Syria: Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade

Ben Stechshulte for The New York Times

At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, customers can drink imported Scotch, smoke water pipes and watch a show featuring young Iraqi woman gyrating to a 10-piece band on a garishly lighted stage.

MARABA, SYRIA— Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT NYTimes.com

Special: Janice Raymond, Risking Her Life to Fight Sex Trafficking

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND -- Janice Raymond is about to receive a major award for her outstanding contribution to the war against people trafficking - but she is not a popular woman. Hate mail and death threats are part of her everyday life, and such is the uprising of sheer malevolence towards her from all parts of the world that she cannot give out her address or telephone number for fear it will appear on the internet. Even having her photograph taken is a risk.

Nevertheless, this extraordinary woman is a shining light and an outstanding inspiration to thousands. Fighting to protect women and children from sexual exploitation is her life's work, and she is not about to stop now. Dr Raymond is co-executive director of the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women (CATW) and professor emeritus of Women's Studies and Medical Ethics at the University of Massachusetts, and she is in Glasgow for the first time to receive, at Glasgow City Chambers tomorrow evening, the Zero Tolerance International Woman Award, one of a series of awards launched last year by the Scottish charity to recognise those women working to prevent violence against women.

Raymond, who is half Irish, was pivotal in bringing about a new UN definition of trafficking that embraces the often ambiguous concept of consent in order to protect all victims of trafficking - including children, who are, she says, "becoming much more of a market"...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT TheHerald.co.uk

Scotland: Educating Boys on Prostitution

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND -- Young men in Scotland must be targeted in the fight against prostitution, according to a leading American feminist.

Janice Raymond (left), an executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, wants schoolboys to be educated about prostitution in an attempt to shape male attitudes towards pornography and sexual exploitation from an early age.

She said: "Young men are more aware of the issues, including prostitution and exploitation, and we need them to engage with our work.

"Men are part of the problem, not prostitution on its own."

Ms Raymond was speaking in Glasgow on Saturday night at the awards ceremony for Zero Tolerance, the anti-domestic violence charity, where she collected the International Woman Award...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT TheHerald.co.uk

US Gov: Trafficking + Int'l Military Organizations

Fact Sheet
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington, DC
February 22, 2007

Trafficking in Persons (TIP) is modern-day slavery, a crime that is brutal, dehumanizing and a multi-dimensional threat to international security. Human trafficking is linked to organized crime, undermines peacekeeping efforts, and is incompatible with military core values. Any nation serious about ending human trafficking must begin by ensuring that its own uniformed employees lead by example by helping combat modern-day slavery at home and abroad.

Historically, profiteers of both labor and sex trafficking have targeted international military organizations. Labor traffickers sometimes try to exploit military contract opportunities. Sex traffickers often prey on individual peacekeepers and servicemen with solicitations of commercial sex. While the vast majority of military personnel conduct themselves honorably, a number of recent trafficking in persons cases have occurred in connection with international military organizations.

Typically, commercial sex sellers conduct activities, such as pimping or maintaining brothels, in districts frequented by service members. These activities also provide cover for sex trafficking - the recruitment or use of, especially women and girls, for commercial sexual exploitation.

Where prostitution is legal or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and, typically, an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery. Of the estimated 800,000 people trafficked across international borders annually, 80 percent of victims are female, and up to 50 percent are minors. Hundreds of thousands of these women and children are abused in prostitution each year, including many who are used in prostitution near military bases.

Peacekeepers and service members who engage in commercial sexual exploitation put themselves at risk of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, which jeopardizes the readiness of their unit.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL FACT SHEET AS A PDF HERE

India: Tackling Sex Trafficking Through "Maid Ban"

NEW DELHI, INDIA -- India will ban women under 30 from emigrating to work as domestic help in the Gulf and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia in a bid to curb sex trafficking, a report said Tuesday.

The move came after Renuka Chowdhury, the minister for women and children, said that overseas domestic workers had complained of being pushed into prostitution after their employers had seized their passports.

A ban will be "imposed on granting emigration clearance to women below 30 if they are seeking employment as housemaids," Chowdhury, who recently returned from Kuwait, was quoted by the Times of India as telling parliament.

An exception will be made for women who return to India on leave from their jobs and who wish to return to their employers, the ministry for Indians working abroad said.

Some 17 countries will be covered by the ban, which was aimed at halting the trafficking of women for prostitution, the newspaper reported...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT The Middle East Times

India: 35% of Prostitutes Enter Trade Before Age 18

NEW DEHLI, INDIA -- Of 2.8 million prostitutes in the country, 35.47% entered the trade before the age of 18 years, Minister of state for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury informed the Rajya Sabha today.

“The study on girls/women in prostitution in India, conducted between 2002-04, reports that there is a growing trend in the number of prostitution in the country. The study estimates that there are 2.8 million prostitutes in the country of which 35.47% entered the trade before the age of 18 years”, she said in a written reply.

The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956 (ITPA) supplemented by the Indian Penal Code prohibits trafficking in human beings including children for purpose of prostitution and lays down severe penalties for traffickers, she said.

The ITPA is being further amended providing for more stringent punishment for trafficking in persons including children, Chowdhury said adding her ministry conducts advocacy, awareness generation, sensitization programme for prevention of child trafficking...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT LiveMint.com (A Wall Street Journal Publication)

Special: Should Prostitution be Legal? New Website Explores Pro's + Con's

USA -- Should Prostitution Be Legal? ProCon.org Investigates the Selling of Sex With New Website

The D.C. Madam, 5 murdered women in Ipswich, and Hawaii House Bill 982 have aroused interest in the question of whether prostitution should be legalized.

ProCon.org launched its 10th website today, Prostitution ProCon.org, to bring much-needed clarity and balance to the debate over prostitution.

The world's oldest profession is treated as just another job in countries like New Zealand, where it is legal. Other countries, such as Iran, consider it a crime punishable by death. Prostitution is illegal in the United States, except in one state, Nevada, which permits individual counties to decide for themselves whether to legalize prostitution. So far, 11 counties have opted for legalization.

To help unravel the pros and cons of legalizing prostitution, ProCon.org examines all the surrounding issues, including: human trafficking, AIDS, brothels, red light districts, rape, violence, slavery, economics, religion, morality, and more.

Prostitution ProCon.org features over 200 expert sources from Presidential hopefuls Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton to Ann Landers, Heidi Fleiss, Susan B. Anthony, and the ACLU.

The Managing Editor, Kamy Akhavan, remarked on the project:

"The issue of legalizing prostitution comes up in debates year after year. When we tried to learn more about the issue, we found inaccurate data, biased presentations, hard-to-follow academic reports, and a general lack of reliable information on which to base an informed opinion. We were frustrated by the lack of info, and we thought that most people probably felt the same way. After 6 months of full-time research, we completed our Prostitution ProCon.org website. It is free, fair, and easy to use. Finally."

Some featured content areas include: -- Top 10 Pros and Cons on Prostitution -- Federal, State, and Nevada County Laws on Prostitution -- Comparison of Prostitution Laws in 26 Countries Strange but true facts that appear on our website include: -- In Japan, prostitution is illegal, but selling oral sex is legal. -- In Sweden, selling sex is legal, but paying for sex is illegal. -- Medieval lawyer Johannes Teutonicus defined a prostitute as a woman who has had sex with more than 23,000 men...

