International Human Trafficking and Migration
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Victory in Landmark Human Trafficking Civil Case
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The Myth of Initial Consent
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Video: Stop Child Trafficking Walks Inspire Action
"No Good Jobs": Sokha and Makara's True Story of Slavery
Published November 05, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Sokha and Makara's stories were originally collected by Stop the Traffick. In this case, a serious family illness put these young girls at risk for trafficking. Often, when given the choice between sending a child to work and watching another family member die, parents will send their children away with desparte hopes of money. Here is their story:
Sokha and Makara are from Poipet in Cambodia. When they were just 14 and 15 years old, their mother was ill with a liver problem. The family needed money to pay for the medicine to treat her. They also hoped to buy some land to build a home. A man promised good jobs for the girls in nearby Thailand, and offered the family some money if they would let them go. Sokha and Makara were excited at the thought of being able to help the family with the money they earned. The reality turned out to be very different.
The man was a trafficker. There were no ‘good jobs' for the girls in Thailand. Sokha's mother died within a year, and the family couldn't afford to buy the land that they had dreamed of. Sokha, who is now 17, says, ‘I felt cheated. The traffickers used us for slave jobs, and while they earned lots of money, we only got enough to feed ourselves each day.' She explains how she and Makara, 16, were given jobs selling fruit, but it did not pay enough. So they were forced to work even harder and to do work that they didn't enjoy.
Sokha and Makara's story has a happy ending because of the Cambodian Hope Organization (CHO) that works with Tearfund, a relief and development agency. Sokha and Makara's parents met with CHO and gave them photos to pass on to an organization in Thailand that rescues trafficked girls. The girls were found and rescued about a year after their ordeal started.
What is unusual about this story is not that the sisters were trafficked, but that they were kept together for the duration of their enslavement. Many traffickers will try and isolate and disorient victims, which often means cutting them off from friends and family. However, having a sister close by may have been the key to helping these two young women survive slavery.
Photo credit: thomaswanhoff
Taken in the Night: Martin's True Story of Slavery
Published October 21, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
This story is originally from Reuters. While Uganda has become the most famous backdrop for stories of children trafficked to become child soldiers, it is not the only country where they are currently being exploited. Child soldiers have been used in conflicts all over Asia and Africa, including being used by the Taliban as suicide bombers. But Martin's story represents the experience of many child soldiers in Uganda.
I was 10 years old when the Lord's Resistance Army came to my door in the middle of the night. They ordered me to leave my home and come with them. In my district, we had heard about the atrocities they were committing, and so we were all terrified. The men looted my house, taking chickens, goats, and clothes. Then they took me. My cousins and I, along with other boys, were tied together by our hands. For one whole day we walked like that, trying to dodge the Ugandan army. We walked for a week, until we arrive in southern Sudan to begin our training.
During the day we were taught how to march and how to handle a gun. The mane in charge told us we needed to be ready for battle because President Yoweri Museveni had ordered the Karamoja to ome and raid all the cattle in the countryside and abuse and kill our families. We were told to overthrow the government, which would make Joseph Kony president and life better for us. The commanders told us that overthrowing the government was our main goal, a goal we should be willing to die for. The older boys were the security for the training camp -- forced to kill children if they tried to escape. They did it with a wooden club, and all the children were forced to watch as the offending child was beaten to death. It was meant to be a warning to us all. You would be beaten if you broke even the simplest rules, like not eating pork or shea nut butter. But you would be killed to trying to escape.
I saw my first battle at age 12. I was petrified and freezing, since we were attacking at dawn. Yet, somehow, I survived. For years I kept hopeful that someday I would be able to return home and go back to school. Maybe one day I would be chosen to be part of an operation in Uganda, and from there I could escape home. But that never happened. Instead, we moved from south Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The commanders claimed the war would be over by 2006, and we could all return home. When it didn't I decided with three others to escape. We managed to sneak away, walking three days until we reached a place near Aba in Congo. There, we found the Congolese army, surrendered ourselves, and explained our situation. News of my escape was broadcast over the radio, and my little brother came to meet me. We were overjoyed to see each other again.
Martin is now free and hopes to go back to school to continue his education.
Photo credit: babasteve
South Korea's Disposable People
Published October 20, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Abolitionist Kevin Bales was the first to coin the term "disposable people" as a reference to modern-day slavery. It's remained a popular term because it has both great descriptive power and great accuracy. Victims of human trafficking are treated temporary, replaceable items -- not individual human beings. Amnesty International has recently shined a light on one group of people who are particularly treated as such -- migrant laborers in South Korea.
South Korea was actually one of the first Asian countries to grant equal rights to migrant workers, including the same status as Korean workers. In 2004, they passed legislation guaranteeing equal labor rights, pay, and benefits for all migrant workers. However, five years later, many migrant workers continue to face the hardships and abuse they experienced before legal reform. Workers often work with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals without sufficient training or protective equipment, putting them at greater risk of accidents and fatalities. They receive less pay than South Korean workers in the same jobs. Female migrant workers face sexual harassment, rape, and trafficking into prostitution. Many workers have had wages withheld without cause and been cheated out of wages.
