Slavery's Global Comeback

Slavery's Global Comeback

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/slaverys-global-comeback/266354/
6 DEC 19 2012, 7:44 AM ET 5


J.J. GOULD - J.J. Gould is deputy editor of TheAtlantic.com. He has written for The Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, The Moscow Times, and The European Journal of Political Theory

Buying and selling people into forced labor is bigger than ever. What "human trafficking" really means.


Slaves pan for gold in Accra, Ghana. Many have children with them as they wade in water poisoned by mercury that's used in the extraction process. (Lisa Kristine)

RANGOON, Burma -- Earlier this year, Ko Lin, 21 at the time, left his hometown of Bago, 50 miles northeast of Rangoon, along with a friend to look for work in Myawaddy, near the Thai border. The two found jobs there as day laborers loading and offloading goods, anything from rice to motorcycles, that were being illicitly transported by truck in and out of Thailand. After a month, Ko Lin had saved up the equivalent of about US$150 and decided to rejoin his family in Bago. Stopping first to pray at a local pagoda, the two friends met a super-amiable young woman who ended up pitching them an offer to work in Thailand. Her uncle, she said, could arrange a great job for them there.

Ko Lin was reluctant but bent to his friend's enthusiasm. The uncle turned out to be a trafficker who forced them to walk through the jungle for more than a week. They ended up in weeks of forced labor in Chonburi, a city 60 miles east of Bangkok, after which Ko Lin was knocked unconscious and woke up separated from his friend on a fishing boat in the Gulf of Thailand. For months, he then rarely if ever had more than two hours of sleep a night, always on a shared, cramped bed; he was given three meals only on days when the captain felt he'd pulled in enough fish to earn it; and when he was fed, it was always dregs from a catch that couldn't be sold on the market. His arms regularly became infected from the extended exposure of minor wounds to sea water. If he complained that he was feeling unwell, the crew would beat him. He was injured multiple times by heavy blocks and booms, once having to tend to a head wound himself with a handful of wet rice. Three months out, Ko Lin was rescued in a police raid.

There are now twice as many people enslaved in the world as there were in the 350 years of the transatlantic slave trade. Ma Moe, 34, and her husband lived in a suburb about an hour outside of Rangoon, poor enough that some days they had nothing to eat. A friend offered her a job as a domestic worker in China where, she was told, she could make between $100 and $200 a month. Despite her husband's objections, she decided to go. Near the border, her friend told her the trip would be getting rough and she should take some pills so she wouldn't get carsick. The pills knocked her out almost immediately. When she woke up, she was in a small village in China; she still doesn't know where. Kept with a few other women in a small house, Ma Moe would be taken around to different villages where she was offered up for purchase as a "wife." After a failed escape attempt, when she was beaten by local police, a man from northern China bought her. Given the anxious month-and-a-half she'd now spent as a Burmese commodity in China, she could hardly eat from the stress and was emaciated. Concerned, wanting a child, the man who bought her had her blood tested; the results showed she's HIV-positive; and he ended up leaving her at the bus station. With no hope of being able to get back to Burma, she prayed to die there. But a young newspaper seller, after fending off an attempt by another apparent trafficker to get Ma Moe to go with him, called a Chinese police hotline for trafficking victims. The police coordinated Ma Moe's transfer to a Burmese anti-trafficking task force, and they ultimately took her home.

There's a plain-language word for the horror stories that Ko Lin and Ma Moe have survived, as anachronistic as it might sound: slavery. Contemporary slavery is real, and it's terribly common -- here in Burma, across Southeast Asia, and around the world.

The leading demographic accounts of contemporary slavery project a global slave population of between 20 million and 30 million people. Most of these people have been unknowingly trafficked though the promise of opportunity by predators. Others are children literally sold by parents or relatives in order to pay off debt or to lessen their economic burden. The highest ratios of slaves worldwide are from South and Southeast Asia, along with China, Russia, Albania, Belarus, and Romania. There is a significant slave presence across North Africa and the Middle East, including Lebanon. There is also a major slave trade in Africa. Decent-based slavery persists in Mauritania, where children of slaves are passed on to their slave-holders' children. And the North Korean gulag system, which holds 200,000 people, is essentially a constellation of slave-labor camps. But most contemporary slavery is based on trafficking -- based on varying combinations of deception and coercion, very mobile, very dynamic, leveraging communications and logistics in the same basic way modern businesses do generally. After the earthquake of 2010 devastated Haiti, Hispaniola was quickly overrun with opportunistic traffickers targeting children to sell into domestic slavery or brothels.