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT Sys-Con.com

India: Nearly 3 Million Prostitutes

NEW DELHI, INDIA -- India's minister for women and child development said Tuesday the country has an estimated 2.8 million prostitutes and the number is rising.

Renuka Chowdhury presented a study on "Girls-Women in prostitution in India" to the lower house of Parliament. She said more than one-third of Indian prostitutes entered the profession before age 18, the Press Trust of India reported.

She told lawmakers her ministry runs homes to provide shelter, food, clothing, counseling, rehabilitation and other facilities to victims of commercial sexual exploitation. She said another project is being implemented to combat trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT United Press International

The IOM Handbook on Direct Assistance for Victims of Trafficking

The IOM Handbook on Direct Assistance for Victims of Trafficking

DOWNLOAD HANDBOOK HERE IN PDF FORMAT (Adobe Reader Req.)

Description: International Organization for Migration (IOM) has had some 13 years of experience in implementing counter-trafficking activities and has provided assistance to over 14,000 victims of trafficking in all regions of the world. With a growing number of organizations, especially local NGOs, now providing or intending to provide assistance to victims of trafficking, IOM would like to share its experience and lessons learned. This Handbook summarizes and systematizes this experience. IOM recognizes that each victim is unique and requires and desires different assistance. As well, the nature of trafficking is different around the world and is ever evolving, requiring changing responses. Therefore this Handbook is not meant to provide a single methodology for the provision of assistance to victims of trafficking, but to offer suggestions and guidance, based on IOM’s many years of experience. IOM hopes that it will be helpful to all organizations providing such assistance to victims, but especially for organizations who are just beginning to develop victim assistance programmes and can benefit from IOM’s experiences. This Handbook provides guidance and advice necessary to effectively deliver a full range of assistance to victims of trafficking from the point of initial contact and screening up to the effective social reintegration of the individuals concerned.

Table of Contents : Preface* Security and Personal Safety* Screening of Victims of Trafficking* Referral and Reintegration Assistance* Shelter Guidelines* Health and Trafficking* Cooperation with Law Enforcement Agencies* Appendices

Number of Pages : 356
Language : English
Format : Softcover
Year : 2007
ISBN / ISSN: 978 92 9068 371 1

DOWNLOAD HANDBOOK HERE IN PDF FORMAT (Adobe Reader Req.)

Ecuador: Two Men Prosecuted for Trafficking

Ecuador - Two young Ecuadorian men have received stiff jail sentences for human trafficking in the capital, Quito, with the case representing only the second successful prosecution of traffickers in the country.

The judge handed down a 12-year sentence to a 19 year-old male and a six-year term for his 18-year-old accomplice.

The judicial authorities have confirmed that they are currently trying to get convictions on 160 cases of human trafficking.

Working with the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Child Welfare Police and the International Labour Organization (ILO), IOM provided protection and assistance to the victims and their families through its Global Emergency Fund. The assistance included transportation, lodging, medical, legal and psychological support for the victims and their relatives during the trial in Quito.

The victims, both girls, were 13 and 15 years old when they left their homes in a small town in Pichincha Province with their boyfriends who put them to work in the sex industry.

They said they were in love and left home hoping to marry and have children. During their ordeal, the girls were sexually, physically and verbally abused. They were given food and shelter, but this was deducted from their earnings.

The victims testified against the accused but are still struggling to accept that they were abused and exploited by the men they loved and trusted...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT International Organization for Migration

Legalizing Prostitution: A Solution? N. Kristof Opines

NICHOLAS KRISTOF for The New York Times - A number of you have commented on my blog that the way to address prostitution is to legalize it and encourage unions of sex workers, thus empowering prostitutes and enabling sensible regulation and health outreach programs.

In the context of countries like India and Cambodia where I've written about sex trafficking, that would be a bad mistake. Let me explain why.

There may be a sound argument for legalization and sex worker unions in Brazil and South Africa, perhaps even China. My sense is that in those countries many women genuinely choose to be prostitutes because of economic pressures or opportunities. But in India, I have yet to find a single woman who made that choice - every single one of them first entered after being forced by a trafficker, her parents, or her husband. Later, after they had been prostituted, some continued to sell their bodies voluntarily. But the initial entry into prostitution was invariably coercive.

That means that if you validate the red light districts, then the new entrants will continue to be trafficked into it. And in India we have had something of an experiment, in which the legalization model has failed.

In the effort to combat AIDS, a union was established of prostitutes in Shonagachi, a red light district in Calcutta (one of the places in my video reporting of a year ago). The union, DMSC, purports to represent prostitutes and to dignify sex work, and it argues that it's important to empower the women by offering them respect and acknowledging their choice of occupations.

A DMSC brochure, for example, states: "Like other entertainment workers of the world we use our brain, ideas, emotion and sex organs, in short, our entire body and our mind to make people happy. As entertainment workers, we seek governmental recognition and fulfillment of our just professional demands."

Among liberals in the U.S. and India alike, that model has been treated respectfully. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and CARE have both shown support for that approach as a way to fight AIDS. I have lots of respect for both the Gates Foundation and for Care, and they do fantastic work around the globe--but in this case I think they've made a mistake.

The argument in favor is "harm reduction" - a sex worker union makes it easier to hand out condoms and educate women about AIDS. That's true to some extent, but the latest data we have actually show a rising degree of HIV among young prostitutes in Shonagachi. The data aren't good, but they don't demonstrate to me that the model works. In contrast, there is a health outreach model in Cambodia that really does reduce HIV and STD, through regular check-ups, without legitimizing the brothels and protecting them from raids. That's the direction to go in.

More broadly, many of the prostitutes from Shonagachi have told me that DMSC is just a front for the brothel-owners, a way of protecting them from raids and harassment. Likewise, the trafficking of young girls and forced prostitution seems as flagrant as ever in Shonagachi. That's also the judgment of two people whose anti-traffickng work I admire: Ruchira Gupta and Urmi Basu. Both live in Calcutta and see Shonagachi up close, and both oppose the legalization model. So even if DMSC achieved a mild reduction in HIV infection levels -
which it apparently hasn't - it comes at the expense of legitimating trafficking and modern slavery.

I'm particularly swayed by an argument of Ruchira's, based on the contrast with Bombay. Traditionally, the red light districts of Bombay and Calcutta have both been enormous, and Calcutta has DMSC while Bombay has in recent years seen more raids and harassment of brothels. The upshot is that Shonagachi is as big as ever and seems to have as much trafficking and more HIV than ever, while Bombay's red light district has shrunk dramatically. There still are some brothels in Bombay's red light district, but only a fraction of the number
there used to be.

Some skeptics say that the raids have only pushed prostitution out of Bombay's red light district and hidden it among neighborhoods throughout the city, making it more difficult to control trafficking and AIDS. There may be some of that. But if NGO's have trouble finding the brothels than customers do as well. And most estimates are that total prostitution in Bombay has come down a great deal because of the harassment.

In contrast, DMSC seems to legitimate a red-light district that is completely enmeshed with criminal gangs, trafficking and forced prostitution. The validation from DMSC probably makes it easier for police to take bribes from brothels to look the other way, and harder to order up raids and aggressive police coverage. So, quite apart from morality, it seems to me that Bombay's record comes out better than Calcutta's. Maybe legalization and sex worker unions can reduce HIV in Africa and Brazil where forced prostitution is less of a problem, but it doesn't work in India.

