Human trafficking is a disease that is spread across the world. (Including the United States) Trafficking in persons is a heinous crime and human rights abuse. The most vulnerable members of the global community, those who have limited access to social services and protections, are targeted by traffickers for exploitation. Steps have been taken, however, to locate victims, reinstate their inherent rights, provide them with protection and services, and prosecute offenders. The United States has the most advanced system to fight human trafficking. It's a never-ending battle across the world. How many guys do you work with who continually support human trafficking by traveling to these countries to exploit women and children in the sex industry?
No country is immune from human trafficking. Victims are forced into prostitution or to work in quarries and sweatshops, on farms, as domestics, as child soldiers, and in many forms of involuntary servitude. Traffickers often target children and young women. They routinely trick victims with promises of employment, educational opportunities, marriage, and a better life. (U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State.)
Some of my other posts on Human Trafficking:
Human trafficking is the third most profitable criminal activity, following only drug and arms trafficking. An estimated 9.5 billion is generated in annual revenue from all trafficking activities, with at least $4 billion attributed to the worldwide brothel industry.
11 Facts about Human Trafficking
1.The average cost of a slave around the world is $90.
2.Trafficking primarily involves exploitation which comes in many forms, including:
◦Forcing victims into prostitution
◦Subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude
◦Compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography
◦Misleading victims into debt bondage
3.According to some estimates, approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation.
4.It is estimated that there are approximately 27 million slaves around the world.
5.Between 2001 and 2005, 140 defendants have been convicted of human trafficking in the U.S. which is a 109% increase from 1996-2000.
6.Around half of trafficking victims in the world are under the age of 18.
7.More than 2/3 of sex trafficked children suffer additional abuse at the hands of their traffickers.
8.Trafficked children are significantly more likely to develop mental health problems, abuse substances, engage in prostitution as adults, and either commit or be victimized by violent crimes later in life.
9.Women who have been trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation experience a significantly higher rate of HIV and other STDs, tuberculosis, and permanent damage to their reproductive systems.
10.There is only one shelter in the U.S. designed specifically to meet the needs of trafficking victims, and it currently only houses a total of seven to nine victims.
11.Trafficking victims normally don't get help because they think that they or their families will be hurt by their traffickers, or that they will be deported.
Sources:
Initiative against Sexual Trafficking
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
US Dept. of State
Free the Slaves
Do something! 11 Facts About Human Trafficking
Arab Times today:
Read Article Here
US warns countries of sanctions
KUWAIT CITY, June 14, 2010: The United States has warned Kuwait, which remains in Tier 3 (watch list), and 12 other countries of possible sanctions for failure to do enough to fight human trafficking.
Other nations with a failing grade include Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, Congo, the Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
The US State Department evaluates the measures taken by different countries around the world to eliminate trafficking and sexual slavery every year.
On Monday, the department notified these 13 countries on their failure to comply with minimum international standards and that they might face US penalties unless their records improve.
The United States on Monday put allies Singapore and Thailand as well as Vietnam on a human trafficking watch list, accusing them of failing to prevent women from being forced into prostitution.
The move opens the way for the United States to cut off some civilian assistance, although it usually functions as a symbolic means to pressure countries to take action.
In an annual report, the State Department added a growing number of Asian nations to its watch list — Afghanistan, Brunei, Laos, Maldives, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Bangladesh, China, India, Micronesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka remained on the list, unchanged from a year earlier.
The following is the report on Kuwait:
Kuwait (Tier 3)
Kuwait is a destination country for men and women, some of whom are subsequently subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor. The majority of trafficking victims are from among the approximately 550,000 foreign women recruited for domestic service work in Kuwait. Men and women migrate from India, Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, Iran, Jordan, and Iraq to work in Kuwait, most of them in the domestic service, construction, and sanitation industries. Although these migrants enter Kuwait voluntarily, upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor by their sponsors and labor agents, including through such practices as non-payment of wages, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and restrictions on movement, such as the withholding of passports.
Labor recruitment agencies and their sub-agents at the community level in South Asia may coerce or defraud workers into accepting work in Kuwait that turns out to be exploitative and, in some instances, constitutes involuntary servitude. In some cases, arriving migrant workers have found the terms of employment in Kuwait are wholly different from those they agreed to in their home countries, making them vulnerable to human trafficking. As a result of such contract fraud, the Government of Indonesia in October 2009 banned further migration of domestic workers to Kuwait.
