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.
""Survivors need to reintegrate into society. If they have money then they can reintegrate more easily. If they do not have money then they may be preyed on and re-trafficked," said Danuwar, who now runs an anti-trafficking charity in Nepal."
"Her call for compensation was backed by Nepal's leading anti-trafficking judge, Tek Narayan Kunwar, who set a precedent in 2012 when he ordered the government to pay the equivalent of $3,000 to the son of a woman who died of HIV after years working in Indian brothels."
(Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
According to federal and international law, children trapped in the commercial sex trade are to be treated as victims and not criminals. Yet, many U.S. states and localities are not doing that.
AUSTIN – In recent sessions, the Texas Legislature has passed laws aimed at making it tough for human traffickers and pimps, as well as helping the victims of those criminals.
It looks like the upcoming session will be no different.
As in the case of legislation aimed at reducing the number of child deaths due to abuse or neglect, anti-human trafficking proposals are also expected to get the lawmakers’ attention when the Legislature is back in session on Jan. 13.
“This is a fight that we must continue,” said Rep. John Frullo who, in his four years as a legislator, has successfully authored legislation aimed at giving law enforcement the resources they need to combat this problem.
"That mix of men and money has brought another plague. Undercover footage provided by the anti-trafficking organization iEmpathize hints at a more insidious problem: human sex trafficking.
"Windie Jo Lazenko said an influx of money and a highly skewed ratio of men to women has fueled a massive increase in prostitution, often arranged through websites like Backpage.com. And where there is prostitution, she said, there is trafficking.
A Friday night at J Dub's Bar & Grill in Williston, N.D., begins and ends with multicolored flashing lights, thumping dance music and crowds of young men with money to spend.
Ethnic Hmong, Lao and Montagnard girls, including children, are being
abducted and forced into marriage and prostitution at an alarming rate
by corrupt government and military officials in Vietnam and Laos
according to statements issued jointly today by non-governmental
organizations.
When the screen goes dark, April Jones, the moderator of the two-hour "brain trust" conversation of experts on human trafficking, expresses what many in the room are no doubt thinking.
"The thing I noticed most about that video," she says, "is that everyone spoke perfect English. Everyone was from this country. This is not something that happened hundreds of years ago. It's happening here and now."
Maria watched the expensive car roll into her small town in
Honduras. Two well-dressed men stepped out of the vehicle. They walked
toward Maria, 15, and two friends who were with her. The men said they
were recruiting people to work in a textile factory in the United
States.
It sounded like a terrific opportunity—a chance for Maria to earn
enough money to help her family while supporting herself. Most of all,
it meant she would be able to send money to her mother, who was
struggling to raise six other children on her own.
Maria agreed to go with the men. So did her two friends.
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16 Mar 2013 Human trafficking is a day-to-day reality in many parts of the world, with women and children the primary victims.
A young girl begs for money in Ratchaprasong, Bangkok. The trafficking of children, many of whom are forced to work as beggars, is one of several cross-border human rights issues that have not been tackled due to the Asean principle of non-interference. APICHIT JINAKUL
There are four Asean bodies currently dealing with human trafficking. One thing is common among them: they don't talk to each other.
The four bodies are:
- The Asean Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights, which has included human trafficking as one of the priority issues in its five-year working plan;
- The Asean Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, which included the trafficking of women as part of its plan for the elimination of violence against women;
- The Asean Committee on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers, which has touched on the issue in its four-years-and-still-ongoing debate about the instruments needed to protect migrant workers in the region;
- The Senior Official Meeting on Transnational Organised Crime, which discussed human trafficking in the draft of the Asean Convention on Anti-Trafficking in Persons (ACTIP).
Discussions on the ACTIP have been now been stalled for more than two years since it was firstly proposed by the Philippines in 2011.
Content-wise, the draft is problematic for two reasons.
First, it focuses heavily on organised crime while largely overlooking the human rights element of human trafficking. Secondly, it includes a "non-interference" clause.
Within the human rights framework, trafficking in persons represents the situation of someone being held under another's control due to a lack of economic choice and/or access.
Moreover, the lack of status and rights guaranteed by international human rights laws increases people's vulnerability to trafficking. In effect, human rights violations are both a cause and a result of trafficking in people.