The model in the West that seems to have worked best is Sweden's, which involves decriminalization for prostitutes themselves, but seeks to crack down on pimping and on the demand side. By arresting customers, the Swedish model undermines the economics of prostitution, and it seems to have reduced the trafficking that one sees in the Netherlands and Germany.

Fundamentally, I think these kinds of disputes about legalization are a distraction in countries like India. Both left and right in the States do good work on trafficking, but the two sides can't even agree on what to call the issue. The left tends to refer to sex work and sex workers, to avoid stigmatizing people they want to work with. The right tends to use terms like
prostitution and prostitutes, to avoid euphemisms that validate such work.

One reason more hasn't been accomplished in the campaign against human trafficking is that the issue has become so polarized in the U.S. There's immense distrust and much less cooperation than one might expect. But the one thing everybody should be able to agree on is that whether or not prostitution should be legal for 18-year-olds who are on their own, it is appalling for 13-year-olds to be imprisoned in brothels and forced to sleep with customers.
And that is what is going on in countries like India.

SEE THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT NY Times Select

UN: Resolution Approved To Criminalize Child Exploitation

UNITED NATIONS, WASHINGTON - Resolution recognizes international response needed to a global problem.

A resolution introduced by the United States and Ecuador that urges U.N. member states criminalize all aspects of child sexual exploitation was approved at the 2007 meeting of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

The resolution was approved at the conclusion of the 16th session of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, which met in Vienna, Austria, April 23-27.

The Resolution on Effective Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Combat Sexual Exploitation of Children recognizes that child sexual exploitation is a growing international problem demanding an international response.

The resolution defines child exploitation to include sexually explicit images of children (child pornography), the victimization of children through prostitution and child-sex tourism. The resolution maintains that sexually explicit images of children severely harm children and are linked to other sexual exploitation offenses against children.

International cooperation is absolutely essential to combat these crimes, say U.S. authorities. Sexually explicit images of children are easily distributed across international boundaries through the Internet. Similarly, child-sex trafficking -- including the victimization of children through prostitution and sex tourism -- often involves international travel, with offenders having different nationalities from those of the victims, so international teamwork is considered crucial.

According to a 2006 study by the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, 95 countries have no legislation specifically addressing child pornography.

The U.S. government hopes the resolution will encourage countries lacking such legislation to consider it....

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT USinfo.state.gov

UN: Anti-Trafficking Drive Hits Culture Barriers

Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

VIENNA -- Global efforts to crack down on human trafficking are handicapped by lack of information from countries whose cultures have not deemed some forms of slavery to be a crime, U.N. officials said on Monday.

The United Nations is trying to raise awareness that two centuries after the transatlantic slave trade was abolished, millions of adults and children are sold into prostitution or made to work in degrading conditions for little or no pay.

"We operate in an information fog. We don't know the scope of threats we face and can't gauge global trends. We just see the tips of icebergs," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

"It's time to move from statements of intent and legislative mandates into realisation of goals and delivery of results," he told a meeting of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Vienna.

Costa told a news briefing during a break in the meeting: "When families (in Asian villages) sell their daughter, it's not out of poverty necessarily, it may be cultural."

He said only a fifth of member states had so far responded to a UNODC questionnaire asking them to identify and measure their organised crime problems. "Many do not know (what to say), and ask for our technical assistance."

A diplomat close to the UNODC said its campaign was running up against cultural traditions in some significant developing nations that tolerated human trafficking and related slave labour outlawed by U.N. conventions.

"In case of human trafficking, until now it often hasn't been tracked. It's only now that police in some countries are coming to realise that it's a crime," said the diplomat, asking not to be named.

"Normally, they would arrest a load of women and treat them like prostitutes and completely miss the point that they are actually victims of horrendous (trafficking to clients abroad)."

More than 110 countries have signed and ratified a U.N. protocol against human trafficking since December 2003 but many criminal justice systems have not curbed the practice.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT UK.News.Yahoo.com

Myanmar: Poverty Drives Hidden Sex Industry

A street vendor in Myanmar sells condoms. An estimated 20-30% of
prostitutes here have HIV. (AFP/File/Khin Maung Win)

YANGON, MYANMAR -- Sandar was 13 years old when her mother talked her into selling her virginity to help pull the family out of poverty.

Two decades later and still far away from that goal, Sandar has been arrested for prostitution more times then she can recall, jailed twice, and forced to pay bribes or have sex with policemen in exchange for her freedom.

Her friend Sei Sar Nyo, who sits beside Sandar grasping her hand, has been beaten for asking clients to use a condom. Sei Sar Nyo's family no longer talk to her, and she faces regular abuse in socially conservative Myanmar.

Despite the hardships, Sandar, who gave one name only and is now 33, and Sei Sar Nyo, 25, laugh when asked what other job they would do.

Nothing else would pay so well, they say.

"I'm not interested in any other business," says Sei Sar Nyo. "If I worked in a company I would earn 30,000 kyat (about 24 US dollars) in a month -- in this job I earn that in a night."

These two women come from very different social backgrounds, but ended up in Yangon's underground sex industry for the same reason -- to support their families in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Both are now working during the day for international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), but their nights are spent selling sex in the city's brothels, restaurants and karaoke bars...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT News.Yahoo.com

India/Nepal Border: 21st Century Slave Trade

Meena Khatum, right, had to fight against brothel owners to be reunited with her son, Vivek.

INDIA/NEPAL BORDER (Nicholas Kristof for the NYT)- Anyone who thinks that the word “slavery” is hyperbole when used to describe human trafficking today should meet Meena Khatun. She not only endured the unbearable, but has also shown that a slave trader’s greed sometimes is no match for a mother’s love.

Human trafficking is the big emerging human rights issue for the 21st century, but it’s an awful term, a convoluted euphemism. As Meena’s story underscores, the real issue is slavery.

Meena was kidnapped from her village in north India by a trafficker and eventually locked up in a 13-girl brothel in the town of Katihar. When she was perhaps 11 or 12 — she remembers only that it was well before she had begun to menstruate — the slaver locked her in a room with a white-haired customer who had bought her virginity. She cried and fought, so the mother and two sons who owned the brothel taught Meena a lesson.

“They beat me mercilessly, with a belt, sticks and iron rods,” Meena recalled. Still, Meena resisted customers, despite fresh beatings and threats to cut her in pieces.

Finally, the brothel owners forced her to drink alcohol until she was drunk. When she passed out, they gave her to a customer.

When she woke up, Meena finally accepted her fate as a prostitute. “I thought, ‘Now I am ruined,’ ” she remembered, “so I gave in.”

Meena thus joined the ranks of some 10 million children prostituted around the world — more are in India than in any other country. The brothels of India are the slave plantations of the 21st century.

Every night, Meena was forced to have sex with 10 to 25 customers. Meena’s owners also wanted to breed her, as is common in Indian brothels. One purpose is to have boys to be laborers and girls to be prostitutes, and a second is to have hostages to force the mother to cooperate.

So Meena soon became pregnant. The resulting baby girl, Naina, was taken from Meena after birth, as was a son, Vivek, who was born a year later.

The two children were raised mostly apart from Meena. Meena alerted the police to her children’s captivity (the police were uninterested), so her owners decided to kill her...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT NYTimes.com

UNODC: To Launch Global Intitiative to Fight Human Trafficking

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is launching a Global Initiative to fight human trafficking.