Some 600 Indonesian domestic workers sought refuge in the Indonesian embassy in Kuwait in the last year; some of these domestic workers may have been victims of trafficking. Some of these workers arrive in the country to find their promised jobs do not exist. Many of the migrant workers arriving for work in Kuwait have paid exorbitant fees to recruiters in their home countries — a practice making workers highly vulnerable to forced labor once in Kuwait. Some unscrupulous Kuwaiti sponsors and recruiting agents prey on some of these migrants by charging them high amounts for residency visas, which foreign workers are supposed to receive for free. Adult female migrant workers are particularly vulnerable and consequently are often victims of nonconsensual commercial sexual exploitation and forced prostitution. Some domestic workers have fled from employers, and subsequently have been coerced into prostitution. The Government of Kuwait does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making sufficient efforts to do so. Although the government made some efforts to improve its performance from previous years, heated public discourse and wide press debate on human trafficking have not yet resulted in the implementation of adequate laws. The Kuwaiti government made progress on some of the commitments it made in 2007 by making trafficking related law enforcement data available and by continuing to investigate and prosecute some types of trafficking related offenses. The government has not, however, made sufficient progress in fulfilling other commitments it made in 2007, including commitments to enact legislation specifically prohibiting human trafficking, to establish a 700-person permanent shelter for victims of trafficking, and to develop and implement a training program to educate government officials on the effective handling of trafficking cases. The government remains reluctant to prosecute Kuwaiti citizens for trafficking related offenses; much of the human trafficking found in Kuwait involves domestic workers in Kuwaiti private residences. The government acknowledged some workers face difficulties but denied this contributes to a systemic trafficking problem.
Recommendations for Kuwait: Enact the draft anti-trafficking bill to specifically prohibit and punish all human trafficking offenses; enact the draft domestic workers bill to provide domestic workers with the same rights as other workers; establish methods to proactively identify victims of human trafficking, especially among the female domestic worker population; ensure sponsors and employers do not illegally hold migrant workers’ passports; and expand on anti-trafficking training to law enforcement and judicial officials.
Prosecution
The Government of Kuwait demonstrated minimal progress in anti-human trafficking law enforcement efforts over the last year. Although the government has not yet enacted legislation explicitly prohibiting trafficking in persons, the Kuwaiti Criminal Code prohibits several trafficking-related offenses. Limited forms of transnational slavery are prohibited through Article 185, which prescribes a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. Article 201, which prohibits forced prostitution, prescribes a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment if the victim is an adult and seven years if the victim is under the age of 18. While these prescribed penalties are sufficiently severe and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious offenses, the government did not punish any trafficking offenders under these statutes.
Kuwait charged 15 Kuwaiti citizens and 63 expatriates with crimes relating to the abuse of domestic workers, including one murder, although only two criminals were imprisoned. Two of these Kuwaiti employers were sentenced to 15 and 16 years in prison; however, one absconded and was not apprehended. Another Kuwaiti employer was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but this sentence was subsequently suspended upon payment of a $350 fine.
The victim — an Indonesian maid — had been beaten, scalded by boiling water, and branded with a heated knife by the employer.
Another Kuwaiti employer was sentenced in December 2009 to fifteen years in prison for beating to death an Asian woman employed as her maid. In April 2010, an appeals court reduced the jail term to seven years. The government also convicted 48 defendants charged with violence against foreign workers in other occupations. No information on sentences was available for these cases. Kuwaiti law enforcement generally takes an administrative or civil approach in addressing cases of forced labor or exploitation, such as assessing fines, shutting down employment firms, issuing orders for employers to return withheld passports, or requiring employers to pay back wages. Such administrative penalties are not sufficiently stringent and do not reflect the heinous nature of human trafficking crimes. Kuwaiti courts sentenced two police officers to ten years in jail each for raping three female migrant workers. The crime took place in a detention facility, where the women were being held after running away from their employers.
Protection
During the year, Kuwait made no discernible efforts to improve protection for victims of trafficking. The government continued to lack a formal procedure for the systematic identification and protection of trafficking victims among vulnerable populations, such as foreign workers arrested without proper identity documents and women forced into prostitution. Kuwait’s short-term shelter has a maximum capacity of 40 and is intended to provide medical, psychological, and legal services. According to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MOSAL), approximately 300 domestic workers enter and leave the shelter each year and are referred from embassy shelters. Sources indicate, however, officials restricted the number of women each embassy sends to the shelter and requested the embassies only refer “simple” cases. There was no shelter available for male migrant workers. In 2007, the government committed to opening a 700-person shelter for both men and women.
This shelter had not yet been established, as the government was in the process of transferring the building from the Ministry of Education to MOSAL. During the reporting period, the Indonesian government, together with IOM, sent delegations to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan to assess the plight of Indonesian domestic workers in these countries. Over 400 victims, found in the Indonesian embassy shelter in Kuwait and unable to leave because they either did not have passports or exit permits (or both), were flown home as a result of the delegation’s intervention. Trafficking victims were generally deported for running away from their sponsors or employers. Foreigners convicted of prostitution are also deported, regardless of whether they were sex trafficking victims. Government authorities did not encourage victims to participate in the investigation or prosecution of their traffickers.
Prevention
The Government of Kuwait made some efforts to prevent trafficking in persons this year. Kuwait’s National Assembly passed and enacted a new private sector labor law, which, among other things, increased punishment for the illegal recruitment of workers, and allowed for the establishment of a state-owned recruitment company to oversee and manage the recruitment of all migrant workers — this recruitment company had not yet been established. The law excludes Kuwait’s half-million domestic workers — the group most vulnerable to human trafficking — and does not establish mechanisms to monitor workers’ rights. In August, MOSAL issued a ministerial resolution to immediately permit most foreign workers to change employers after three years of work, without having to secure the permission of the current Kuwaiti sponsor. In April 2010, MOSAL issued another resolution instituting a minimum wage of approximately $200 a month, Kuwait’s first-ever minimum wage. However, domestic workers are not included in these Resolutions..
