. Please watch it!

Kids on Human Trafficking in SA

http://www.southafricaproject.org/blog/2010/03/stop-2010-human-trafficking-in-south-africa-2/

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