Framing the treaty with such a heavy focus on organised crime will further isolate victims from the structure that is supposed to protect them. It makes prevention, protection and the promotion of state cooperation more important than individual human rights.
Ignoring human rights and focusing on organised crime essentially renders the value of victims as mere "evidence" in criminal cases.
The level of protection offered to victims will be dependent on their usefulness to an investigation or prosecution.
Instead, the ACTIP should widen its focus to provide a legal framework to protect trafficked persons and individuals at risk of being trafficked, while still targeting individuals accused or convicted of trafficking-related offences, defining their entitlements and holding duty-bearers to account.
It should also not miss the opportunity to set up mechanisms to receive complaints and to supervise the implementation of the convention at the national level.
Often, governments are reluctant to accept legal responsibility for human trafficking and for corresponding human rights violations because they claim criminals groups committed the crime, not the government itself.
Some governments simply argue that they have done everything to prevent the harm, and they are therefore not responsible.
In this respect, the ACTIP should apply a standard of due diligence which holds governments responsible for failures to prevent, investigate, prosecute or compensate for human trafficking offences.
Each government has an obligation to prevent and respond to acts by private entities that hinder human rights.
As human trafficking is a transborder issue that naturally involves more than one country, does the principle of non-interference really serve as a better measure to combat human trafficking?
Non-interference is a key principle of many inter-governmental relationships worldwide.
The problem here is that non-interference is the only "institutional principle" to which Asean has been effectively, and to some extent religiously, committed.
The 1967 Bangkok Declaration stated that member states were determined to prevent external interference in order to ensure domestic and regional stability.
External interference has been interpreted as involvement in the domestic affairs of states that ranges from even the softest political commentary to coercive military intervention that would undermine national sovereignty.
But in many situations, the principle has not been absolute in its practice.
In 2005, for instance, Asean heads of state called for the release of political prisoners under detention.
In 2007, Asean urged the military junta in Myanmar to continue working with the UN in order to open up a meaningful dialogue with now-opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The strict application of the principle in combating human trafficking in the region would do significant harm to women and children.
The ACTIP should expand, rather than limit, rights protection by including positive obligations for member states such as legislative reform instead of the negative obligation of non-interference.
As Asean moves towards a more people-oriented community and is increasingly interdependent among its member states, the principle of non-interference will not only make the region more susceptible to human trafficking, but will make the association fail to achieve ongoing relevance and credibility among its own citizens and on the broader global scene.
Yuyun Wahyuningrum works as a senior adviser on Asean and human rights at the Human Rights Working Group, a Jakarta-based coalition of NGOs working on human rights issues.
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect. On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows. By: Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher, Eric Neumayer Download This Paper
For many students, the thought of a young child sold into a world of violence and abuse for a mere $200 by her mother or father is a scenario thought about when watching Hollywood-produced movies such as “Taken.”
Yet for numerous women and children around the world, the scenario is a ruthless reality.
The topic was the focus of a lecture by Leonardo Territo, a professor in the department of criminal justice at Saint Leo University and professor emeritus in the department of criminology at USF, who spoke to a small crowd of about 20 in the John and Grace Allen Building on Friday.
Territo, who served as chairman of the department of police administration and director of the Florida Institute for law enforcement at St. Petersburg College, gave students in the Honors College a deeper insight into the content of the book he co-wrote titled “International Sex Trafficking of Women and Children.”
Due to corrupted living conditions in many countries such as Russia and Cambodia, Territo said the appeal of coming to America runs high for many women living in such places looking for a better way of life.
According to Territo, about 14,500 to 17,000 foreign women and children are trafficked into the U.S each year and physically controlled by their captor.
Territo said a reason for this is the use of false advertisements that con many women into becoming sex slaves unknowingly.
“Generally there will be ads in newspapers offering lucrative job opportunities such as waitress jobs or nanny openings,” he said. “She will be drugged and repeatedly raped. She’ll be moved place to place, not able to establish relationships with others.”
Territo spoke of the brutality of human trafficking.
He shared the story of a 13-year-old Cambodian girl named Long Pross, who had her eye gouged out with a piece of metal by a pimp because she asked to be set free.
“Many girls in places such as Cambodia may be sold for as little as $200 to $300 and will not likely see their parents again,” Territosaid.