A series of regional events will be organised throughout the world designed to strengthen anti-trafficking networks and generate coordinated initiatives in preparation of a

Global Conference against Human Trafficking
Vienna, 27-29 November 2007

The Vienna Conference, involving government ministers, international organizations, NGOs and the private sector, will focus on three themes:

· Vulnerability: why does this tragedy still occur?

· Impact: the human faces of victims and the humanitarian costs.

· Action: to end trafficking in persons.

The aim is to generate the political will, a plan of action and the financial resources needed to have a significant world-wide impact on ending human trafficking.

Details of the proposed events will be announced in the coming weeks.

READ THE ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE AT UNODC.org

Moldova: Helping the Deserted Children

When Anna was nine her mother left to look for work abroad

MOLDOVA - In Moldova, one in six adults has left to work abroad and the children they abandon become rich pickings for human traffickers.

Anna is 16. She lives alone in a ramshackle cottage with a cock and a hen called Romeo and Juliet.

She has a small scrap of land where she grows vegetables to feed herself.

"What I missed most in my childhood was toys and the warmth of my mother. I never felt I was loved," she says.

Anna's father has disappeared. Her mother went to work abroad when she was nine, leaving Anna and her 11-year-old brother under the eye of a neighbour.

But when her mother failed to send money home, the neighbour abandoned the children.

Their mother was away for two years.

"We didn't even know if my mother was alive," says Anna. "There were times when we didn't even have bread in the house."

Anna received fire wood and food from her school and the local mayor's office.

Each day a child under the age of seven is abandoned in Moldova.

Youngsters left alone because their parents work abroad have swelled the ranks of orphanages by 10% in recent years.

One in nine children is living with just one parent, relatives or a distant neighbour.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT News.BBC.co.uk

UN: Fund to Combat Human Trafficking

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations proposed a new global fund Monday to fight international human trafficking and forced labor, a problem that it said had grown to epidemic proportions and was rarely effectively prosecuted by governments.

"Slavery is a booming international trade that involves several million people a year being trafficked in bondage," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office of Drug and Crime, who announced the new initiative on trafficking in London.

"There is finally a growing awareness of a huge problem in terms of size, money and the human costs in terms of suffering," Costa added.

The UN estimates that 2.5 million people are trafficked and enslaved, although the crime is frequently unreported and many estimates are far higher. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 12.3 million people across the globe in forced work. The U.S. government say that up to 800,000 people are shipped like commodities across international borders to serve as cheap labor.

About 50 percent of people smuggled and sold into forced work are minors and 80 percent are women and girls, according to a 2006 State Department study. Most end up working in the sex trade...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT IHT.com

India: Assam's missing women and the sex trade

Many of the missing women end up like these alleged arrested call girls

ASSAM, INDIA - The biggest problem in India's north-eastern state of Assam is separatist militancy. But it faces another, less well known issue. Thousands of its women, old and young, have gone missing over the past 10 years.

A recent police report says 3,184 women and 3,840 female children have gone missing in the state since 1996.

That's around two females a day on average.

The report was compiled by Assam police and their research branch, the Bureau of Police Research and Development.

The local police are far too busy, according to Assam police intelligence chief Khagen Sarmah, fighting insurgents.

"Our counter-insurgency commitments affects our normal policing duties like checking trafficking."

"Too many policemen are involved fighting the insurgents rather than following up on other crimes," Mr Sarmah said...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT News.BBC.co.uk

Israel: National service volunteer fights trafficking in women

ISRAEL - "Women trafficking and prostitution are one and the same, and the women who are exposed to both phenomena display similar symptoms," 21-year-old Naama Yehezkel says. As an activist for Isha L'Isha - the Haifa Feminist Center, which aids local and foreign women working in the sex industry, she should know.

"Women who engage in prostitution usually suffered sexual abuse or neglect at an early age. They're usually looking for a way to survive, and prostitution is just that - a means to survive, but not to live. Not in the full sense of the word, because the pimps know how to prey on them," she says.

Several weeks ago, Yehezkel toured the Tiberias hotel strip with volunteers from the Hotline for Migrant Workers. There, they handed out flyers and booklets listing emergency numbers for women who have fallen victim to human trafficking. They talked to hotel workers, kiosk employees and taxi drivers to find out where women were being exploited in the local sex industry...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT Haaretz.com

Moldova & Pridnestrovie: NGO's Urge Countries to Unity Against Sex Slavery

Pridnestrovie (green) is a de facto independent republic
within the borders of Modolva (dark gray)

CHISINAU, MOLDOVA - NGOs are working in both Chisinau and Tiraspol, respectively the capitals of Moldova and Pridnestrovie, to cut down on human trafficking and the sale of underage girls as sex slaves.

They receive limited help from the two governments, and since Tiraspol and Chisinau don't see eye to eye due to their long-running territorial dispute, there is a near-total lack of cooperation and partnerships at the official level.

Despite a lack of help from Moldova, in Pridnestrovie, or Transdniestria as it is also known, there are separate hotline and prevention activities as part of a program of collaboration with the United Nations, Danida, EU and NGOs to stop human trafficking. The new initiative involves a forum, educational activities and a hotline designed to prevent human trafficking.

The work is sponsored by the European Union (EU), the Italian anti-immigration exploitation program, IOM (International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency) and Danida, of the Danish foreign ministry.

The group also collaborates with a YMCA-led anti trafficking group originally from Belarus, La Strada. They have set up a hotline which victims and everyone else can call from both within Transdniestria and from without. The number is 0800 88888 and is a free call, locally. If calling from abroad, it is + 373 533 8 60 30.

A spokesperson consulted by Tiraspol Times says that the problem exists, but it is nowhere near the levels of neighboring Ukraine or Moldova, the #1 trafficking hub in Europe. Even so, the group wants to alert locals in Tiraspol and other parts of Pridnestrovie to the risks, and prevent traffickers - some of whom come from Chisinau - from recruiting new sex slave victims locally...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT TiraspolTimes.com

US/Taiwan: Human Trafficking Likely to Worsen

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Once billed as merely a challenge to the government, human trafficking has snowballed to the point of "threatening national security" amid a surge in the number of foreigners who go missing after arriving in Taiwan, immigration experts said yesterday, adding that the crisis will likely worsen as the government fumbles in its efforts to fight it.

Speaking to immigration officials and experts at the International Conference on Human Trafficking in Taipei yesterday, US Deputy Assistant Attorney General Grace Becker called such trafficking the "largest human rights violation in today's world."

The problem is set to further intensify, she added, as the number of people traversing international borders to find work doubles annually, as it has for the past seven years.

Local charity workers said such trends mean the country must heed Becker's advice to foster a progressive attitude in handling trafficked foreigners, many of whom drop off the government's radar and become sex slaves known only to the underworld.

Traveling with US Department of Justice officials yesterday, Becker said the key to fighting human trafficking is to "empower" trafficked people and overlook the crimes -- especially prostitution -- that they were forced or swindled into committing by traffickers.

Earning the victims' trust, Becker added, typically leads to their divulging information that allows authorities to root out the "big fish," the traffickers.

"We believe in the US, like I'm sure you do in Taiwan, that treating victims with care exemplifies our highest values," she said.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT TaipeiTimes.com

US: Trafficking Victim Set to be Deported

The Africans in America group has helped about 25 victims
of trafficking from Nigeria in the US since 2001.

WASHINGTON, DC - Celestina Ifeacho Joseph was trafficked to the United States from Nigeria in 1984, at the age of 10. She was then forced to work for a wealthy Nigerian couple in Houston for 15 years without pay, and sexually abused. Today she awaits deportation in a US government detention center.

