Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Good News About Human Trafficking

These past few weeks I have been learning how the boycotts and buycotts that are used to try to raise awareness about international issues or even solve international issues, such as sweatshop labor, do not work as well as they claim to or as much as people would like them to be. In fact some boycott campaigns can do more harm to than good to people they are meant to help. Throughout this semester I have been researching what governmental and non-governmental organizations have done to raise awareness about and prevent human trafficking. One of the practices that many of these organizations have had success with has been local involvement. I am going to use this blog to show how local involvement has helped these organizations fight against human trafficking.
A charity from the United Kingdom called Stepping Stones Nigeria, partnered with a local non-governmental organization called Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network(CARN) to work with the children who have been kicked out of their homes because they were labeled ‘witches or wizards’. Stepping Stones Nigeria helped CARN and the children build houses and a school at the CARN shelter. CARN and Stepping Stones Nigeria have also hired teachers to educate the children. In addition to formal education, the children are also taught, marketable skills such as farming, sewing, building, and soap making. The two organizations have been talking with local professionals to set up apprenticeships for the children when they get older. The rabbit, poultry, and snail farms at the CARN shelter help the children make money, from sales, and give them protein rich food. Another success of these two organizations has been the Prevent Abandonment of Children Today (PACT) campaign. The campaign began in November of 2006 and with the help of international and local officials and activists, the campaign has led to the arrests of many parents who had abandoned their children. This has helped stop the abandonment of children because now that the police are enforcing the rules against child abandonment, parents are less likely to abandon their children. The PACT campaign has also gotten local radio and TV stations involved. These stations have daily advertisements warning their viewers and listeners, that child abandonment is illegal and immoral.
The International Justice Mission has worked with local police around the world to make sure laws against various types of human trafficking are enforced. In the Philippines child trafficking in particular has been a major problem. IJM members with experience in law enforcement have helped to give training to the Philippians’ police, who had not received formal police training before, due to lack of funding. In May 2003, the Philippians’ government passed an anti-trafficking law which can penalize traffickers with jail time up to life. Another law has also been passed in the Philippines with the help of IJM officials, this law makes sure that children in jail are not in adult prisons. This is a positive change because it prevents abuse of the children while they’re in jail.
Thus by working with local police and community members Stepping Stones Nigeria and the International Justice Mission have been able to create change in areas where human trafficking is a major problem.


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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Want to Know More?

Throughout my research about the many forms of modern slavery, I have found some sites that I have found very useful. Below are some of these sites as well as other websites created by organizations that should have very reliable information on modern slavery.
The following sites are run by governmental organizations, both national and international.

• http://naptip.gov.ng/
This is a site created by the Nigerian National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters .This site has wide range of information about the various departments of the agency, such as the departments of investigation, monitoring, public enlightenment, legal matters, and research and program development. There is also a department for the rehabilitation and counseling for victims of human trafficking.
• http://www.humantraffickinginasia.net
This site was created by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Asian Foundation and the United States Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The site covers current new and articles about human trafficking, as well as information from studies about human trafficking. The site also talks about the legal matters concerning human trafficking such as initiatives and laws protecting victims. It also mentioned the relatively unknown form of modern slavery called organ trafficking.
• http://www.osce.org/cthb
This site focuses on the Secretariat Office of Special Representative and Co-coordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings and their activities. The Secretariat Office is part of the Organization for Safety and Co-operation in Europe. The site has information about human trafficking which includes: statistics about traffickers and victims as well as many publications about helping the victims of human trafficking and about how the traffickers can be prosecuted.
• http://www.state.gov/g/tip
This site is run by the United States’ Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The site contains information about anti-trafficking and awareness programs, as well as legislation which focuses on human trafficking. One of the useful sources that can be found on this site includes a Trafficking in Persons report which covers information about human trafficking in 175 nations.
• http://www.ungift.org/
This site is managed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Labour Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the United Nation Children’s’ Fund(UNICEF), the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This site contains information about initiatives, conventions of groups fighting human trafficking, knowledge centers, and legal protocols.
• http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/index.html?ref=menuside
This site is managed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. This section of the website contains information on human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Such information includes recent news and events. It also tells about the roles of the departments of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for the prevention of human trafficking, the protection of the victims, and the prosecution of the traffickers. The site also has reports about global patterns of human trafficking and training materials for Criminal Justice professionals that want to know what they can do to fight human trafficking.

