About Modern-day slavery in focus | Global development | The Guardian

The Guardian states  it  is "working with Humanity United to highlight modern-day slavery, investigate its root causes and analyse potential solutions."

Check this out here: About Modern-day slavery in focus | Global development | The Guardian:

Training Mongolian officials on trafficking and smuggling

Source: UNGIFT.HUB

http://www.ungift.org/knowledgehub/stories/July2013/Training-mongolian-officials-on-trafficking-and-smuggling.html

( IOM ) -  With rising numbers of Mongolian labour migrants moving overseas, there has been an increase in human trafficking, particularly of young Mongolian women for the purpose of sexual exploitation. As a destination country, foreign victims are most commonly trafficked to Mongolia for forced labour, particularly in the construction and mining sectors.

  

  

To help mitigate these trends IOM is hosting a three-day workshop in Ulan Bator next week for 35 Mongolian government officials, to strengthen their response to document fraud, migrant smuggling, and human trafficking.

The workshop, for officials from the Mongolian Immigration Agency (MIA) and the General Authority on Border Protection (GABP), will address the challenge of managing irregular migration, smuggling and human trafficking in Mongolia.

"This specialised training will greatly contribute to the Mongolian Government's counter-trafficking efforts by providing nominated MIA and GABP trainers with the opportunity to understand the fundamental issues," said Vice Director of Immigration Mongolia, M. Munkhbat.

"This workshop will provide Mongolian frontline immigration officers and border guards with the necessary skills to better detect fraudulent travel documents and to more effectively interview and identify victims of trafficking," said Officer in Charge of IOM Mongolia, Kieran Gorman-Best. "We are delighted to have trainers from IOM as well as the governments of Australia, Canada and China working with us on this."

This activity is part of IOM's 'Strengthening the Management of Labour Migration and Counter-Trafficking in Mongolia' project funded by its international Development Fund. In the past year, IOM, in partnership with the Mongolian Gender Equality Centre, have provided direct assistance to over 60 victims of trafficking.

OSCE report links human trafficking and torture

Source: OSCE

http://www.ungift.org/knowledgehub/stories/July2013/osce-report-links-human-trafficking-and-torture.html

( OSCE ) -   The OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, on 25 June 2013 launched a ground-breaking research paper that connects human trafficking and torture and other forms of ill-treatment.

   

  The OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, during a side event at the 13th Alliance against Trafficking in Persons conference, Vienna, 25 June 2013. (OSCE/Alfred Kueppers)

 

"This research shows the extent to which trafficking in human beings is associated with violence and human suffering, such that we can compare it to and even consider it to be a form of torture," Giammarinaro said during the 13th Alliance against Trafficking in Persons conference in Vienna. "It also suggests new criteria to enhance political will against both trafficking and torture, and new means to provide victims with additional protection such as reparation, which includes not only compensation but also rehabilitation."

The Special Representative partnered with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM) and the Helen Bamber Foundation to produce Trafficking in Human Beings Amounting to Torture and other Forms of Ill-treatment, the fifth in an ongoing Occasional Paper series produced by her office. 

BIM co-director, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, Manfred Nowak, said: "Depending on each individual case, trafficking and re-trafficking can amount to torture. For victims of trafficking, unconditional residence is essential for having access to reparation including compensation and rehabilitation."

"Torture consists of stripping away a person's dignity and identity, asserting total power and control over mind and body, inflicting pain, and causing despair," said Bamber, whose foundation offers specialist clinical care to survivors of human rights violations including state torture and human trafficking. "Our clinicians work to address the psychological consequences of this experience in victims of human trafficking."

The United Nations has declared 26 June as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

Click here to read the OSCE report. 

