Progress Report #2

Human Trafficking

Group number 1

Members: Jillian Mandell, Lea Prihoda, Bri Meyer, Kody Gilliland Amelia Heintzelman, Courtney Harnish

United States Team – Bri and Amelia

Bri (Labor Trafficking)

·      The different industries of labor trafficking in the US include; agriculture and farms, domestic work, hostess and strip clubs, restaurants and food service, factories, peddling and begging rings, and also hospitality industry.

·      One big way to take action is by telling your congressperson to act on critical anti trafficking legislation. This will really get the ball rolling in order for more regulations to be passed.

Sources:

Baldas, Tresa. "Human Trafficking a Growing Crime in the U.S." USATODAY.COM.

N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2012-01-22-us-human-trafficking_N.htm>.

"Human Trafficking Into and Within the United States: A Review of the Literature." U.S.             Department of Health and Human Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.               <http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/humantrafficking/litrev/>.

"Labor Trafficking in the US." Polaris Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.        <http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/labor-trafficking-in-the-us>.

"Trafficking Victim's Protection Act of 2000." N.p., n.d. Web.

Amelia (Sex Trafficking)

·      83% of the women interviewed for this study entered the sex industry before the age of 25

·      Pimps and other traffickers are often responsible for other criminal activity including fraud, extortion, migrant smuggling, theft, and money laundering

·      Women who are targeted by pimps and traffickers are often in economic desperation, have a lack of reliable income, live in poverty, have lack of family support, appear vulnerable

·      Methods of control include isolation, controlling monetary income, threats, intimidation, drug and alcohol dependencies, physical and sexual violence

·      Although sex trafficking tends to be stereotyped as an immigration issue equal attention must be given to legislation against trafficking to both international and US women

·      Official definition of trafficking included in Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children: “Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by the threat or use of force, by abduction, fraud, deception (inducement) coercion or the abuse of power, or by the giving or receiving of payments to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation (irrespective of the consent of the person): exploitations shall include, at a minimum, (the exploitation of prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation) forced labor of serviced slavery or practices similar to slavery or servitude

·      Factors promoting sex trafficking include (but are not limited to) gender based social and economic inequality, male demand for sexual entertainment, expansion of transnational sex industries, globalization of capital and information technology, armed conflict

·      Approx. 50,000 women and children are trafficked each year into the US from other regions including Latin America, Russia, and Southeast Asia

·      Legalization and regulation has been proposed as answer to abuse

Source:

Gomez, Carol J. “Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States; International and Domestic Trends.” National Institute of Justice. March 2001: 7-119. Web. 30   September 2012.

European (Eastern Europe) Team – Jillian and Kody

Kody (Labor Trafficking)

·      18% of the total of human trafficking is labor.  Although, that might be a low estimate to the amount of people that are really in labor trafficking

·      The department's report also says slave labor in developing countries such as Brazil, China and India was fueling part of their huge economic growth. Other countries on the blacklist were Algeria, Cuba, Fiji, Iran, Myanmar, Moldova, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Sudan and Syria.

Source:

"Sex Trade: Forced Labor Top U.N. Human Trafficking List." CNN. Cable News   Network, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012.  <http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/16/un.trafficking/>.

Jillian (Sex Trafficking)

·      Macedonia is one of the worst areas for sex trafficking abuse

·      CNN news clip of story from Velesta (town in Macedonia)

·      So hard to stop because so many police officers are on the payroll for the sex traffickers, traffickers/traders always get tipped off before a raid occurs but hard to figure out who is involved/who isn’t

·      Most women have bosses or owners and may never even know their true name

·      Have sex with as many as 10-18 men per day

·      NATO soldiers are “common customers”

·      In Europe alone, officials estimate that more than 200,000 women and girls — one-quarter of all women trafficked globally

·      Smuggled out of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics each year

·      The rapid rise of this sex slave trade can be traced to the fall of the Soviet Union

·      Moldova (really bad area)

·      “Moldovans are a hybrid population of Russians, Romanians, Jews, Ukrainians and Bulgarians,” Revenko said. “That creates a special race of women that are beautiful and in demand. They have no future. They are a good target for the traffickers.”

·      “In Velesta, a town so small that the 120 Moldovan girls working as prostitutes there make up a sizeable part of the population, the sex slaves are rarely seen during the day. Kept under lock and key in the back rooms of a dozen “kafane,” or café-bars that double as brothels, they are summoned by their owners when a customer arrives. Then the girls, most in their late teens or early 20s, are paraded in skimpy lingerie before clients who “pick us according to their tastes,” said Irina, a Moldovan who answered a want-ad to be a waitress in Italy, but ended up trapped in a Balkans brothel instead of working in a restaurant in southern Sicily.” -CNN

·      Billions in profits

·      Lack of laws/laws that are not enforced

·      SOURCE: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071965/ns/us_news-only/t/infiltrating-europes-shameful-trade-human-beings/#.UGj1d81DF2k

o   good video of Europe specific stories

§  global post

Source:

The Price of Sex. Dir. Mimi Chakarova. 2011. Price of Sex. Web. <http://priceofsex.org/>.