The next websites listed are from non-governmental organizations.
• http://www.antislavery.org/english/default.aspx
This site is run by the Anti-trafficking Monitoring group. This organization has branches all over the world. Some of the information on this site includes articles, reports, and other resources which discus the many forms of slavery that are present in the world. It also has resources about colonial slavery. One section of the website discuses what people can do to get involved in the fight against human trafficking.
• http://www.catwinternational.org/
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) is a nongovernmental organization which promotes women’s rights and works to combat sexual exploitation through work with international human rights. This work with human rights includes campaigns, programs, and projects aimed at raising awareness about sex trafficking and in the prevention of sex trafficking. A resource that could be very useful when one needs to find facts about trafficking is the Fact book of Trafficking, Prostitution, and Other Exploitations , which can be found under the heading ‘resources’.
• http://hrea.org/index.php?doc_id=430
This site is maintained by the Human Rights Education Associates, which is a non-governmental organization which supports educating people about human rights issues. This link will take you to a section of the site which contains information on slavery and forced labor. The information which this link discusses includes: the eight main forms of slavery according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the national and international legal documents against forced labor, and national and international anti-slavery agencies. The portion of this link that discusses the anti-slavery agencies is particularly helpful because it can lead to websites about those organizations. This link also contains teaching materials for advocates against slavery and for teachers.
• http://www.ijm.org
This website is run by the International Justice Mission, a human rights agency which fights against slavery, sexual exploitation, and other human rights violations by raising awareness, helping the victims, prosecuting against the traffickers and other perpetrators, and helping the communities of the victims. I highly recommend this site because IJM does not only teach about human rights issues and free the victims, it helps the victims gain marketable skills so they will not need to return to their form of slavery in order to make a living and has projects that try to help the communities so its citizens are less vulnerable becoming victims. The resources this site contains includes: stories about the victims who have been freed and how IJM has continued to help them, statistics and fact sheets about the forms of slavery and other human rights violations, a press center which contains press releases, articles, and video clips from IJM in the news, reports on the IJM projects, and resources to show how to be involved through a career in human rights and by praying for an end to injustices. This site also has a section which shows the many ways people can get involved in the work IJM is doing, whether they are a student, organization, or church.
• http://www.lastradainternational.org/
La Strada International is a European network against human trafficking. This site contains a wide range of information which includes: legal documents from the United Nations, the European Union, and the Council of Europe, discussions about the root causes of human trafficking and the trends for victims and traffickers in particular countries, reports of human trafficking, a resource center which contains background information about human trafficking, and links to many governmental and non-governmental organizations.
• http://www.polarisproject.org/
The Polaris Project is one of the largest anti-trafficking organizations in the United States and Japan. It has programs at international, national, and local levels. It provides social services and housing for victims of trafficking. It also runs the National Human Trafficking Resource Center which is a hotline for human trafficking, works towards anti-trafficking legislation, and helps communities get involved in the fight against human trafficking. This site contains information about: what human trafficking is, how people can report a possible case of human trafficking, what laws at the federal and state level protect victims and fight trafficking. It also has news about the organization’s projects and the community organizations the Polaris Project has helped to create.
• http://www.terredeshommes.org/
The Terre des Hommes International Federal is a group of national organizations which works for the rights of children and community opportunities without discrimination. This site contains information about the projects the organizations have created to improve living conditions of disadvantaged children, their families, and their communities and the organizations’ campaigns against child trafficking. These organizations have projects in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Resources which this site contains includes reports on the projects, publications about the prevention of child trafficking and inter-country adoption, and information on how to get involved through donations or political lobbying in Europe.
• http://www.humantrafficking.org/
This site contains information from governmental and nongovernmental organizations in East Asia and the Pacific that work against human trafficking. This site was created after the Asian Regional Initiative Against Trafficking. It contains a wide variety of information about campaigns and projects to prevent human trafficking and help the victims. There are also articles which talk about reasons behind human trafficking in specific countries. This site is very useful for finding links to other sites about projects and campaigns created by governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
• http://humantraffickingsearch.nd
This site is a search engine for human rights issues which was created by the National Multicultural Institute. It has several sections which are for: human trafficking, child labor, forced labor, and sex slavery. I found this site to be very useful since it led me to more reliable sites than google.com did.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Modern Witch Hunt Leads to Modern Slavery