Related articles

• Scottish trafficking laws may criminalise victims

The Protection Project: 100 Best Practices in Combating Trafficking in Persons

http://www.ungift.org/knowledgehub/publications.html?vf=%2Fdoc%2Fknowledgehub%2Fresource-centre%2FCSOs%2F100-Best-Practices-in-Combating-TIP.pdf

Source: UN.GIFT

Mar 12 2013

Tags: Awareness-raising, Legal framework, Victim assistance, Sex trafficking, Labour trafficking, Organ trafficking, Trafficking and gender,Trafficking in children, Report/handbook/toolkit, NGO, Business, Civil-Society, Governments, modern-day slavery

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Over the past decade, civil society has played a pivotal role in the fight against trafficking in persons. A multifaceted and complex phenomenon, trafficking in persons must be addressed at various levels. Members of civil society have worked alone or by joining forces with law enforcement groups, legislators, national governments, and international organizations while designing strategies of prevention, protection, prosecution, advocacy, and research. The Protection Project encourages the dissemination of information about the best ways to combat trafficking in persons by recommending five main components of civil society: (a) nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), (b) corporations, (c) academia, (d) media, and (e) faith-based organizations. The Protection Project’s 100 Best Practices in Combating Trafficking in Persons: The Role of Civil Society offers examples of some successful initiatives that have been undertaken by representatives of those five main categories. This publication is intended to serve as a guide in the design and implementation of anti-trafficking practices worldwide, as well as to inform the general public about outstanding contributions to the fight against trafficking in persons.

How Many Slaves Work for You? - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/how-many-slaves-work-for-you.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y 

Source: NYTimes.com

By LOUIS P. MASUR

Published: December 31, 2012

New Brunswick, N.J

THE Emancipation Proclamation, signed 150 years ago today, was a revolutionary achievement, and widely recognized as such at the time. Abraham Lincoln himself declared, “If my name goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

On New Year’s Eve, 1862, “watch-night” services in auditoriums, churches, camps and cabins united thousands, free as well as enslaved, who sang, prayed and counted down to midnight. At a gathering of runaway slaves in Washington, a man named Thornton wept: “Tomorrow my child is to be sold never more.”

The Day of Jubilee, as Jan. 1, 1863 was called, arrived at last and celebrations of deliverance and freedom commenced. “We are all liberated by this proclamation,” Frederick Douglass observed. “The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated.” The Fourth of July “was great,” he proclaimed, “but the First of January, when we consider it in all its relations and bearings, even greater.”

Yet the day never took hold as Emancipation Day, an occasion to commemorate freedom for all Americans. Nearly three years would pass before the ratification of the 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery. All too quickly, the joy of emancipation succumbed to the reality of a circumscribed freedom in which blacks found themselves the victims of economic injustice and racial discrimination.

Settling on a single day to celebrate emancipation was further complicated by the variety of dates on which actual freedom, or word of it, came to the slaves: for example, slavery ended on April 16, 1862 in Washington, but it didn’t come to Virginia until April 3, 1865; word of the war’s end and emancipation didn’t reach Texas until June 19, 1865, a day celebrated as “Juneteenth.” Some areas marked Feb. 1, 1865, when Lincoln signed the joint resolution approving the 13th Amendment. As a result, local traditions took the place of a nationwide anniversary.

But those local traditions don’t preclude a national observation. Indeed, today’s sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation provides an opportunity to observe Jan. 1 as a day of emancipation and to rededicate ourselves to freedom. In 1963, standing before the Lincoln Memorial, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. labeled the Proclamation a “beacon light of hope” to African-Americans and used the centennial to call for a renewed commitment to civil rights in America. Fifty years later, we might consider what a new Emancipation Proclamation would look like, one written for our times.

It would, above all, focus American and international attention on the millions of people still held in servitude. In September, the Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, an organization devoted to securing personal freedom and rights for all individuals, began a project called 100 Days to Freedom. Students in schools across the country were invited to craft a New Proclamation of Freedom, which the foundation hopes will be signed by President Obama on Jan. 11, which is recognized worldwide as Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

In the United States, thousands are held against their will; minors, especially, are the victims of ruthless exploitation. While other countries are worse offenders, the United States, according to State Department reports, serves as both a source and a destination for the trafficking of children.