As pervasive as contemporary slavery is, it hasn't come clearly into focus as a global issue until relatively recently. There are a couple of big reasons why -- one having to do with the scale of the problem, the other with the concept of slavery itself.

The Scale

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates the number of slaves in the world today at around 21 million. Kevin Bales, of Free the Slaves -- the U.S. affiliate of the world's oldest human-rights organization, the U.K.-based Anti-Slavery International -- (and the author of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy) puts it at 27 million. Siddharth Kara of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy says more than 29 million.

That range represents a tightening consensus. In the 1990s, some accounts had the world's slave population as high as 100 million; others had it as low as 2 million. "It was nuts," says Bales. "I traced all these numbers back. The 100-million number, I finally found this guy in India who'd said it at at UN conference. I asked him, 'How did you get that?' And he said, 'I don't know, it was just a guess.' So nobody had the number."

Bales's 27 million -- which as a statistician he considers a "conservative estimate" -- is derived from secondary-source analysis. "It's still not great," he says, "in the sense that it's not based on random-sample surveys at the grass-roots level. We're doing that now, though, building much sounder numbers, and they're still coming out in the same range. ... So we're getting closer."

In which case, assuming even the rough accuracy of 27 million, there are likely more slaves in the world today than there have been at any other time in human history. For some quick perspective on that point: Over the entire 350 years of the transatlantic slave trade, 13.5 million people were taken out of Africa, meaning there are twice as many enslaved right now as there had been in that whole 350-year span.

The Concept

Some of what's obscured contemporary slavery, then, has been mathematical; but some has been conceptual: In the West, and particularly in the United States, slavery has long settled in the public imagination as being categorically a thing of the past.

One consequence of this is that when people apply the idea of slavery to current events, they tend to think of it as an analogy. That is, they tend to use the word to dramatize conditions that may be exploitive -- e.g., terrible wages or toxic working environments -- but that we'd never on their own call "slavery" if the kind of forced labor we used to call "slavery" still existed. "In 1994, when I was in the United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery," Bales recalls, "a group came in and said they wanted the UN to declare incest a form of slavery. And we were like, incest is incest; you don't have to call it slavery."

But there's a reverse consequence to seeing slavery as a thing of the past, too: It can mean having a harder time recognizing slavery when it's right in front of us.


A slave in Kathmandu, Nepal, stacks 18 bricks at a time, each weighing four pounds, carrying them to nearby trucks for 18 hours a day. (Lisa Kristine)

Right after the end of the Cold War, people in Western cities -- in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York -- started noticing something pronounced about migration patterns out of the just-collapsed Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc: The "immigrants" were disproportionately young women and girls. It took no one long to understand that they were prostitutes, and it took few much longer to get that they weren't operating freely; criminals were trafficking them out of Eurasia effectively as black-market goods, like opium or Kalashnikovs.

The dominant rhetoric that the coalition of Christian conservatives and anti-prostitution feminists who took the lead on this issue used at the time wasn't "slavery" but "trafficking for sexual exploitation." Around the same time, a movement developed against sweatshop labor that ended up focusing not broadly on the issue of forced labor but narrowly on the conditions of the sweatshops themselves, sometimes even just on safety issues within them.

Luis CdeBaca, the U.S. ambassador at large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, sees both of these frameworks as inhibiting and, intentionally or not, ways to feel too comfortable about addressing the issues in question. "If we say the problem with domestic servants is that they're not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, and so let's just go out and make sure they get covered by labor laws around the world, we get to ignore, for example, the fact that domestic servants are being locked in and raped. It's not a wage issue; it's a crime issue. If we look at prostitution and we devolve back to the old debates about whether prostitution should be legal and regulated, should it be illegal and criminalized, we won't say, '... hey, why doesn't the 13th Amendment apply to a woman in prostitution just as much as to a woman on a farm?' Then we end up missing the reality of modern slavery."