But foreign women and children are not the only casualties of this brutal business.
According to Territo, roughly 100,000 to 300,000 American children are sexually exploited annually.
Students such as Monica Restro, a freshman majoring in civil engineering, were alarmed by the statistics.
“Coming in, I knew it was a problem in foreign countries but not in the U.S.,” Restro said. “It really opened my eyes to the awful people who live here and do these things.”
In the U.S, Territo said pimps seek out troubled young women, often runaways, at public places such as shopping malls or bus stops in order to take advantage of them. The pimps, he said, are master manipulators and work by schmoozing their underage prospects at first. These pimps will buy them lavish gifts and shower the girls with affection.
“It’s often the first time in these girls’ lives that a man has treated them that way,” Territo said. “The average age of a young person entering prostitution is 14 years old. Many think, ‘Who would want to be intimate with a girl that small?’ You’d be surprised.”
Often times the younger the girl is the more expensive she is to the customer, Territo added.
Territo said he hopes education about human trafficking continues to spread throughout the community. He said the industry is all about money, and there is no lack of customers.
“It’s a tragic subject, but an important subject,” Territo said.
Published: February 15, 2013 This week’s 78-to-22 vote in the Senate to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act provided a refreshing demonstration of bipartisanship that the House would do well to emulate. Last year, the Republican-led House blocked the act’s renewal over objections to new protections for gay, immigrant and American Indian victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It falls to Speaker John Boehner to see that this does not happen again. The Senate bill would provide services, like shelters and legal help, for abuse victims regardless of their sexual orientation or immigration status. To ease passage in the House, the measure’s lead sponsors, Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Michael Crapo, an Idaho Republican, dropped a provision that would have increased the number of visas available for battered women who were undocumented immigrants. Mr. Leahy has said he will push for the increase in future immigration reform efforts.
Other sticking points remain, chiefly the new powers the Senate bill would grant tribal courts, which currently cannot pursue non-Indians who attack Indian women on tribal land. Domestic and sexual violence has been soaring in tribal communities, and the law needs updating to address this prosecutorial gap. The Senate bill requires that criminal defendants in tribal courts be accorded normal constitutional protections. Negotiators are working on possible changes to alleviate Republican concerns about ensuring fair treatment of non-Indian defendants.
In one important change from last year’s bill, the Senate agreed to tack on a renewal of another stalled measure, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This would toughen penalties for sex traffickers and impose stronger protections for trafficking victims. What should be an uncontroversial bill has been held up by Republicans over the Obama administration’s proper insistence that contractors under the act afford victims access to a full range of reproductive health services.
Seventeen Republican members have written to Mr. Boehner urging action on a Violence Against Women Act renewal that reaches “all victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.” This is a sign that the G.O.P.’s rejection by female voters in November is causing some rethinking. Mr. Boehner should allow a vote on the Senate bill.
Other sticking points remain, chiefly the new powers the Senate bill would grant tribal courts, which currently cannot pursue non-Indians who attack Indian women on tribal land. Domestic and sexual violence has been soaring in tribal communities, and the law needs updating to address this prosecutorial gap. The Senate bill requires that criminal defendants in tribal courts be accorded normal constitutional protections. Negotiators are working on possible changes to alleviate Republican concerns about ensuring fair treatment of non-Indian defendants.
In one important change from last year’s bill, the Senate agreed to tack on a renewal of another stalled measure, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This would toughen penalties for sex traffickers and impose stronger protections for trafficking victims. What should be an uncontroversial bill has been held up by Republicans over the Obama administration’s proper insistence that contractors under the act afford victims access to a full range of reproductive health services.
Seventeen Republican members have written to Mr. Boehner urging action on a Violence Against Women Act renewal that reaches “all victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.” This is a sign that the G.O.P.’s rejection by female voters in November is causing some rethinking. Mr. Boehner should allow a vote on the Senate bill.
Hundreds of women are trafficked from Burma each year (Picture: World Vision)
‘I was afraid. I had no choice. I had no way to go home,’ says Su Thandar from Burma.
When she was 17, she was trafficked against her will from her home near Yangon to China where she was forced to marry a man she’d never met.