In a speech delivered in September at the Clinton Global Initiative, President Obama declared that the time had come to call human trafficking by its rightful name: modern slavery. “The bitter truth is that trafficking also goes on right here, in the United States,” he declared. “It’s the migrant worker unable to pay off the debt to his trafficker. The man, lured here with the promise of a job, his documents then taken, and forced to work endless hours in a kitchen. The teenage girl, beaten, forced to walk the streets. This should not be happening in the United States of America.”

That same month the president signed an executive order that stated the United States would “lead by example” and take steps to ensure that federal contracts are not awarded to companies or nations implicated in trafficking. “We’re making clear that American tax dollars must never, ever be used to support the trafficking of human beings,” he said.

Still, the invisibility of modern slavery makes it all the more pernicious and difficult to eradicate. The organization Slavery Footprint asks on its Web site, “How many slaves work for you?” A survey poses a series of seemingly innocuous questions such as what do you eat, what do you wear, what medicine do you take, and what electronics do you use? Upon completion, a number is revealed: I discovered that 60 slaves work for me — cutting the tropical wood for my furniture, harvesting the Central Asian cotton in my shirts or mining the African precious metals used in my electronics.

One way to reduce our complicity and attack human trafficking is to participate in Made in a Free World, a platform started by Slavery Footprint to show companies how to eliminate forced labor from their supply chains. A smartphone app also allows consumers to identify items made by forced labor and send letters to the manufacturers, demanding that they investigate the origins of the raw materials used in their products.

At his speech condemning human trafficking, President Obama referred to Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation as having “brought a new day — that ‘all persons held as slaves’ would thenceforth be forever free. We wrote that promise into our Constitution. We spent decades struggling to make it real.”

Today we should celebrate the extraordinary moment in the nation’s history when slavery yielded to freedom. But the work must continue. For those who insist they would have been abolitionists during the Civil War, now is the chance to become one.

Louis P. Masur is a professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University and the author of “Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union.”

Bibiana Ferraiuoli Suarez: Ricky Martin Foundation: It's Time To Finally Abolish Slavery

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bibiana-ferraiuoli-suarez/ricky-martin-foundation-i_b_1125536.html

Bibiana Ferraiuoli Suarez

Executive Director, Ricky Martin Foundation

12/12/ 2/11 10:49 AM ET 2/12/ 2/11 10:49 AM ET11 10:49 AM ET

They were going to be sold for prostitution in 2002. But it never happened. Advocates of an invisible crime, among them Ricky Martin, rescued them at the dawn of day. Almost a decade has gone by after my first encounter with human trafficking and to turn a blind eye to one of the most vicious violation of human rights is simply unbearable.

Statistics - are daunting and contested due to the nature of the crime.
But one life saved by our awareness and educational efforts, validates our mission as advocates of children's rights.

Worldwide, it is estimated that 27 million people are victims of human trafficking and modern day slavery and, year after year, UNICEF estimates that1.2 million children are sold into pornography, prostitution, and servitude, among other forms of exploitation.

Moreover, human trafficking is considered today to be one of the fastest growing illegal business in the world. The billions of dollars generated by this heinous crime is only the tip of the iceberg when you factor in pornography, prostitution and worldwide labor exploitation.

Drug trafficking only surpasses human trafficking.

This "economic crime", as it was recently dubbed in the article Stolen Souls published in Columbia Magazine, holds relatively low risk with high profit potential and criminal organizations are drawn to it, because unlike drugs or arms, human beings - can be repeatedly sold.

And to think that those three girls that were shivering in the streets were next in line to become merchandise is unacceptable. Fortunately they are safe and their hopeful ending, inspire Ricky Martin to establish 'People for Children' in 2004 as the principal project of his Foundation. This initiative serves as a global anti-child trafficking platform to raise public awareness, conduct investigations, and recommend public policy.

