Trafficking in Children
Interview: Human Trafficking Filmmaker Guy Jacobson
Published July 28, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Recently, I had the chance to chat with Guy Jacobson, creator of the critically acclaimed film Holly, about a young girl trafficked into prostitution in Cambodia. While making Holly, Guy also started the Redlight Children Campaign to raise awareness about child trafficking.
Rare in the anti-trafficking movement, Guy walks the fine line between the serious subject and being downright funny. His passionate rhetoric is punctuated with his charming, earthy Israeli accent and sharp, self-deprecating wit. It's with a joking twinkle in his eye that he says his career change from high-powered New York lawyer to anti-trafficking filmmaker was a huge disappointment to his Jewish mother. But it is with grave seriousness that he tells the story of traveling through Cambodia and being solicited by throngs of 7, 8, and 9-year-old girls. He recounts,
"'Me yum yum you,' said one of the little girls. ‘Me no have money, then mamasan be boxing me.' She meant that the madam of her brothel was going to beat her that night if she didn't return with money."
It was then Guy decided he couldn't sit back and wait for someone else to help these children.
Amanda: You mentioned that you made Holly to draw attention to the issue of child trafficking. Do you think you've succeeded?
Guy: I would like to believe that the last 7 years of my life have made whatever amount of tiny impact to put this issue more on the agenda, to make it slightly more mainstream. We've tried to use the film to get law firms and associations and corporations involved and active. I hope that people will hear about this issue because of [Holly], people who may not want to hear an academic panel about trafficking but will go see a film. If not, (he chuckles) my mother was right and I should have stayed an attorney and made more money.
Editors Note: Holly has inspired perhaps hundreds of news articles and other media pieces on this issue, so despite Guy's commendable modesty, he has made much more than a slight difference.
Amanda: One of my favorite things about listening to you speak is your use of humor. Given the seriousness of the subject matter, where is there room for humor in anti-trafficking activism?
Guy: In my case, I am just a smartass! But seriously, child trafficking is an incredibly difficult issue, and maybe the reason this issue is not discussed more regularly is that it so emotionally difficult and taxing. It is a gross human rights violation and a crime against humanity. It involves the word "sex", and it makes people want to put their hands on their ears and go "la la la!" So I use a little bit of humor; it's a way to ease people into the issue. Humor can allow people to hear it more easily.
Amanda: Sounds like between your wit and the film you chose to make, you're all about making this issue accessible to as many people as possible.
Guy: Then bottom line is you can't only preach to the choir. You can't only talk about trafficking to the people who already know about it. I realized I knew so little- the scope, the ages of the children, the location and the prevalence. If I didn't know these things, and I'm reasonably educated, then the issue is not in the media. I thought maybe I can leverage mass media to reach the masses.
Amanda: Do you have plans to make another anti-trafficking movie?
Guy: I think there are enough contracts on my life after the first one (he laughs)! When we shot Holly, at the same time we started working on a documentary. It's called Redlight, and Lucy Liu is the producer and narrator. It follows the story of Somaly [Mam] and the kids [in her shelter] for five years. We're in the polishing stages, and we hope it will be premiered in the major international film festivals later this year and released in theaters in 2010. Beyond that, as a filmmaker, I personally don't have another story to tell on this issue.
You can find out more about Holly, Redlight, and Guy's other projects at www.priorityfilms.com and www.redlightchildren.com. The trailer for his Holly is below, and it is now available on DVD on the Priority Films website.
The Child Who Makes Your Makeup
Published July 26, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
You know that shimmer eye shadow that you wear on date or to special parties? Well, that shimmer comes from the mineral mica. And much of the world's mica comes from India, where children as young as six work long, arduous days for as little as a single meal of rice. And their labor is what fuels the Western cosmetic industry.
According to one Indian child rights NGO, after garments, sporting goods, and fashion accessories, cosmetics is the fourth largest industry employer of child labor. As one child laborer testified,
I used to go to school and I learned how to write my name in English and some maths. Now I just collect mica with groups of children. We work in a 5ft to 10ft hole, and loose earth falls down all the time. Last year one girl was buried.
Mica is not only used in cosmetics, but also in paints and in some electronics. It is actually a surprisingly common material in a number of consumer products. Just for fun, I decided to check some of my own cosmetics, specifically one that I thought was safe from being tainted by exploitation. My Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer? Contains mica. Since my Burt's Bees was made in North Carolina (at a factory near where I went to college), I thought for sure there could be no exploitation in it. It even says "100% Natural" on the label, which must mean something! But supply chains can taint products, even those made in America in fair factories.