Pattern Recognition

CdeBaca thinks we've been using euphemisms about slavery in our recent history scarcely less euphemistic than were "servant" or "peculiar institution" before the U.S. Civil War, noting current preferences for "gender-based violence" or "rape as a weapon of war" to describe what goes on in eastern Congo. "If rape becomes the more comfortable word than slavery," CdeBaca says, "you know slavery is a highly emotive term."

But if the president of the United States has nevertheless embraced the term "slavery," as Barack Obama has now done with his speech at the Clinton Global Institute in September, you know it's also an emotive term whose time has come -- or come again. The State Department, meanwhile, now answers the question "What is modern slavery?" by implying, virtually to the point of stating, that it now considers "slavery" the umbrella term for crimes of "trafficking":

Over the past 15 years, "trafficking in persons" and "human trafficking" have been used as umbrella terms for activities involved when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled service.

The United States government considers trafficking in persons to include all of the criminal conduct involved in forced labor and sex trafficking, essentially the conduct involved in reducing or holding someone in compelled service. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act as amended (TVPA) and consistent with the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol), individuals may be trafficking victims regardless of whether they once consented, participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked, were transported into the exploitative situation, or were simply born into a state of servitude. Despite a term that seems to connote movement, at the heart of the phenomenon of trafficking in persons are the many forms of enslavement, not the activities involved in international transportation.

(Emph. added)

CdeBaca understands the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Palermo Protocol that State mentions here, both dating from 2000, to be crucial preconditions for the change in social conceptions about human trafficking and forced labor that have followed. Usually the dynamic is the other way around, CdeBaca says: A social movement grows and, if it's successful, after 10 years or so, Congress passes legislation or the UN (or some other international body) passes a resolution. With contemporary slavery, more than a decade of governmental and trans-governmental initiatives have seeded the social conversation, which has in turn taken the lead in articulating the emerging consensus around the language of contemporary slavery.

CdeBaca thinks this consensus is hugely consequential, not just domestically in the U.S. -- where Obama has now not only embraced this language but issued an executive order to remove human trafficking and forced labor from federal contracting -- but globally. "The fact that we're able to come into a place like Burma, which has come so far so fast just in the last 10 or 12 months, with this unified message is wonderful," he says, "because the government here isn't going to have to unlearn those differences. When we talked to the government [on Friday], they were talking about forced labor and forced prostitution as though they're the same concept. We didn't have to talk through 'here's why you need to care about forced labor as much as you care about forced prostitution,' or 'here's why the girls in the brothels matter.' They got it. And I think it's because they come into this at this moment, now."

The New Abolitionism

It's to the not-modest credit of modern civilization that the awareness of slavery has always given rise to anti-slavery movements. Abolitionism today may be more complex than what went before it only because it has to be. Contemporary slavery is, as Ethan Kapstein wrote in Foreign Affairs back in 2006, "a product of the same political, technological, and economic forces that have fueled globalization" -- or as Andrew Forrest, the chairman of Fortescue Metals Group and founder of the anti-slavery group Walk Free, has it, "Slavery is the dark side of globalization."

In essence, organizations like Walk Free, or the Global Business Coalition Against Trafficking (gBCAT), want harness the good, or at least potentially good, aspects of globalization to eliminate its most evil aspect. Forrest believes that it now makes maximum sense for big global businesses to integrate their risk-management strategies with their corporate-social-responsibility strategies and their procurement strategies, cleaning their supply chains once and for all of any involvement with forced labor. Forrest believes in the constructive power of potential shame, too, with his current campaign to recruit major businesses around the world to sign on to Walk Free's "zero tolerance for slavery pledge."

Slavery today is driven by the same political, technological, and economic forces as globalization itself. Projects like this won't necessarily be easy; in fact, their success will necessarily be a tough question. There are certainly precedents for it: Nike may be one of the most slave-free garment manufacturers in the world today, because it got hammered for its labor practices in the 1990s by a very successful campaign against it as a brand -- brand equity being a very important, very bottom-line issue for a company like Nike. But what if we're looking instead at a mining company that needs to procure concrete for railway tracks to get its materials out, and the best deal on concrete is made by slave labor in Abu Dhabi by some nameless supplier? There's no brand equity at stake there. Mineral extraction is a similarly faceless industry. We all know who makes our cell phones; few of us know who makes the tantalum and coltan that go into them. That doesn't have to be note of cynicism, but it does get at the complexity of the challenge in leveraging global business's better angels against its worst instincts.