Today, December 2 as we commemorate the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, we must remind society that modern day slavery works against human rights.

At the Ricky Martin Foundation, we are committed to end this modern scourge. Since 2004, we have been privileged to partner with: UNICEF, Habitat for Humanity, The Protection Project at The Johns Hopkins University, The University of Puerto Rico, Save the Children, RTL Foundation, The Trafficking In Persons Office and SAP, among others.

We also launched with Microsoft navegaprotegido.org, an online bilingual safety website to prevent children from crimes in the Internet; Call and Live, the first anti-trafficking regional campaign with the InterAmerican Development Bank; and Se Trata, the first anti -trafficking community program in Puerto Rico with Doral Bank.

Most recently, we published "Human Trafficking in Puerto Rico: An Invisible Challenge", the result of an alliance with the University of Puerto Rico, and The Protection Project, which documents that minors in Puerto Rico are at risk of becoming victims of sexual and labor exploitation, prostitution, pornography, and other forms of this despicable crime.

A truth that happens in every country's own backyard, hence our next hopeful ending is the development of our first Child Development and Prevention Center in Puerto Rico to serve as a safe haven from exploitation for children and youth.

As a young public charity, we invite you, your friends, organization and corporation to support our cause. Encouraging one another to put meaning to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states 'no one shall be held in slavery or servitude' through their actions is the right and imperative thing to do.

A decade later after opening my eyes to this atrocious crime, our vision prevails, not one child should be enslaved of their most basic human rights.

Modern-day slavery: Here, there and everywhere | The Energy Collective

June 27, 2010 by MarcGunther

0

Modern-day slavery is not just about sex workers or poor people in faraway places.

Some farmworkers in the U.S., for all practical purposes, work as slaves. Laborers with few or no rights, working under inhumane conditions, typically far home, have produced such products as blueberries, organic milk, personal computers or cell phones and garments imported from India, a new report says.

Consider:

An estimated 12 to 27 million people are victims of slavery, and other forms of forced labor around the world. In the United States alone, 10,000 or more people are being forced to work at any given time.

The report, called Help Wanted: Hiring, Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery in the Global Economy (PDF for download, here), was published by Verite, a non-profit based in Amherst, Mass., that monitors and reports on labor rights abuses around the world. (It was funded by Humanity United, a nonprofit focused on peace and human rights started and chaired by Pam Omidyar.) Over the years, Verite has helped identify and clean up the supply chains of such global brands as Timberland, Gap, Levi Strauss, Apple, Disney and HP. I met with Verite’s executive director, Dan Viederman, last week in Washington to talk about the report, and what can be done to deal with slavery.

Dan Viederman

Dan, who is 46, explained to me that Verite has begun a initiative called Well Made to help companies, governments, investors and advocates deal with modern-day slavery. Companies, for examples, are given sets of questions to put to their suppliers. Shareholders are advised to bring pressure on companies they own.

Here it must be said that today’s slaves are not the equivalent of those in 19th century America; in theory, at least, they have legal rights, at least in theory. In fact, many of the stories in the report come from workers who managed to escape dire conditions, on their own or with help.

But these modern-day slaves, who can be found in such places as Taiwan, the Persian Gulf, India, Malaysia and, yes, here in the U.S. of A., do have some experiences in in common with the American slaves who picked cotton in the antebellum South: They typically work far from where they grew up, they were trafficked from their homes to their workplaces by labor brokers (slave ships in the old days), and they don’t have the freedom or organize or look for work elsewhere.

This makes it relatively easy to uncover forced labor.

“The presence of foreign migrant workers is a significant indicator of exploitative labor conditions,” Dan told me. Many employers like to bring in workers from abroad. “You get a cheaper and more compliant workforce if you bring in people who don’t understand their legal rights and can’t turn to social support systems,” he said.