The moral of this story is bigger than mica. Slavery and exploitation sneak into products via supply chains. And when a product like my Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer has up to 20 ingredients, it can be very difficult to track the source of each one. Maybe the mica in my tube was mined by poor, desperate and exploited children and maybe it was not. But as a very loyal customer, I want to ask Burt's Bees (and all the many, many other cosmetic companies who use mica) to find out.
Image from indiansari.blogspot.com
America's Trafficked Children Are Being Arrested, Not Rescued
Published July 22, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
This was the topic of an unprecedented congressional briefing on capitol hill that took place yesterday. Co- sponsored by the Caucus on Victims' Rights and the Caucus on Human Trafficking, Congressman Chris Smith, Congressman Ted Poe, and Congressman Jim Costa were attentively listening to the challenges and recommendations of the panelists in addressing child sex slavery in America. In addition to the Congressman in attendance - the room was packed with nearly 80 congressional staffers and professionals. A clear message was sent that we are concerned about every victim exploited through the crime of human trafficking and that includes hundreds of thousands of American kids - every year.
The congressional briefing was spurred by the National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America's Prostituted Children written by Shared Hope International. The report reveals the shocking findings of three years of intensive research on the issue of child sex trafficking in America from ten locations across the U.S. While the research locations ranged from areas as diverse as Salt Lake City, Utah to Clearwater, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada the findings were hauntingly similar - underage American girls are the bulk of victims in commercial sex markets and are too often being arrested rather than rescued. Additionally, nearly every interview revealed that American child sex trafficking victims were being misidentified or not identified at all by Child Protective Services and social service providers who are responsible for providing proper treatment and care. The arrest and lack of specialized services for these children is causing revictimization.
Important key findings:
- At least 100,000 children are used in prostitution every year in the United States.
- The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years old.
- Prostituted girls are often controlled by a pimp who recruits them into sex trafficking by posing as a boyfriend, caretaker, and protector.
- The 3 primary manifestations of child sex trafficking in America is: pimp-controlled prostitution, familial prostitution, and/or survival sex.
- The business of sex trafficking of America's youth is flourishing as demand for commercial sex with young, innocent girls and boys continues to occur with little and low punishment.
- Child sexual slavery is fueled by a cultural of tolerance which glorifies pimping and normalizes the sexual exploitation of children.
Domestic minor sex trafficking is a serious problem in the U.S., and one that will not be solved overnight. But the first step is admitting to ourselves that it's not just foreign kids who are vulnerable- it's our kids. And this report is the first step to learning to admit that.
Nigerian Baby Farms Breed Slaves from Slaves
Published July 21, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
I wish this article were a joke, and that the term "baby farm" was an exaggeration for what is happening to teen girls and their children in Nigeria. It's not. Nigerian girls are being trafficked to breed children in factory farm-like conditions to then be harvested and sold. Both the teens and their children are victims of the baby harvesting industry.
Here's how the baby farm operation works. Poor teen girls are lured into traffickers' hands in many of the ways traffickers lure teen girls for sex- promises of jobs, money, love, or stability. But instead of simply enslaving these girls in a traditional brothel, the traffickers bring them to an illegal clinic where they are raped until they become pregnant. During the pregnancy, they are cared for medically. After they give birth, the babies are sold into slavery for anywhere between $2,500 and $3,800 and the girls are paid $170 for their baby and their "work".
These clinics operate like a factory farm- the seeds are sown via rape into the teen mothers. The babies are then allowed to germinate, are harvested, and are sold as a commodity. I have rarely in my years working with human trafficking systems seen a process so completely dehumanizing to all the people involved. The girls are treated not just as objects but as factories, and the babies are treated as a product. A disturbing addition to this already disturbing story is the fact that some of these children are adopted by well-meaning parents, who believe the clinic is a legitimate adoption agency. They see the payment as an adoption fee and don't realize their child was created via human trafficking and rape in order to turn a profit. Other children, however, are not sold to well-meaning parents at all. Some are sold into slavery.
Thus far, I don't know of any confirmed cases of baby farms outside of Nigeria where the teen mothers were trafficked into the situation. There have been reports of baby farms in other countries like India where the women were all supposedly participating of their own free will. But I cannot help but believe that where there is a profit to be had by the sale of human beings, there will be traffickers willing to do what it takes to make that profit. This is not a uniquely Nigerian crime- in fact, Nigeria has laws preventing the sale of children in the same way the U.S. and the UK and many other countries do.
The photo above is a little tongue-in-cheek, but the reality of these girls' experiences is bleak. The outlook for some of their children is no brighter.