On March 25, Ms. Joseph was interviewed from jail by a local Houston radio station. Clearly distraught, Ms. Joseph said that she has been visited by associates of her traffickers in jail and that her parents and sister in Nigeria are in hiding. "They are threatening my life," she said. "Please - I just need help. I'm helpless here."

Ms. Joseph's case is being publicized by Africans in America (AIA), an advocacy organization in New York that seeks to educate the Nigerian diaspora in the US about trafficking. AIA has appealed for a lawyer to assist Ms. Joseph and is asking the US immigration service to reconsider the deportation order.

At first sight, Ms. Joseph would seem a logical candidate for protection under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which seeks to protect, rather than punish, victims of trafficking and offers them special permission ("T" visa) to stay in the US if they denounce their traffickers. The TVPA is considered one of the main human rights success stories of the current Bush administration. Each June the US issues a report that grades all countries except the US for their efforts to stop trafficking.

At the same time, the TVPA runs up against the need to control illegal immigration. Most trafficking victims enter the US illegally because they are brought in by their traffickers on forged documents.

Ms. Joseph managed to escape from her traffickers in 1999 - a year before the TVPA was enacted - and missed the 2002 deadline for applying for a T visa. But AIA says that after missing the deadline, she was too intimidated to approach the authorities.

Ms. Joseph told the radio station that she was brought to the US on a promise of being put through school. She was delivered to the home of Mrs. Beatrice Ikeakor, a wealthy Houston-based Nigerian businesswoman, where she looked after the children before being put to work in a restaurant owned by Mrs. Ikeakor and her husband, Ms. Joseph said. Ms. Joseph was then sent to work in an old people's home owned by the couple. According to AIA, Ms. Joseph was recruited in Nigeria by Mrs. Ikeakor's sister.

Ms. Joseph claims that she was sexually abused during her enslavement. In 1997 she was forced to marry a man. After escaping in 1999, she started to rebuild her life and entered a community college where she was studying to be a nurse when she was arrested.

The case has been complicated by the fact that Ms. Joseph's lawyer appears to have been close to the traffickers, and consistently misrepresented her case. She asked him to withdraw and hand over the files, which he has yet to do. In an added twist, Mrs. Ikeakor herself contacted AIA and complained that she did not know the meaning of trafficking.

The case illustrates the central involvement of diaspora communities in trafficking, both as a source of traffickers but also as an ally in preventing and exposing the crime. Mr. Ezekwenna from AIA told The Advocacy Project that his group, which was founded in 2001, has helped about 25 victims of trafficking from Nigeria in the US.

AIA recently secured a T visa for Stella Okereke, a 68-year-old Nigerian who was forced to work in a New York basement for 12 years. Mrs. Okereke escaped from her traffickers in 2000, but AIA managed to secure a T visa for her after finding pro bono legal aid. AIA introduced Mrs. Okereke to the Nigerian Minister of Women's Affairs at a recent event in New York, to publicize the role of the diaspora in trafficking.

On Monday, AIA sent Ms. Joseph's case to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which coordinates a network of support groups for victims of trafficking in the US. A lawyer met with Ms. Joseph on Tuesday.
To hear the interview by Ms. Joseph, log into KPFT radio Houston, register, and play the March 25 edition of the Haiti show (7.30 pm). Ms. Joseph's interview comes on after several minutes.

To read the press release by Africans in America, or to contact AIA, visit AIAinc.org

Japan: Historian Stands By Proof of Wartime Sex Slavery

Yoshiaki Yoshimi, historian who uncovered proof of wartime sex slavery

TOKYO, JAPAN -- It was about 15 years ago, recalled Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a mild-mannered historian, when he grew fed up with the Japanese government’s denials that the military had set up and run brothels throughout Asia during World War II.

Instead of firing off a letter to a newspaper, though, Mr. Yoshimi went to the Defense Agency’s library and combed through official documents from the 1930s. In just two days, he found a rare trove that uncovered the military’s direct role in managing the brothels, including documents that carried the personal seals of high-ranking Imperial Army officers.

Faced with this smoking gun, a red-faced Japanese government immediately dropped its long-standing claim that only private businessmen had operated the brothels. A year later, in 1993, it acknowledged in a statement that the Japanese state itself had been responsible. In time, all government-approved junior high school textbooks carried passages on the history of Japan’s military sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women.

“Back then, I was optimistic that this would effectively settle the issue,” Mr. Yoshimi said. “But there was a fierce backlash.”

The backlash came from young nationalist politicians led by Shinzo Abe, an obscure lawmaker at the time in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who lobbied to rescind the 1993 admission of state responsibility. Their goal finally seemed close at hand after Mr. Abe became prime minister last September.

Mr. Abe said he would adhere to the 1993 statement, but he also undercut it by asserting that there was no evidence showing the military’s role in forcing women into sexual slavery. His comments incited outrage in Asia and the United States, where the House of Representatives is considering a nonbinding resolution that would call on Japan to admit unequivocally its history of sexual slavery and to apologize for it.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT NYTimes.com

UK: Britian's Hidden Children

Many victims of child trafficking are sexually exploited

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND -- When Marie, a young girl from Cameroon, turned up in Manchester at the end of 2004 she was just one of hundreds of asylum seeking children alone in the city looking for help.

Her story was harrowing. Having been trafficked to France and forced into prostitution by her aunt, she fled to Britain with the help of a man who said he would help her escape.

Suffering from a range of physical and mental health problems, probably as a result of the abuse she endured, Marie was admitted to hospital.

Within two months she was dead. A post-mortem examination revealed natural causes. She was 16.

Sadly, Marie's case is thought to be just the tip of the iceberg and part of a growing industry which contributes to the 5,000 child sex slaves recently estimated to be working in the UK by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

This comes as the UK marks the 200th anniversary of the Parliamentary Act to abolish the slave trade.

According to Ecpat UK, an organisation which represents charities working against child exploitation, Marie's was one of 28 known cases of trafficked children in Manchester in 2005...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT News.BBC.co.uk

Moldova: Low Prices Increase Demand for Trafficking Victims

62% of Moldova's population lives below the poverty level

CHISINAU, MOLDOVA -- Two American TV crews have investigated Moldova's growing sex slave trade. In Chisinau, human traffickers now charge as little as $500 for delivering a child prostitute into a life of white slavery abroad. These record low prices are driving up demand, and exports are booming.

Last year, Moldova's best known legitimate export - cheap wine - was blocked from its main market and exports nearly cut in half. Exports of fruit and meat also suffered. But one category increased: The export of human flesh, in the form of Moldovan girls sold into sex slavery abroad. Many never return.

Two American TV crews have investigated this modern slave trade. The first, a team from PBS Frontline, went undercover and pretended to be Western buyers of prostitutes. They were quoted prices between $500 and $600 per girl.

A second report aired on ABC News this weekend, putting the spotlight on a problem which is improving in Pridnestrovie but becoming worse all the time in Moldova. CIA, in unclassified material, describes Moldova as a country with widespread crime and underground economic activity. Moldova is the center of the slave trade of the 21st century. As Europe's leader in human trafficking, people - many of them underage - are today the country's main illegal export.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT TiraspolTimes.com

UK: Victims Rufused Asylum Fall Prey to Prostitution

Medija, from Albania, was betrayed by a boyfriend
who forced her into the UK sex industry

UNITED KINGDOM -- Almost a year ago to the day residents of the Cornish city of Truro watched in amazement as police officers swooped on a house in a quiet street.