Because the migrant workers frequently pay recruitment and transportation fees to get jobs in faroff places, they can find themselves in what’s called “debt bondage.” They are bound to their new employer, sometimes because they need the money to pay debt, other times because they have traveled on a work visa that ties the migrant to a single employer.

Some labor brokers endeavor to act responsibly–the global company Manpower Inc. is an industry leader–but many are unscrupulous. “It’s by an large and unregulated industry,” Dan said.

The Verite report, which is extensive, looks at four sectors and locales:

the migration of adults from India to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States of the Middle East for work in construction, infrastructure and the service sector; the migration of children and juveniles from the Indian interior to domestic apparel production hubs; the migration of adults from Guatemala, Mexico and Thailand to work in U.S. agriculture; and the migration of adults from the Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal to the Information Technology sector in Malaysia and Taiwan.

Verite’s Well Made website puts a human face on the problem. Here’s an example of a worker who was trafficked from Guatemala to Georgia to Connecticut:

Fortunately, some governments and companies are paying attention. The U.S. State Department this month published its own report finding that more than 12 million people worldwide are victims of “trafficking in persons” — trapped in forced labor, bonded labor or prostitution. If you read deep into Apple’s corporate responsibility report, you find this dense but revealing passage:

Some of our suppliers work with third-party labor agencies to source workers from other countries. These agencies, in turn, may work through multiple subagencies: in the hiring country, the workers’ home country, and, in some cases, all the way back in the worker’s home village.

By the time the worker has paid all fees across these agencies, the total cost may equal many months’ wages and exceed legal limits—and many workers need to incur significant debt to pay these fees. Apple’s Code has always strictly prohibited all forms of involuntary labor. As such, we classify recruitment fee overcharges as a core violation of voluntary labor rights, and we require each supplier to reimburse overpaid fees. As a result of our audits and corrective actions, foreign workers have been reimbursed more than $2.2 million in recruitment fee overcharges over the past two years.

To Apple’s credit, it has not only required its suppliers to reimburse workers but issued a “standard for Prevention of Involuntary Labor, which limits recruitment fees to the equivalent of one month’s net wages.”

But Dan tells me: “Only a handful of companies are now paying attention to the problems of migrant workers.”

Sad to say, modern-day slavery can be very profitable. Labor brokers make a good living. The employers get a docile workforce and essentially outsource the job of recruiting and hiring people. Workers also can benefit, to a degree. Today’s New York Times has an excellent story about the impact of global migration which says, among other things, that

Migrants sent home $317 billion last year — three times the world’s total foreign aid. In at least seven countries, remittances account for more than a quarter of the gross domestic product.

Of course, if the workers had the freedom to move from one employer to another, or to organize themselves, they could obtain or negotiate higher wages and send even more money home.

The bottom line is that lots of the things we consume and enjoy at low prices exact a high cost on others who are out of sight and out of mind.

Disclosure: My wife Karen Schneider recently joined the board of Verite, but since I’ve written about the organization’s work before (see this from 2006 and this from 2008), I see no reason to stop now.

Photo credit: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Modern-day slavery: Here, there and everywhere | The Energy Collective

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• Marc Gunther: Modern-day slavery: Alive and Well (huffingtonpost.com)
• The U.S. Checks Itself in 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report (womensrights.change.org)
• Human Trafficking Booming in Washington, D.C. (humantrafficking.change.org)
• Isn't Slavery Bad Karma or Something? (humantrafficking.change.org)

ICE gives voice to victims of human trafficking in the United States

Image via Wikipedia

WASHINGTON - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a media initiative to inform the public about the horrors and the prevalence of human trafficking, which is modern-day slavery.

(Media-Newswire.com) - WASHINGTON - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) has a media initiative to inform the public about the horrors and the prevalence of human trafficking, which is modern-day slavery.