There will meanwhile be new opportunities for political will against slavery, particularly now that Obama has used the word -- new legislative efforts, new instruments of international cooperation -- and new opportunities to build important capacities, with law enforcement, with victim care and rehabilitation, and so on.

And then there will be social-awareness campaigns -- which may represent the one strand of the contemporary anti-slavery movement skeptical observers are more inclined to be cynical about than they are about the leadership of global business on the issue. If you're tempted to think that way, consider before anything else that here in Rangoon, it's not only perfectly reasonable but a vital public-service announcement to say, "Kids, this is how you recognize it if someone's trying to trick you into slavery, and this is what you do about it ...." When I asked Ma Moe, who'd been sold into slavery by a friend, what was the most important thing she wanted people to understand about her experience, she lit up emotionally in a way she hadn't up to then, insisting emphatically on how crucial it is that people in Burma -- especially young people -- get the coaching they need to insulate themselves and their families from the risk of being trafficked, particularly given how sophisticated traffickers are at profiling victims and preying on trust.

Neither is any of this the hard part compared with the complex task of modulating or outright changing kinds of social norms that heighten the risk of capture by traffickers, particularly in contexts governed by a caste system or other forms of entrenched social hierarchy. Which aren't uncommon across South and Southeast Asia, and which can create barriers to human empathy every bit as powerful as what morally and psychologically enabled the open slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries.

Precedents

There are historical reasons why social awareness of slavery could be more effective on the global level than we might first be inclined to think.


"Stowage of the British Slave Ship 'Brookes' Under the Regulated Slave Trade, Act of 1788" (Thomas Clarkson)

As Bales likes to remember, there have been three major anti-slavery movements in the modern era prior to the nascent contemporary one. The first was started in 1787 by Anti-Slavery International -- or as it was called at the time, the Society for Effecting the Termination of the Slave Trade -- in London. Twenty years later, the slave trade in the British Empire was finished. This worked completely through social mobilization; in fact, it was one of the first major social movements in the West. The Society inundated parliament with huge petitions against slavery -- 517 altogether. It passed around anti-slavery cameos that fashionable women wore in bracelets and pins. And it disseminated Thomas Clarkson's drawing of the Liverpool-based slave ship Brookes, showing the horrible reality that slaves were forced to cross the Atlantic packed in like sardines, lying in their own excrement and vomit, for months. This picture was extremely shocking -- and effective.

The second anti-slavery movement was marked by some of the most decisive moral leadership in U.S. history, but it was also thwarted by a virtually total social division between the North and the South, with virtually total Southern intransigence, and culminated an enormous war that resulted in more than a million deaths, counting civilian casualties, and ended in results for the United States' former slaves that abolitionists could only be very partially proud of, if at all, and that has cast a long shadow since.

Hierarchical societies still create empathy barriers as powerful as what enabled the open slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries. The third movement is less well known but offers a precedent for contemporary abolitionism that may be in some ways as compelling as the first. This was the global movement, which included luminaries like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt, against the enslavement of between 5 and 10 million people in the Congo as the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. The purpose of this enslavement was to feed new technologies, particularly pneumatic rubber tires. But the breakthrough for this movement was also thanks to new technologies: portable cameras that enabled abolitionists to do magic-lantern shows in big theaters everywhere -- a kind of documentary film before there were documentary films -- detailing the destitution in the Congo, which truly freaked viewers out and helped mobilize the public broadly. After this anti-slavery campaign captured the photos it captured and showed them across Western Europe and in North America, Leopold, who had completely denied everything until then -- and he could, because there was no way to prove what he was doing -- gave up, ended the enslavement, and, in 1908, relinquished the Congo to the Belgian government.

Let's see what the fourth one does. The most optimistic view says that as massive as slavery is today, it's also on the edge of its own extinction, needing only the right push. If the global slave population is 27 million, it's still 27 million out of a total of 7 billion, making it -- and here's the paradox -- the smallest fraction of the global population to be enslaved ever. If slavery generates between $30 billion and $45 billion a year to the global economy, it's a big industry, but it also amounts to the smallest ratio of the global economy ever represented by slave labor and slave output. While slavery has grown in absolute terms, it's shrunk in relative terms, and so, the theory goes, it's increasingly vulnerable.