The operation was part of the national operation Pentameter, which aims to tackle exploitation within the sex industry.

Today the fight against sex trafficking continues as officers from the Devon and Cornwall force share information with other forces around the UK.

The UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) in Sheffield, Europe's first dedicated centre for victims of people-trafficking, was created in October last year.

It brings together a number of agencies including care organisations and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) to tackle 21st Century slavery, as the UK marks 200 years since the Parliamentary Act which to abolish the slave trade.

Det Insp Martin Warren of Soca in Devon and Cornwall said that since the introduction of the UKHTC, work had been stepped up to identify and care for victims of human trafficking, which was now "commonplace" in the West Country.

...

The Poppy Project in London is one of the care organisations that works with the UKHTC, and has provided safe accommodation for victims of sex trafficking from the West Country.

Nineteen-year-old Medija, from Albania, is one such victim and this is her story:

"Before I was trafficked, I lived in a small town in Albania with my family.

I left school when I was 14 so I could work in the market with my father.

He was very worried all the time about money, and sometimes he would hit me.

While I was working I met a man called Guri.

He said he had seen me around and liked me. He became my boyfriend.

'Disowned me'

My parents did not approve and said I must choose between him and them. I decided to go and live with Guri, as I was tired of living in a small house.

After a few months he said he wanted to take me to live in Italy. I didn't want to go but my family had disowned me so I had no choice. I agreed to go.

Guri paid for my travel and we travelled by speedboat to Italy, where he gave me false Italian travel documents.

He said I would need them because the UK authorities were prejudiced against Albanians.

From Italy we travelled across Europe by coach to the UK, where we were met by a friend of Guri's.

He drove us to a house. That's when they told me that I would be working as a prostitute.

I screamed and cried and refused.

They beat me badly and raped me, and told me I had no choice. It was true.

I had sex with between five and ten men every day, seven days a week, working in saunas during the day and massage parlours some nights.

I was exhausted and often in pain, from all the men and from the beatings. I had no contact with my family and I was locked in the house all the time, only let out to go to work.

I lived like this for six months until the police raided the sauna.

They took me to the Poppy Project, who gave me shelter and are helping me recover from my experiences.

I still have many problems. I can't sleep and have nightmares, and sometimes I have panic attacks.

I am afraid of people and do not like to leave the house. I don't trust anybody.

I sometimes drink too much, to help me forget what happened. But it doesn't work. I will never forget what those men did to me. "

Heather Sable of Plymouth-based Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support Council, said Medija's plight was "just the tip of the iceberg" of human suffering created by human trafficking in the region.

Each week she and her volunteer workers tackle about 100 cases a week of refugees for whom a paid human trafficker was the only way to get out of their country of origin and into the UK.

Provision of false passports and travel documents all came as part of the illicit trade in humans.

The result when refugees appear in the UK is often not what they expected...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT BBC.co.uk

DC: US Gov't Takes Global Approach to Combatting Sex Trafficking

WASHINGTON – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recognizes that trafficking victims have rights and require services and temporary immigration relief, Gabriel Garcia, chief of ICE’s human smuggling and trafficking unit, said March 20.

ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, “has the unique organizational ability to investigate trafficking in persons with a global reach and provide short-term immigration relief to trafficking victims,” Garcia said in testimony before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism.

Of the approximately 600,000 to 800,000 people coerced or forced into crossing international borders each year, about 14,500 to 17,500 end up in the United States, according to U.S. government estimates.

ICE is one of several U.S. agencies working to stop trafficking through training to help better identify victims, improving services provided to victims and by public awareness campaigns.

Trafficking victims rescued in the United States are granted “continued presence,” which is a short-term immigration protection that allows certified victims of trafficking to remain in the United States for up to one year to enable them to apply for a “T visa.” Those who receive T visas are able to stay in the United States and bring their families over as well. They have access to federal benefits and services and can accept employment in the United States for up to three years and then apply for lawful permanent residence, Garcia said.

ICE officials conduct their work worldwide. Fifty-six ICE attaché offices help foster strong international relationships, Garcia said. The attaches work with local law enforcement for better coordination of investigations. ICE officials target recruiters, brokers, document providers, travel agencies, corrupt officials, smugglers and businesses engaged in criminal activities at both source and transit countries. ICE also cooperates with foreign law enforcement authorities to target bank accounts, wire transfers and other funding mechanisms that fuel trafficking enterprises, Garcia said...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT USInfo.state.gov

UK: British Women "Threatened With Sale"

Many trafficking victims are from Eastern Europe. The UK is the main destination for Lithuanians. Others are from Asia, Africa and South America.

UNITED KINGDOM -- The figures are startling.

An estimated 4,000 trafficked women are thought to be working in the British sex trade at any one time, having arrived from across the world.

The majority willingly travel here from eastern Europe, west Africa and south-east Asia with the promise of jobs, more money and a better way of life.

What they end up as are commodities. Coerced, often forced, to work as prostitutes, they are moved from address to address, city to city, by the gangs that control them.

They have little chance of escape, let alone the life they were promised, and live in constant fear of being "sold" on to another gang.

But according to those on the frontline trying to help these women, it is not a threat confined to foreign nationals - some believe it is a two way street.

In short: British women are being threatened with being sold abroad...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT BBC.co.uk

UK: Home Sect. Reid to Combat Trafficking

The UK's Home Secretary John Reid

UNITED KINGDOM -- The Home Secretary will this week announce plans for a crackdown on trafficking gangs who force thousands of women and children into prostitution and forced labour.

John Reid will also sign the European Convention on Human Trafficking, which commits signatories to tackling the traffickers and helping victims to recover from their ordeals and give evidence against their captors. The UK Action Plan on Human Trafficking, to be announced on Friday, will set up a network of refuges and support services for trafficking victims in towns and cities across the UK.

There is currently only one Government-funded refuge for women who escape from the gangs. Ministers say many more are urgently needed because of the "alarming" scale of the trade described as "21st century slavery". There is mounting concern over the growing number of child slaves being brought to the UK...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT Telegraph.co.uk

European Study: Health Risks & Consequences of Trafficking

"The health risks and consequences of trafficking in women and adolescents: Findings from a European study"

Source: International Sexual and Reproductive Rights Coalition (ISRRC)

This report represents the findings of a two-year multi-country study on women's health and trafficking to the European Union. It is an initial inquiry into an area about which little research has previously been conducted. Interviews were conducted by researchers in Albania, Italy, the Netherlands, Thailand, and the United Kingdom with women who had been trafficked, health care and other service providers, NGOs working against trafficking, law enforcement officials, and policymakers.

For more information and to download the full text, please go to:

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

England: Sex Slavery Widespread

ENGLAND -- Young women tricked into coming to England, often by boyfriends, are being sold off in auctions at airport coffee shops as soon as they arrive.

They are among the thousands of women brought into the UK to be sex slaves, usually with no idea of their fate.

The trade was one of the findings of a BBC News website investigation into slavery in 21st Century England.

As the UK marks 200 years since the Parliamentary Act to abolish the slave trade, slavery goes on in another form.

The slave trade, outlawed by legislation introduced in March 1807, saw people from Africa transported en masse to the Americas by the UK and other European countries.