As part of ICE's continued efforts, the agency has unveiled an outdoor public service announcement campaign, "Hidden in Plain Sight," to draw the American public's attention to the plight of human-trafficking victims in the United States. The campaign message explains that human trafficking includes those who are sexually exploited or forced to work against their will.

Posters, billboards and transit shelter signs were rolled out last month bearing the slogan "Hidden in Plan Sight." They are displayed in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Newark, New Orleans, New York, St Paul, San Antonio, San Francisco and Tampa. The campaign's goal is to raise public awareness about the existence of human trafficking in communities nationwide, and asks members of the public to take action if they encounter possible victims.

By going directly to the American public, ICE is hoping to root out the criminals associated with human trafficking. As the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security, ICE is poised to target individuals and companies suspected of using people as modern-day slaves.

"Most Americans would be shocked to learn that slavery still exists in this day and age in communities throughout the country," said John Morton, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for ICE. "Because this heinous crime is extremely well-hidden, we need to help educate members of the public about human trafficking, and encourage them to keep alert for possible human trafficking victims."

It is estimated that 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked around the world each year. These victims are trafficked into the commercial sex trade, and into forced-labor situations. Many of these victims are lured from their homes with false promises of well-paying jobs; instead, they are forced or coerced into prostitution, domestic servitude, farm or factory labor, or other types of forced labor.

The greatest challenge in combating human trafficking is victim identification. Surprisingly, many people are unaware that this form of modern-day slavery occurs every day in the United States. These victims may end up in a foreign country. They are often unable to speak the language and have no one to advocate for them. Traffickers often take away the victims' travel and identity documents. They tell their victims that if they attempt to escape, their families back home will be either physically or financially harmed.

ICE is asking for the public's help to remain alert to recognize and identify victims of modern-day slavery who are in our midst. They are domestic servants, sweat-shop employees, sex workers and fruit pickers who were lured here by the promise of prosperity. Ultimately, they are forced to work without pay and are unable to leave their situation. ICE is committed to giving them the help they need to come forward and help us end human trafficking with vigorous enforcement and tough penalties. As a primary mission area, ICE has the overall goal of preventing human trafficking in the United States by prosecuting the traffickers, and rescuing and protecting the victims.

One example that demonstrates the horrors of human trafficking is regarding a family of four in Newark, N.J. Lassissi Afolabi, Akouavi Kpade Afolabi, Derek Hounakey and Geoffrey Kouevi were all indicted in the District of New Jersey on numerous charges, including: visa fraud, forced labor, trafficking, transportation of a minor across state lines with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, smuggling and harboring aliens for commercial advantage and financial gain.

Their scheme involved smuggling young African women into the United States under assumed identities, and forcing them to work in hair-braiding salons in the Newark, N.J., area. The women worked six to seven days a week, eight to 12 hours per day. They were not allowed to keep the money they earned. Some of the victims were also subjected to physical and sexual abuse, and were held in servitude for more than five years. Ultimately, all the defendants were convicted or pleaded guilty to the charges and are awaiting sentencing.

In Atlanta, Ga., Amador Cortes-Meza, Francisco Cortes-Meza, Raul Cortes-Meza, Juan Cortes-Meza and Edison Wagner Rosa-Tort were indicted for adult and child sex trafficking. They physically abused young women and girls, some of whom were as young as 14 years of age. The victims were held against their will, and forced into prostitution. To force them to work as prostitutes in the Atlanta area, some of the victims were beaten, threatened, or their families in Mexico were threatened.

At least one of the co-defendants was always present in the home where the women lived to monitor them and direct the prostitution work. None of the victims were allowed to leave the house unaccompanied. The victims often had to service 20 to 30 men each night. Some of the $25 prostitution charge went to the drivers who transported the young women to the "johns." However, the majority of the money was kept by the traffickers. Earlier this year, four of the six defendants pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, which carries a minimum 10-year sentence; another pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. The last defendant is pending judicial action. All other defendants are pending sentencing.