How You Rescue a Child From Slavery
Published July 16, 2009 @ 07:06AM PT
The issue of how to best remove children from human trafficking situations, and more importantly what to do with them when they are removed, is as complex as it is important. And it's not a process in which there can be many mistakes.
Unabridged has a great article this week about the steps one man named George takes to free children from slavery in the fishing industry in Ghana. It's a process, which in this case, can take up to six months. After identifying a child in slavery, he must then find the parents, convince them of the reality of their child's situation, and secure a legal means for their release into his care. By this time, the traffickers and the child have sometimes moved to a different place.
While this article is an interesting example of how to find and help child slaves, it's important to remember that removing children from different industries and in different countries will look very different. Sometimes, removal is accomplished by a raid by local law enforcement, a tool often used on illegal brothels or work sites with a high immigrant populations. Other times, children can be removed by the intervention of families, NGOs or community based groups. Occasionally, a child may escape his or her trafficker and seek help at a service agency. In short, there is no one universal way to rescue a child from slavery.
While the process of getting a child out of an exploitative situation is important, what happens next is arguable even more crucial. Children who are removed from slavery and not given proper services and resources are incredibly vulnerable to be re-trafficked. Since in all parts of the world, NGOs and shelters are underfunded and often at capacity, children are often rescued only to have no place to go. It's these situations which are often most dangerous for the children. This one of the many reasons that collaboration and coordination between law enforcement, NGOs, shelters, and other groups working with trafficked persons is so crucial.
Image from abandoned-orphan.typepad.com
World Premier: The Killers' New Human Trafficking Music Video
Published July 13, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
The Killers have teamed up with MTV's Exit Campaign to create a new music video focused on human trafficking. Their previous collaboration with Radiohead produced this, which focused on trafficking in manufacturing. The Killers' video instead focuses on trafficking of children into prostitution.
The world premier of this video is tonight on MTV, but you can watch it here now.
Honestly, I have some very mixed feelings about this video. On the one hand, everything MTV Exit does is brilliantly executed artistically and technically, and this video is no different. I'm also a personal fan of The Killers' music; the song they've created evokes the sort of hip melancholy that usually only happens when an American Apparel store shuts doesn in Brooklyn. On the other hand, the video reinforces some problematic stereotypes- like women and children being trafficking into the sex industry are locked in a room when they're not being raped. I also question who the audience for this music video is. It starts off seeming to be a general awareness activity, but towards the end starts to feel like it's only targeting men who buy commercial sex. I wish it had clearly focused on one group, or the public at large, instead of wavering.
The Radiohead video on human trafficking (as much as I moan about how I'm not a Radiohead fan) did an excellent job of presenting the issue of trafficking as simple and chillingly connected to you as a person. The Killers' video comes across as more sensational and more disconnected from the average MTV viewer. Still despite a few flaws, I hope that this video will help attract MTV viewers and Killers fans (especially those who may buy commercial sex or have friends who buy commercial sex) to learn more about human trafficking.
Now, if only I can download this song onto my Wii for Rockband II, then I can rock out to abolition with The Killers!
The New Market of Mobile Porn
Published July 08, 2009 @ 07:14AM PT
The porn industry has always been at the fore-front of developing new technologies. It popularized the VCR in the 1980s and quickly blanketed the Internet in the 1990s. And now, porn is going mobile. Mobile phone, that is.
Already, wireless companies in Japan are having capacity issues, as so many users are downloading more and more pornographic films and photos to their mobile devices. And those same companies estimate the amount of revenue from adult mobile downloads will double between now and 2013 to the tune of $4.9 billion. Now that's a lot of porn. In the U.S., the attitude is slightly different. After an app entitled "Hottest Girls" (decidedly soft-core, featuring scantily clad women) appeared in their app store, Apple announced they would not allow pornographic apps on their devices. However, the estimates of the market size- $3.5 billion by 2010- are similar to the Japanese.
So what's the problem with vast amounts of porn being downloaded and watched on cell phones across the country? As with most porn issues, the problem is kids. When porn is mobile, the industry is much harder to regulate. Already, there have been several cases of child pornography showing up on cell phones. It's also harder for parents to monitor what their children are looking at when porn can fit in pocket. And some of the porn that's out on the Internet these days is not of the "Hottest Girls" vein; it's hard-core, violent, and sometimes grotesque. A thriving mobile porn industry makes it much harder for parents and schools to protect children, both from child predators who would harm them and from disturbing and violent pornographic images.
The mobile porn industry is young enough that few meaningful national conversations about how to regulate and control this newest medium have happened. But if we're looking at what will be a $3.5 billion industry in a couple years, well then it's time to start talking.
Image from theiphoneblog.com