Modern day victims of slavery are often young women from eastern Europe, thinking they are coming to England to work as cleaners or au pairs, only to be forced into prostitution.

The Home Office estimated in 2003 that 4,000 women were trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation. It is thought the figure may have grown since.

Police forces from Cornwall to Northumbria have found themselves having to rescue women and prosecute the traffickers who brought them to England to work as sex slaves.

And as well as foreign citizens coming to the UK, charity workers in Manchester told the BBC they believed British women working in massage parlours had been sold abroad, because they owed the owners money.

Child protection organisations and human rights groups also believe there are thousands of child sex slaves in the UK.

The UK Human Trafficking Centre was opened last year to co-ordinate the law-enforcement approach to the problem.

A spokesman told the BBC women were sometimes sold off in auctions in airport coffee shops and restaurants as they arrived in the country.

And he said there were also many cases of English women, from backgrounds of poverty, being sold from town to town to work as prostitutes.

But it is now believed that as many as 85% of women working in brothels in the UK have come from overseas - in the mid-1990s, an estimated 85% were UK citizens.

Operation Pentameter, a Home Office initiative aimed at rescuing sex workers held against their will carried out between January and July 2006, saw 84 trafficked women rescued, including 12 aged 14 to 17.

Some 230 arrests were made and more than £250,000 in cash was seized - but officers were only able to visit about 10% of the estimated number of sex establishments in the country.

The Poppy Project, a London-based scheme which provides accommodation and support for the women, has had 581 victims referred to it since its launch in 2003.

Its own research in 2004 found evidence of "off street" prostitution in every one of London's 33 boroughs, again with the overwhelming majority of workers in brothels, saunas and massage parlours being non-British nationals.

The Helen Bamber Foundation, set up to help victims of torture and other human rights violations, said women being forced into sex slavery in England were experiencing "horrific brutality", with physical violence and the psychological trauma of being forced into sex...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT BBC.co.uk

Mumbai: Prostituted Minors a Billion Dollar Industry

A commercial sex worker in Mumbai

MUMBAI, INDIA -- For most, Mumbai remains a city of dreams. But, for some, it has become a place full of nightmares.

In recent years, the financial capital of the country has emerged as one of the leading markets for trafficked minors who engage in prostitution or, in other words, the commercial sexual abuse of a minor.

According to estimates released by international agencies, trafficking of minor girls is a $1-billion-a-year industry, and it is thriving due to increased sex tourism in Mumbai, Goa and adjoining coastal areas.

Edging past North-Eastern states, poverty-stricken rural areas of Maharashtra — Beed, Latur, Solapur, Jalgaon, Ahmednagar, Nandurbar, Chandrapur, Washim, Akola, Buldhana, Dhule and the Konkan region — have emerged as one of the biggest suppliers of minors.

States such as Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa have also opened up as the new supply markets, says a Mumbai police source.

As instances of HIV and AIDS reach alarming proportions, demand for younger, pre-puberty girls has hit an all-time high. Girls as little as seven and eight-years-old are being forced into prostitution, both in the red-light areas and as “professional” call girls (always accompanied by an adult), according to a DNA investigation.

Affluent businessmen, some members of the film and advertising industries, diamond merchants and politicians form the “select” clientele who source minors.

“Trafficking in minor girls has seen an estimated 30 per cent increase from previous years,” says a social activist working at Kamatipura — the city’s most notorious red-light district...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT DNAIndia.com

Japan: Denial Reopens Wounds of Ex-Sex Slaves

Japanese students visiting South Korea view photos of
Korean women who were sex slaves of Japan's army. Ahn Young-Joon/AP

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Wu Hsiu-mei said she was 23 and working as a maid in a hotel in 1940 when her Taiwanese boss handed her over to Japanese officers. She and some 15 other women were sent to Guangdong Province in southern China to become sex slaves.

Inside a hotel there was a so-called comfort station, managed by a Taiwanese but serving only the Japanese military, Ms. Wu said. Forced to have sex with more than 20 Japanese a day for almost a year, she said, she had multiple abortions and became sterile.

The long festering issue of Japan’s war-era sex slaves gained new prominence last week when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the military’s role in coercing the women into servitude. The denial by Mr. Abe, Japan’s first prime minister born after the war, drew official protests from China, Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines, some of the countries from which the sex slaves were taken.

The furor highlighted yet again Japan’s unresolved history in a region where it has been ceding influence to China. The controversy has also drawn in the United States, which has strongly resisted entering the history disputes that have roiled East Asia in recent years.

Ms. Wu told her story on Wednesday outside the Japanese Consulate here, where she and two others who had been sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women, were protesting Tokyo’s refusal to admit responsibility for the abuse that historians say they and as many as 200,000 other women suffered...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT NYTimes.com

US: Judge Rules Groups May Deny Funding to AIDS Groups

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration can deny funding to nonprofit AIDS groups that don't publicly disavow prostitution and sex trafficking.

Overturning a lower court's decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the AIDS groups' free speech rights would not be violated if the money was linked to a pledge to uphold government policy.

At issue is the case of DKT International Inc., which provides family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention programs in 11 countries. The group, which helps distribute condoms to prostitutes and other sex workers in Vietnam, has refused to sign a pledge to support the Bush administration policies.

In 2005, DKT sued the U.S. Agency for International Development, contending its free speech rights were violated by a 2003 law requiring groups to explicitly oppose prostitution and sex trafficking in order to qualify for part of a $15 billion AIDS program. A U.S. District Court ruling last year agreed, saying the funding conditions insist that groups ``parrot'' the U.S. government's position on prostitution...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT Guardian.co.uk

Japan: Existence of "Comfort Women" Denied by PM

Comfort women being trucked to a Japanese camp during WWII

JAPAN -- "Comfort women" were forced to work in brothels during World War II; Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says there's no proof that ever happened.

In European countries, it is a punishable offense to deny the Holocaust. In contrast, Japanese war crimes have never been fully prosecuted or acknowledged, nor have most victims been afforded redress. Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe exploited this lack of accountability by asserting that there is "no proof" that women were forced into sexual bondage to serve the Japanese military during World War II, in effect labeling as prostitutes or liars all the thousands of victims of this abhorrent practice. After international outrage erupted, Abe stepped back, but by then the survivors had once more been victimized by his denial of an overwhelming historical record.

The prime minister's revisionist statement contradicts abundant evidence that has come to light despite the government's efforts to conceal or minimize the mistreatment of thousands of women in about 2,000 wartime brothels run by or with the cooperation of the Japanese military. Although no one knows exactly how many girls and women were conscripted to provide sex to Japanese soldiers, most historians estimate the number at between 100,000 and 200,000. Most were Korean and Chinese, though they also included other Asians and Europeans from Japanese-occupied areas. Many were kidnapped and raped, others were tricked or defrauded; some were sold by their families.

Japanese soldiers have come forward during the last 15 years to admit to forcibly taking girls and women on orders of the military. In 1992, documents found in the archives of Japan's Defense Ministry indicated that the military was directly involved in running the brothels. The Japanese government formally apologized to the women in 1993. Since then, Japan's official position has been one of admitting moral but not legal responsibility. A private fund was set up to compensate the former "comfort women," and two Japanese prime ministers wrote formal letters of apology to women who received the payments. Some victims claimed that this ambiguity was unacceptable and refused to accept compensation...