Anyone who knows or suspects that someone is being forced to work against their will should contact the ICE tip line anonymously at 866-DHS-2-ICE. You can also view or download the video Public Service Announcement at www.ice.gov.

http://media-newswire.com/release_1104826.html



-- ICE --

Modern-day abolitionists battle global slave trade, human trafficking

Image via Wikipedia

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

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• 
  

Human trafficking surrounds us | The Star-Ledger Editorial Page - NJ.com

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By Star-Ledger Editorial Board/The Star-Led...

October 22, 2009, 5:41AM

When Akouavi Kpade Afolabi lured more than 20 young women from West Africa to New Jersey with promises of a better life, she lied.

Once here, the young women — who ranged in age from 10 to 19 — were made to work countless hours in her family’s two hair-braiding salons for no pay.

Her attorney argued the treatment of the girls was cultural. That’s hard to believe. But it was profitable — and criminal. She stole their meager tips, barred them from attending school and threatened them with violence and voodoo curses if they tried to leave.

Last week, she was convicted on 22 counts of human trafficking and visa fraud. She now faces her own captivity, 20 years in prison. A fitting punishment.

Sadly, such abuse is the story of tens of thousands of women from around the world who are trafficked to America in hopes of escaping the poverty of their homelands. They think they’ll be working in factories, as domestics and babysitters.

Alone in a foreign land and in deep debt for their travel and lodging, many soon realize they’re trapped in a tale of modern-day slavery.

They’re beaten, humiliated and sexually assaulted. Passports and other documents are taken away. Some are made to work long hours in factories and other businesses without food or pay. Others are forced to work as prostitutes. Several of the girls, who were smuggled from Togo and Ghana, were also used for sex by Afolabi’s son and her ex-husband. At least one was a minor.

The State Department estimates about 17,500 people — men, women and children — are brought here every year as forced laborers. Some 4,00 are believed to end up in New Jersey. Many are used for sex work.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-5th Dist.), chairman of the Human Trafficking Caucus, pushed for and succeeded in getting legislation enacted to help victims. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 set aside $95 million for enforcement and anti-trafficking provisions and called for life imprisonment for anyone convicted of human trafficking. Under the law, the young women and girls victimized by Afolabi may be eligible for the same benefits granted to political refugees.

In this case, Immigration and Custom Enforcement has already granted the minor girls special nonimmigrant status, which will allow them to remain in the United States for three years while they apply for legal residency. ICE officials could not readily provide information on the adult victims.

Most people would like to think such things don’t happen in their communities, that forced servitude is a brutality of the past. But modern-day slavery is alive and well, even here in New Jersey. We would all do well to educate ourselves about how human trafficking works, and what it looks like.


http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2009/10/human_trafficking_surrounds_us.html

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Human trafficking called a ‘war crime’

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Congresswoman, Obama administration appointee shine a sobering light on illegal practice they stress must be combated more efficiently worldwide and locally.

By Candice Baker

When many people think of human trafficking, they picture anonymous faces in far-off countries, Rep. Loretta Sanchez said Friday.

“When you think it’s not here, it can be in the house next door to you, and you don’t even know it’s going on. But we’re going to work to eradicate it,” said Sanchez (D-Garden Grove).

She spoke at a town hall meeting on the issue at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa to a crowd of stakeholders, clergy, students and interested community members. About 40 cases related to human trafficking have been uncovered within Orange County to date, with many more perpetrators believed to be hiding in the shadows.

Held by the university’s Center for Women’s Studies, the meeting gave locals a chance to hear from and speak with Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, an Obama administration appointee who heads up the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

“Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It is the fastest growing illegal commerce in the world, overtaking weapons trafficking and only exceeded by drug trafficking,” said Sandie Morgan, the director of the university’s Center for Women’s Studies and the administrator for the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force.