South Korea is an example of the importance of implementation of law. On the books, migrant workers have great legal protections and full rights. However, in reality, no mechanism for implementing the law exists. Workplaces are not monitored for safety violations, the claims of unfair dismissals and wage theft are not addressed. Unfortunately, this sort of situation is not unique to South Korea. Since the U.S. began issuing it's annual Trafficking in Persons report and rating countries on their efforts to combat human trafficking, more countries have passed better anti-trafficking legislation. Strong laws are important, but ultimately meaningless if the country lacks any mechanism to enforce that law. Too often, strong anti-trafficking laws have failed to make a difference in the lives of at-risk and trafficked people because of a lack of enforcement. We should learn from South Korea's example that the "how" of law is often just as imporant as the "what."
Until a better enforcement mechanism is in place, Amnesty International is asking South Korea to do the following:
- to ensure that employers respect, protect and promote the rights of migrant workers through rigorous labour inspections so that the workplace is safe, training is provided and migrant workers are paid fairly and on time;
- to protect and promote the rights of all female migrant workers and stamp out sexual harassment and sexual exploitation;
- to allow irregular migrant workers to remain in South Korea while accessing justice and seeking compensation for abuses by employees; and
- to ensure that during immigration raids, immigration authorities adhere to South Korean law requiring them to identify themselves, present a warrant, caution and inform migrant workers of their rights, and provide those under their custody prompt medical treatment when needed or requested.
Photo credit: 2017
Is Fossil Fuel the New Slavery?
Published October 15, 2009 @ 06:51AM PT
This post is part of Blog Action Day, which is uniting over 8300 blogs in 147 countries to talk about how climate change affects all our lives.
Robin Chase poses this interesting question on Huffington Post. Her theory: The U.S. economy has always been based on some under-valued energy source, which is how it has grown so fast and large. That energy source used to be slavery, and now it's fossil fuel. In general, I steer away from "blank is the new blank" statements because they practically drop to their knees and beg for criticism as imperfect analogies. In this case, the comparison holds some water, but it over-simplifies the historical and current connection between fossil fuels and slavery.
First of all, let's stop talking about slavery like is disappeared at the end of the U.S. civil war. The legal institution of slavery may have been shot down, but what we now call human trafficking, or modern-day slavery, has existed a long, long time and continues to thrive. And secondly, if we're going to talk about either slavery or fossil fuels today, we need to do so in a global context. Neither environmental damage from fossil fuels nor slavery stop at international borders, so why should out thinking?
These few criticisms aside, Ms. Chase is very right about one thing: the American economy is built on under-valued resources. Here's your 10 second American economics lesson: in a capitalist system, a business hoping to make a profit must make sure that the cost of labor plus the cost of production is less than the market value of what he's producing. Easy peasy, huh? For the plantation owners in the American South, the answer to reducing labor costs was chattel slavery. Today, some business traffic or exploit workers and cut back on benefits like health care to reduce labor costs. Others, and arguably a whole lot more, use dirty, non-sustainable, cheap energy to reduce production costs.
The problem with this thinking is that fossil fuels, like slavery, have an actual cost that is higher than the perceived cost. Trafficking appears to be an easy way to save money on workers to the business owner, but it incurs high social costs when you factor in the cost of rehabilitation for survivors, prosecution of traffickers, and the social disorder which human trafficking and other forms of exploitation create. Similarly, using fossil fuels to power a factory may seem like a bargain when compared to more sustainable choices, but the high environmental costs of fossil fuels includes global warming, natural disasters, increase public health problems and more. They are both short-term, lazy ways to produce increased profit at a high cost to society and to the future.
Chattel slavery in the U.S. brought about a civil war. The fight against global human trafficking has embatteled millions -- government officials, students, law enforcement, business owners, religious leaders, and more. With one war the bloodiest in American history and another still raging on the global stage, what will the war against fossil fuel look like? And more importantly, which side will you be on when it is waged?
Photo credit: Don Hankin
Orange County Seeks Happy Ending to Massage Parlor Ads
Published October 14, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
The Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force can't get a decent massage. Maybe that's because the pages of their newspaper, and newspapers nationwide including the Washington Post, are full of ads for "massage parlors" featuring partially clothed, unlicensed female "masseuses." It's one of the most transparent fronts for prostitution and human trafficking still legally advertised, and people are increasingly calling for an end to the ads.
One of the beautiful parts of the American justice system is that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The same holds true for business activities -- they are presumed legal until they are proven illegal. It's legal to post an add promising massages by women in fishnets who just turned 18. It's legal to cover these ads with non-nude sexual imagery aimed at an exclusively male audience. But it's not legal (in most of the U.S.) to run a brothel and it's not legal to sell trafficked women anywhere. So how do you know which massage business are legal and which are illegal? Enter, law enforcement. It's their job to determine if a seemingly-legal business is actually a front for something illegal. A favorite tool of law enforcement to accomplish this is conducting raids in massage parlors they find suspicious, with results varying from ecstatic thanks from newly freed trafficking victims to deportations of undocumented women voluntarily in prostitution to significant abuse by the police. It is certainly a flawed system, but one which does achieve its aims much of the time.