READ THE FULL OPINION PIECE AT LATimes.com

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT COMFORT WOMEN, AND TO VIEW A PHOTO GALLERY, VISIT Comfort-Women.org

Thailand: Life of an Unwilling Sex Worker

"I think some foreign men think it's okay to pay for sex here in Thailand, as they think the girls actually want to do this. But these men don't understand that most of us have no choice ." -Pim, former Bangkok sex worker

BANGKOK, THAILAND -- Bangkok is a notorious destination for sex tourism. But the lives of many of the city's sex workers are full of danger, disease and the urgent need to send money home.

Pim, who recently left her job in a go-go bar, has a typical story.

"I grew up in the countryside in Phetchabun, northern Thailand. My parents were farmers and I helped them in the fields. We were poor but we always had enough to get by.

When I was about 15, my family fell apart. My father always drank a lot, but it became worse and worse, and he started becoming violent. So my mother, sister and I moved out.

I wanted to study to become a nurse, but when my parents split up I had to leave school and find work as a day labourer, harvesting crops for local farmers. I didn't like it much, and it only paid 100 baht ($3) a day.

At about that time a good friend moved to Bangkok, and when she came back to visit she told me she was earning a lot of money there as a waitress.

There was gossip in the village that she was doing something other than waitressing, as she was sending 10,000 baht ($300) home a month, but she always denied it.

She asked me to come with her, but at the time I was still 16 and too scared. A few years later, though - when I had given birth to my daughter, and my husband and I had separated - I changed my mind.

I left the baby in Phetchabun with my mother, and told her I needed to earn some money in Bangkok. But I didn't tell her what I was doing - I still haven't. She'd be so ashamed.

'Can I do this?'

When my friend took me to a bar in Nana Plaza for the first time, I was really shocked. I'd never been to a place like that before, and at the beginning I didn't even know what the dancers were doing.

When I finally realised, I couldn't take it and I walked out of the bar. I kept thinking 'Can I really do this?'

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT News.BBC.co.uk

Ukraine: Tops in Human Trafficking

KIEV, UKRAINE -- More Ukrainian men, women and children have been trafficked abroad and forced into indentured labor or prostitution than in any other Eastern European country since the Soviet collapse, an international migration group said in a report Monday.

Roughly 117,000 Ukrainians have been forced into exploitative situations in Europe, the Middle East and Russia since 1991, the International Organization for Migration said.

Ukrainian officials say low salaries and unemployment force thousands to seek employment abroad, increasing their vulnerability to exploitation by criminals who often seize their passports and refuse to return them.

The organization said the full scale of trafficking through, from and within Eastern Europe is difficult to determine since most victims are unwilling, scared or unable to contact authorities.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE IHT.com

Mariana Islands: Filipinas Top List of Battered Women

The Nothern Mariana Islands, a US Commonwealth, is
about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to the Philippines

COMMONWEALTH OF NORTHEN MARIANA ISLANDS (CNMI) -- They could just be the more courageous ethnic group to report abuses, or there may be just too many of them on island, but regardless of the underlying factors, the fact showed that there are more Filipinos who are victimized by domestic violence than other ethnic groups in the .

This is according to Guma Esperanza in its testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during the latter's hearing in Washington D.C. last week.

Guma Esperanza-House of Hope, which receives federal funding, extends assistance to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking in the CNMI.

Lauri Ogumoro, manager of Guma Esperanza, said that Filipinos is the largest ethnic group that seeks refuge at the center.

Second largest are Chamorros and third, Chinese.

“The ethnic breakdown of clients and their children seeking refuge at Guma Esperanza mirrors the ethnic diversity of the Commonwealth. Filipinos, followed by Chamorro, then Chinese women, are the three largest ethnic groups served through the shelter,” said Ogumoro in her testimony.

Ogumoro was one of the resource persons from the CNMI invited by the Senate panel to speak about the immigration situation in the Commonwealth.

During the hearing, Ogumoro cited the need for “change” in the current system to ensure protection of its citizens and the entire community.

She cited a number of documented cases of sex trafficking and human rights abuses, which she said are indicative that “there's something wrong in the system.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT SaipanTribune.com

UK: Uncovering the Secret Sex Trade

UNITED KINGDOM -- A new project based on Tyneside aims to help a hidden group - the vulnerable women who work unwillingly in the sex trade.

They might not advertise themselves, but they are there. To all appearances, they might be average types of women, just ordinary faces in the crowd. They're all dressed up in skimpy clothes - but then in Newcastle, that's normal - and men eye them up as they pass. Yet these are not like other women just heading out to hit the town. They're working girls, and what is more, they're not uncommon.

This is the picture that's presented by Laura Seebohm, development worker for the GAP project. She deals with women in the sex trade in Newcastle and beyond, and says the lack of a red light district has kept this secret far too long. "It's a very hidden problem," she says. "I think that because there's no red light district, in some ways the women are more vulnerable because nobody knows about it. It's behind closed doors, really."

Though those who worked with vulnerable women had an inkling of the problem, it was just last year when a statutory body decided to act. Research by the Government Office North East confirmed a trade in prostitution with women largely as its victims. "A researcher interviewed people from around the area in relation to sex work and what came out very clearly showed a lack of support for women," says Laura.

She interviewed some women I was working with and we felt we couldn't just leave them. We felt we needed to do something, so we set up a weekly drop-in in central Newcastle. Gradually, more and more women were coming to that, largely through word of mouth, and through that we got funding for a pilot scheme to actually set up and develop a project for sex workers."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT TheNorthenEcho.co.uk

Ireland: Plea for Victims of Sex Trafficking

Visit stopthetraffik.org to purchase the Freedom Key keyring

IRELAND -- The plight of young prostitutes being trafficked to Ireland was highlighted today in a hard-hitting appeal.

A leading charity plans to unlock sex slavery and fight for the rights of the vulnerable to be protected in new legislation.

Ruhama, an organisation that works with and for women involved in prostitution, today launched the Freedom Key keyring.

The symbolic keyring, which costs €2, will highlight the suffering of exploited victims of abuse across Ireland.

“Our aim is to unlock the sex slavery that’s happening in the country today,” said Gerardine Rowley of Ruhama.

“This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and incredibly we still have millions of women from poorer countries enslaved in the sex trade of wealthier countries.

“Little is being done to highlight this issue and unravel the massive injustice, which is all around us.”

The charity believes hundreds of women are being duped into coming here from poor countries including Romania, Albania, Ukraine, Venezuela, Brazil, and Nigeria.

Volunteers stress that without demand, these women would not become victims of trafficking.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT IRELAND ON-LINE

Special Rapporteur Sigma Huda Submits New Trafficking Report to UN

Special Rapporteur Sigma Huda has submitted her annual report to the U.N. on the current trafficking situation in the various countries visited in 2006. Below is the introduction to her report, and at the end of this post the report is available in its entirety for download.

Introduction: Forced marriages take place in many social, political, cultural, economic and legal contexts around the world. In this report, the Special Rapporteur aims to identify when such forced marriages exist and when they have been carried out in the context of trafficking in persons, especially women and children. The Special Rapporteur also examines the possible causes and consequences of forced marriage in the context of human trafficking and addresses the demand for forced marriage. Finally, she offers recommendations to States and non-State actors on ways to prevent trafficking in persons through or for the purpose of forced marriages, discourage the demand for such marriages, protect and assist the victims, and establish legal and prosecutorial measures to combat forced marriages in the context of trafficking in persons, especially women and children.

DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT HERE AS PDF