After the slavery of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, termed colonial slavery, was abolished in the early 17th century, slavery didn’t disappear; it evolved into a new form. This form is rampant throughout the world today in developed countries as well as the developed countries. Modern Slavery can take many forms including human trafficking, debt bondage, contract slavery, and chattel slavery (in which people are sold). There are many differences between the new form and the old form, but the basic formula remains the same. Violence, whether it involves physically harming, threatening, or verbally demeaning the victim, is used to gain fill control over the victims. Once the victims can be controlled, they can be used for many purposes, such as sex and labor. Since slavery is illegal, it is not regulated as colonial slavery was. One can’t tell an enslaved person from a free person by sight alone, there are no distinctive markers. During colonial slavery one race was enslaved, if a person was of African descent they were most likely a slave, but almost anyone, regardless of race or nationality, can become a victim of the modern slavery. However, cultural factors, major events (such as civil war), and personal circumstances can make a person more vulnerable to becoming a slave.
An example of these factors joining to make a person more vulnerable to the modern slave trade can be found in the Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria. Here a 6 week witch hunt resulted in many deaths, in one community 120 people were killed (Foxcroft, 2008). This aftermath of death left many children orphaned by one or both parents. The orphans who were without parents, had no place to live. Those that were only orphaned by one parent were said to be ‘witches’ or ‘wizards’ by their surviving parent’s new spouse, and many were then abandoned to live in the streets. These ‘child witches’ were blamed for every misfortune that happened to the family or the community, whether it be drunkenness, disease, divorce, or infertility. Pastors of local revivalist Pentecostal churches only added to the hysteria by offering to ‘deliver’ the child with or wizard through exorcisms in exchange for a fee. These exorcisms involved chaining up the child and making them drink poisonous liquids, as well as beating and torturing them (Foxcroft, 2008). Those who were not exorcised were killed by being bathed in acid, burned alive, buried alive, drowned, or poisoned. If they were not killed they were imprisoned and tortured to extract a confession.
These horrifying conditions make the children living in this area of Nigeria particularly vulnerable to human trafficking. Those that live on the streets or in abandoned buildings because they have no home or have been kicked out of their home can be more easily kidnapped by traffickers since there is no one taking care of them and therefore no one keeping track of them. However, children that are still living with their families, whether they are among those that are labeled ‘child witches’ or not, are still vulnerable to human trafficking. This is because they are recruited for trafficking by family members. In this area, many parents release their children to traffickers; girls in particular are recruited for ‘housekeeping’. In most cases, these girls are sexually abused and if those that do return to their community are often psychologically damaged and have unwanted pregnancies and HIV/ AIDS (Foxcroft, 2008).
Recruiting for trafficking can be found cross culturally and is most common in areas where conditions such as natural disaster, extreme poverty, or severe shortage of jobs, cause family or friends to take the risks of their children or friends being trafficked in the hopes that they will have a better life elsewhere. The alternative view of the recruiting of family and friends for trafficking is that the ‘recruiter’ has been bribed by the traffickers. By looking at the situation in the Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria, I can see why parents would be willing to take these risks to get their child out of the community.
While Nigeria accounts for 60% of the UK’s source of child trafficking in Western Africa, the Akwa Ibom State is worse off than any other region of Nigeria in terms of vulnerability to trafficking (Foxcroft, 2008).The combination of the children who are kidnapped off of the streets and those who are given to traffickers by parents, have given the Akwa Ibom State the highest rate of child trafficking and child labor in Nigeria.
Works Cited
Foxcroft, G. (2008). Supporting Victims of Witchcraft Abuse and Street Children in Nigeria. Stepping Stones Nigeria .

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