Africa Team – Lea and Courtney

Lea (Labor Trafficking)

·      27 million slaves worldwide, the most at any point in human history

·      Majority of slaves can be found in African and Asian countries

·      It is possible to end slavery in 25 years if everyone takes a part (government, businesses, organizations, everyday people)

·      Slaves work in cocoa, coffee, cotton, fishery, mines, domestic servitude, and prostitutes

·      Today, a slave costs on average $90, whereas in 1850 a slave could cost about $40,000 in today’s money.  This is a historical low

·      In Ghana, children are given up by their families to work in fisheries near Lake Volta

·      Many families are promised that their children are going off to a better life and will have an education

·      Must ask the community what the best solution may be since what works in one place does not work in another

·      Education is key, many centers revolve around educating the children in basic skills like reading (especially those children that come from villages with high illiteracy)

·      In Ghana, parents are taught job skills before being reunited with their children so they do not fall into the trap

·      Children as young as three can be lured into trafficking

·      Children human trafficking is prevalent among orphans who must become the breadwinners

·      Most children endured beatings and psychological abuse, including death threats and warnings they would never see their parents again

·      Many of the countries’ governments do not comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act minimum standards

·      Many are abused (little food, no schooling, long days)

·      Groups are working toward stopping slavery

o   Challenging Heights (Ghana)

o   Free the Slaves (International)

Sources:

"Free the Slaves." Free the Slaves. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2012.  <https://www.freetheslaves.net/>.

Kim, Kyle. "U.S. Report: Worst Human Trafficking in Africa, Middle East." Social                       Capital Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2012. <http://socialcapitalreview.org/u-s-report-worst-human-trafficking-in-africa-middle-east/>.

"West Africa: Stop Trafficking in Child Labor." Human Rights Watch. N.p., n.d. Web. 01Oct. 2012. <http://www.hrw.org/news/2003/04/01/west-africa-stop-trafficking-child-labor>.

Courtney (Sex Trafficking)

·      United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimate that profits from human trafficking in West Africa are exceeded only by the trade in weapons and drugs

·      Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mali, Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger are both suppliers and receivers of trafficked children.

·      A UNICEF investigation in 1998 was used to identify factors that influence child trafficking and they found that poverty, cultural values and traditional belief systems all weaken the protection of child rights and encourage children towards traffickers.

·      According to the UNICEF study, some other factors that encourage and support child trafficking include:

•                Lack of vocational and economic opportunities for the youth in rural areas;

•                Insufficient and/or inaccessible educational opportunities;

•                Ignorance on the part of families and children of the risks involved in trafficking, such as severe abuse, rape, torture, exposure to HIV & AIDS and even to psychological risks related to separation and emotional isolation;

•                Traditional migration of adults within the framework of economic activities;

•                High demand for cheap and submissive labour in the informal economic sector;

•                Opportunities to travel, provided through easy means of communication and transport;

•                The desire of young people for liberation through migration; and

•                Institutional lapses such as inadequate political commitment, non-existent national legislation against child trafficking and absence of a judicial framework allowing for the perpetrators of trafficking to be held accountable for their acts.

·      The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that in 2006, the incidence of child labour in Nigeria for children aged between 10 and 14 amounted to roughly 12 million

·      Women run an equally high risk of being trafficked, and while children are sometimes trafficked for prostitution purposes, women are more likely to be trafficked into the sex industry as sex slaves.

·      South Africa is the primary African destination of trafficked women because it is the regional power house, and its image as a destination of opportunities is regularly used by traffickers to lure women and girls into trafficking traps.

·      The majority of people trafficked to South Africa are from ten countries, namely Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (5).

·      traffickers identify women who are socio-economically deprived and then convince these women to leave their circumstances and travel with them. False promises of food, other material goods and employment convince the victims to willingly accompany the traffickers.

·      In the case of Mozambique, women may also be recruited at taxi stands by taxi drivers who offer women cheap fares. They will proceed through the border without incident; only once through border control are the women forcefully held against their will

Sources:

Consultancy Africa Intelligence. "Human Trafficking in Africa: A Modern Day Evil."        Consultancy Africa Intelligence. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl e&id=233&Itemid=156>.

Skinner, E. Benjamin. "South Africa's New Slave Trade and the Campaign to Stop It."  Time. Time, 18 Jan. 2010. Web. 01 Oct. 2012. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952335,00.html>.

CONCLUSIONS:

Human trafficking is in every part of the world.  Most that are put into it are told promises of a better life with education and job skills.  It is usually too late before they realize that they were lied to.  Violence and abuse is often used whether it is sex or labor trafficking.  Many victims are exported to other countries and originally bought for very little (In some places, people can be sold for as little as $5-$10).  To stop trafficking, it takes work from everyone.