There is one element which I often find missing when we talk about the connection between massage parlors, prostitution, and human trafficking: common sense. Let's face it -- many of these ads are painfully obvious as covers for illegal commercial sex. I think we often get so caught up in legal definitions, we forget to use our common sense as a test for what's legitimate and what's not. Legitimate massage ads tend to focus on their licensed therapists, spa services, relaxing atmosphere, hygiene standards, and quality of service. Illegitimate massage ads tend to focus on the age or race of their masseuses, the "eroticness" of the massage, and men as a target audience. Sure, some of these ads are more nuanced and deceptive, but many of them look and feel obviously illegitimate. If the common sense test comes out with a score of sketchy, then the trickier question becomes whether a massage parlor is an illegal brothel full of trafficking victims and/or children or women who have voluntarily entered prostitution.
It's important to approach this intersection between massage parlors, prostitution, and human trafficking with a solid knowledge of legal codes and a strategic plan to work with law enforcement. But it's also important for activists to use their common sense about what is being advertised in their newspapers and speak out about it. Police can raid only so many massage parlor brothels. But when newspapers have gotten enough complaints from readers about running these ads in the past, they've stopped. And no advertising means less business for pimps and less incentive for traffickers.
Photo credit: thomaswanhoff
Child Slavery at the Circus
Published October 11, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Lions and tigers and bears and slaves, oh my! In the West, we most often associate the circus with acrobats, clowns, cotton candy, and animals (which are often abused as well). But for many Nepalese girls, the circus in India represents a life of slavery, rape, and exploitation.
It's difficult to estimate the number of children who have been trafficked into Indian circuses. One estimate is about 500 at any given time, with new ones being recruited as others age out or escape. They are mostly girls from small villages in Nepal. Some are kidnapped, some a tricked, and some are signed into a contract to work by their parents. But no matter how they enter, these girls rehearse and perform for hours a day, for as little as $3 per month. At night, many are abused and raped by men in the circus or sold in prostitution for extra money. Those who go to see the circus may never know that bright smiles and stage makeup hide nefarious exploitation and slavery backstage.
The Nepalese government has only recently begun to treat the recruitment and captivity of children in circuses as a crime. But now, they are even reaching out to the Indian government to work in partnership to reduced the number of Nepalese girls trafficked into circuses. This is a vast improvement of policy for both governments, and has the potential to prevent more girls from being trafficked into circuses.
I stumbled upon a video that's a great example of human trafficking in circuses. In 2007, a British rescue organization teamed up with a group of Nepalese parents to try and find and rescue the children they had lost to circuses. This is short documentary video of their efforts, which creates an vivid picture of what human trafficking in Indian circuses is like, complete with police corruption, difficulty in finding the victims and traffickers, and a happy ending for at least some of the enslaved girls. It's the reality faced by so many children hoping to escape slavery in an industry created for the joy and amusement of children.
London Considers Axing Human Trafficking Police Unit
Published October 08, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
Here's something to file under Really Bad Ideas Someone's Gonna Lose a Job Over: London, the most populous city in the European Union (with over 250,000 immigrants each year), is considering shutting down the Human Trafficking Unit of the Metropolitan Police due to budget issues. London is a huge destination and transit city for human trafficking victims from all over the world, and shutting down the police force trained to identify and remove victims would be nothing short of catastrophic for the many slaves being held there today.
British and international advocacy groups have expressed everything from concern to outrage at this suggestion. Human trafficking has now been identified as the second or third largest form of organized crime in the world, and diverting resources to any crime less significant is a tough argument to make. And trafficking may even be on this rise when the 2012 Olympics come to London. Even if trafficking doesn't increase in conjunction with the games (as many people fear it will) and remains stagnant, law enforcement will be severely understaffed and unable to properly address it. Furthermore, many advocates fear that without a dedicated unit, the only form of trafficking law enforcement will pay attention to is trafficking into commercial sex industries, leaving no help for slaves in domestic servitude, factories, agriculture, and other industries.
The Met's answer to these concerns is that human trafficking cases will be spread out to other officers. I've got news for you, London. I've trained a lot of cops in my time, and none of them were born understanding human trafficking. I can't tell you how many good, hardworking police officers have missed human trafficking victims standing right in front of them because they didn't know what to look for. This is a hidden crime and the victims are chameleons -- they often look like victims of other crimes or even criminals. How can you expect someone to tease out the intricacies of human trafficking and tell the victims from the perpetrators without any training or support from colleagues who are also experts on the issue?
To me, this move says that London is not nearly as concerned with ending slavery in their city as they are with balancing their budget. The Met Human Trafficking Unit has been lauded as an international example of a highly efficient and effective law enforcement effort. They have brought hundreds of cases against traffickers and freed even more victims. Why would you shut them down? I know money is tight right now, London, but of all the cities in the world to consider this move, you are one of the most dangerous. I hope we never find out how serious this mistake could have been.
Photo credit: JD Mack