A ministerial decree forbids sponsors and employers from withholding passports. However, this decree was not adequately enforced. It was reported that over 90 percent of the domestic workers who went to their embassies for assistance did not have access to their passports. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a warning against sex tourism in all of Kuwait’s Arabic dailies in February 2010 and the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs required some Sunni mosques to deliver Friday sermons on the danger of sex abroad and Islam’s strict teachings against improper sexual relations. Government officials received training on migrant workers’ rights and the ability to use existing laws to prosecute trafficking-related crimes. The government drafted an anti-trafficking bill that remained on the parliamentary agenda as of May 2010.
Human Trafficking in the US:
Read Story Here
10 Things You Can Do to Fight Human Trafficking
Human trafficking may seem like an insurmountable challenge because it is a multi-billion dollar global industry, but individuals can have a huge impact on the fight against trafficking. Here are 10 ideas for things you as an abolitionist can do to free slaves and end slavery.
1.Throw a Viewing Party. Educate yourself others about human trafficking by inviting your family and friends to watch a film on human trafficking and discuss the issue. A film, either a documentary or fictional story, is a great way to introduce people to the issue because it helps them connect visually and emotionally to the victims. A film will also provide some topics for discussion. For some suggested short films, see the 10 Human Trafficking Videos section of this blog.
2.Host a fundraiser for a local anti-trafficking nonprofit. While donating individually to the causes you support is great, there are many ways to take a small amount of money and turn it into a much larger amount for bigger impact. Instead of making a direct donation, try buying supplies for a bake sale or car wash and donate the proceeds, or recruit your friends to match your donation amount. Try some of these original fundraising ideas and don't be afraid to think outside the box.
3.Oppose the commercial sex industry, including prostitution, escort services, strip clubs, pornography and the "pimp n ho" culture. Sex trafficking victims can be found in all areas of the commercial sex industry, and demand for commercial sex makes the business lucrative for traffickers and motivates them to enslave more victims. Have bachelor and bachelorette parties at non-traditional (commercial sex-free) venues. Refuse to watch pornography and encourage friends to do the same. When fewer people buy commercial sex, traffickers have less incentive to force women and children to meet the demand.
4.Support new or better state and local anti-trafficking laws. Many states already have anti-trafficking laws, but some don't. Check to see if there are anti-trafficking laws in your state. Help strengthen state and local laws in your area by contacting your Governor, Senator or Representative. As a voter (or soon-to-be voter), you have the power to demand your representatives follow an abolitionist agenda. And remember, many voices asking for the same changes are powerful- consider a letter-writing campaign.
5. Buy fair trade. Consumer demand for cheap goods and services motivates traffickers to enslave workers to pick our fruit, make our clothing, clean our hotel rooms, serve our food and do a number of other tasks. By buying fair trade goods, you support companies and products which ensure a living wage for the producers and humane working conditions. Learn more about what buying fair trade means.
6.Support education and business opportunities for women and girls. Females disproportionately become victims of human trafficking because in many countries (including the U.S.) they lack the same educational and economic opportunities given to men. There are a number of international micro-economic development programs which give opportunities to girls and women, as well as U.S. organizations like the Girl Scouts which can help low-income girls afford college.
7.Think globally, act locally. Involve your community, like your school, club, sports team or place of worship in the abolitionist movement. It's a built-in network to spread the word about your passion for abolition and a great place to get your feet wet as an anti-trafficking activist. You might be surprised at what resources are available to you in your immediate community.
8.Express the importance of freedom through art, music or performance. A college student with a love of theater and a passion for abolition once noticed that there were a number of young but talented theater majors at her school who weren't getting cast in the big productions. So she wrote a short play based on real narratives of former slaves and cast her fellow students in the play. By charging a small admission fee to the show and selling products from Ten Thousand Villages, she was able to raise awareness in her community and over $1000 for a local anti-slavery NGO in a single night. A performance or piece of art stands out in a sea of facts and brochures.
9.Remember the past and learn from it. It wasn't that long ago that slavery was legal in the United States and most other countries. While economics is and has been the driving force behind human trafficking and slavery, racism, hate, bigotry, indifference and ignorance of different people and cultures have allowed it to thrive. Remember and celebrate abolitionist heroes of the past and celebrate racial unity and diversity today.
10.Report suspected situations of human trafficking. Be alert to signs in your community that someone is being held, forced or coerced to work. To seek assistance for a trafficking victim, call the Department of Health and Human Services Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888 or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE or 800-787-3224 (TTY). Both hot lines are prepared to answer calls in a number of languages. To report suspected trafficking crimes to law enforcement, call the U.S. Department of Justice Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force at 888-428-7581 or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at 866-DHS-2ICE.
You Can Make a Difference!