Currently, among others, the task force is investigating a tip in Costa Mesa that people may be held against their will as servants, and a Huntington Beach tip about human smugglers, Westminster Police Lt. Derek Marsh said.

“It’s real, it’s evil and it’s hurtful,” Westminster Police Chief Andrew Hall said. “It’s as serious a crime as child abuse, elder abuse, rape or domestic violence.”

But cases usually remain unreported, so authorities are unsure how pervasive the issue is in Orange County.

“We’re only now beginning to scratch the surface,” Hall said.

Rather than focusing solely on prosecuting, authorities said the Orange County Task Force also included victim advocacy and service agencies to create a victim-centered restorative process.

“In our world, saving a victim is better than winning a case,” Marsh said.

Sanchez also spoke at the town hall about her efforts to bring awareness to the issue of human trafficking, along with members of the Westminster Police Department, which has been a critical part of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force to deal with the problem locally.

“We all know that this is a profound personal, local, national, international, global concern — and it’s a crime,” Sanchez said.

Modern-day slaves typically are held in domestic servitude as maids, in labor camps or in sweatshops, or as prostitutes, Sanchez said.

Eighty percent of people trafficked are women and girls; half are children.

“These women and children are used and sold like pieces of furniture, and once they use them for a couple years, they’re sold to the next person,” Sanchez said. “They’re used over and over, and year after year, until — if they’re lucky — they just drop them.”

Usually the slave is left in a homeless camp or somewhere in town, but sometimes their dead body is left by the side of the road, she said.

“It’s outrageous, and we need to change it,” she said.

Her work in Congress has helped ensure that every country that houses a U.S. embassy has to complete an annual report on the trafficking of people there.

A recent reauthorization of that law has put “more teeth” on it, she said.

The underground business yields $18 billion in profit a year, Sanchez said.

“That’s why they do it: They’re trading people for money,” she said.

CdeBaca spoke of the need to make discussing human trafficking “acceptable” in polite society, and for euphemisms to be removed.

“I think we have to realize how damaging it can be when we want to look at euphemisms,” he said, throwing out words like “servant,” “prostitute” or “illegal.”

What if those servants, prostitutes or illegal immigrants were enslaved or abused, he asked.

“It’s been said that when there are problems in the world that affect men, that’s politics or national security — and we will act,” CdeBaca said.

CdeBaca is one of the country’s best-known slavery and alien smuggling prosecutors. He received an award from the U.S. attorney general for his work in saving more than 300 Vietnamese and Chinese enslaved workers from a garment factory in American Samoa.

“The chains may be long, but the chains are there,” CdeBaca said. “The voice of the victim is too often unheard.”

But human trafficking has traditionally been euphemized as a “cultural practice” or a “woman’s issue.”

CdeBaca said one of the biggest advances in his cause has occurred in recent years, when leaders in law enforcement stopped seeing human trafficking as such and instead began to treat it as a crime.

“This morning, I had a coffee. I put on a cotton shirt,” he said. The ambassador was frustrated that he didn’t know whether the coffee came from a plantation in South America that keeps slaves, or whether the cotton was picked by children in Central Asia.

“I don’t think any of us knows what we have done in the last four hours that impacts the slavery world,” he said.

The most damning example can be found in most people’s pockets or purses, he said.

“Women are being stolen from villages; they are being raped en masse; and then they are being put to work in what we euphemistically call ‘artisanal mining,’” he said.

These women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are enslaved and handed shovels or tin cans in order to harvest tantalum, a rare element that is used in mobile phones, he said.

“It is a war crime, and we need to think of it as a war crime,” he said.

He also hopes that the current “sexy” portrayals of prostitution in television and on film will go the way of depicting smoking on screen, making perpetrators into pariahs instead of studs.

Getting Involved

If you suspect someone may be a victim of human trafficking, call (888) 3737-888 or visit www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking.

http://www.dailypilot.com/articles/2009/10/09/publicsafety/dpt-humantrafficking101009.txt

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