‘I was very unhappy. I tried to run away three times. But the Chinese police arrested me and sent me back to my husband. Very often, I was beaten by my husband. I have a scar,’ she says, lifting her chin to show me. ‘I cried a lot. I wanted to go home.’
Su (not her real name), now 22, is one of hundreds of women trafficked from Burma across the border into China where they are forced into illegal marriages and to have children.
A recent report from the Burmese government said 80 per cent of human traffic cases in Burma over the last five years involved women being smuggled to China for forced marriage.
Women are trafficked across other borders too, to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Many are exploited as sex workers or labourers. But the majority are sold as ‘brides’ to China, the trade driven by China’s one-child policy, which has created a gender imbalance and a shortage of females to marry. A trafficked ‘bride’ can be sold for between 30,000 Chinese yuan (£3,000) to 50,000 yuan (£5,000).
‘The situation is very serious,’ said Wah Eh Htoo, who works for the charity World Vision in Burma.
‘We know many rural Chinese men are desperate to find a wife, so they can have descendants.
‘Because of the one child policy, Chinese people prefer to have a male, rather than a female. There’s a big gap. That’s why rural Chinese men are trying to get a bride from other countries, like Burma, Vietnam or Cambodia. Burma is one of the main ones.’
Police Colonel Nyunt Hlaing, from Burma’s Transnational Crime Department’s anti-trafficking unit, said: ‘China’s one-child policy is the main cause of the problem,
‘If a village man has 30,000 yuan, a Burmese or Lao woman can be easily acquired. In some cases, the Chinese men are disabled and have no way to be married with Chinese women, so their parents try to search out Burmese women for child-bearing for the next generation.’
According to the government report, 731 trafficking cases (many cases include multiple victims) were reported between Jan 2006 and Aug 2011, including 585 cases in China.
A total of 1305 people were rescued over the past five years, including 780 from China. It’s suspected the reported figures are the tip of the iceberg.
‘China needs to do more to stop this,’ said Colonel Hlaing. ‘But they’re not very effective for the moment because of the great demand.
‘If Burmese women are found, the police arrest them, seize them for one month in prison and deport them to their place of origin.
‘Therefore, most of the women who married Chinese men are prohibited to go out for any purpose. Very few stay in good conditions. They’re beaten by their husbands, father-in-law, mother-in-law, relatives… and are provided insufficient food.’
This is what happened to Su. She came from a poor family and was tricked by a neighbour who offered to help her get a job in a fabric factory in China to send money home.
She was handed over to traffickers and sent to China. The job evaporated. After days of travelling, she met a man at a train station.
‘With sign language, I was told he would be my husband. I didn’t understand. But a Chinese lady, the wife of a trafficker, phoned me and explained in Burmese I had to marry this guy.’
Su lived with her ‘husband’ for five years, somewhere in Yunnan Province, and had two children, a boy and a girl. ‘I thought I was a child, not child-bearing age, but I had no choice,’ she says.
She tried to escape several times, teaming up with other trafficking victims living as ‘brides’ in the area.
‘I met three Burmese women in the same village. There were a lot of trafficking victims around the other villages.’
Eventually, she succeeded. It took six days to reach Burma and alert the authorities. She was forced to leave her children behind.
Even today, she isn’t sure of the exact location where she was held. Her father died while she was away and she lost the family home. She now works as a cleaner in Yangon.
She’s talked to her children on the phone and is trying to find a way to see them, but it’s difficult.
I hear other accounts of girls as young as 14 trafficked to China. Victims are often beaten, intimidated, imprisoned and tortured, isolated and unable to speak the language, receiving no medical treatment.
One striking aspect of the women’s stories is that 65 per cent of the people who trafficked them were other women.
‘Here, people are very desperate because of poverty,’ said Wah Eh Htoo. ‘Women become brokers because they can approach the young women and cultivate their trust. It’s quite shocking. But people are desperate to get out of poverty.’
As well as poverty in Burma, the demand for brides in China needs to be tackled and the criminals who traffic women need to be stopped.
Burmese police authorities are trying to have discussions with Chinese authorities to set up task forces in border towns, Colonel Hlaing said.
It is hoped a memorandum of understanding can be reached. But much more needs to be done: action, not just discussion. So far, there seems to have been reluctance from China to confront the problem. The Chinese embassy in London did not respond when asked to comment.