A possibly less optimistic but still hopeful variation on this theme -- well clear of the most pessimistic view, at any rate, which would be that slavery is simply endemic to global capitalism -- is that slavery isn't just growing more slowly than the rest of the world is; it's also increasingly toxic to the rest of the world; and it's increasingly toxic in ways that the rest of the world will be forced to defend itself against. The same interests responsible for human trafficking and forced labor are, after all, also responsible for fostering other types of crime, as well as the kinds of corruption that slave-labor operations need for survival. If developed countries let slavery go unchecked, it will threaten to corrode the bilateral and multilateral agreements, and the international rule of law, that the whole global economy depends on. If developing countries don't check it, it may or may not mean slower short-term growth, but it definitely complicate long-term growth growth, or stunt it altogether, as outside investors bring more scrutiny and demand more transparency. In the meantime, the more visible an issue slavery becomes globally, the less inclined I'd be to forget some of the social uses mobile technology and social media been put to around the world in the last two years -- or to ignore the analogies between these uses and some of the tactics of the first and third modern anti-slavery movements.

The relationship between a country's tacit willingness to abide slavery and that country's risk of being left behind by the currents of global civilization isn't one that Burmese officials are necessarily inclined to discuss candidly. When I asked Brigadier General Kin Maung Si, the chief of police and head of the ministry of home affairs's human-trafficking office, about his government's emerging commitment to eliminating forced labor, he spoke only of poor economic conditions as a cause of slavery, not of slavery as a cause of economic stagnation. But it's a relationship that his government's new commitments acknowledge implicitly.

It's also a relationship that the leading exponents of the second modern anti-slavery movement were emphatic about and staked their own political reasoning on. As The Atlantic's first editor, James Russell Lowell, wrote in the magazine's endorsement of Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860:

The inevitable tendency of slavery is to concentrate in a few hands the soil, the capital, and the power of the countries where it exists, to reduce the non-slaveholding class to a continually lower and lower level of property, intelligence, and enterprise. ... We do not, of course, mean to say that slaveholding states may not and do not produce fine men; but they fail, by the inherent vice of their constitution and its attendant consequences, to create enlightened, powerful, and advancing communities of men, which is the true object of all political organization.

This reporting was sponsored by MTV EXIT

Trafficking in the Phillipines

Suspect in human trafficking faces deportation from PH
By Tetch Torres
INQURER.net
10:58 am | Tuesday, December 18th, 2012
 2 23 16

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/59769/suspect-in-human-trafficking-faces-deportation-from-ph

Geralyn Quezo, 17, (R) looks on as she stands by a fellow victim of human trafficking at the Visayan Forum Foundation’s halfway house in Manila, 09 July 2007. AFP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration has started deportation proceedings against a foreigner suspected of having ties with a human trafficking syndicate that provides fake Philippine passports to Chinese nationals travelling in the country.
Acting Immigration intelligence chief Ma. Antonette Mangrobang identified the foreigner, a Singaporean national, as Law Suang See. Mangrobang said See was with a Chinese companion Jianhuang Guo, 37. They were both arrested at the NAIA 3 terminal last December 12 when the duo arrived a Cebu Pacific flight from Macau. Both are presently detained at the immigration jail in Bicutan, Taguig pending deportation proceedings. Mangrobang said the passengers were apprehended after Guo presented a Philippine passport in the name of Johnny Dela Cruz Que which turned out to be spurious. She said Guo’s inability to speak in Filipino aroused the suspicion of immigration officers who then doubted the authenticity of his Philippine passport. At this point, See admitted that his companion could not talk in the language and that he was actually a Chinese national. He then produced his companion’s Chinese passport and identication card as a holder of a special resident reiteree’s visa. Guo was also carrying a birth certificate purportedly issued by the National Statistics Office, an NBI clearance and Taxpayer’s Identication Number (TIN) card.

Open Up Your Mind and See Like Me

ASON MRAZ TOPS MYANMAR ANTI-TRAFFICKING CONCERT
By YADANA HTUN
— Dec. 17 12:09 AM EST
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/jason-mraz-tops-myanmar-anti-trafficking-concert


YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz mixed entertainment with education to become the first world-class entertainer in decades to perform in Myanmar, with a concert to raise awareness of human trafficking.

Mraz's 2008 hit "I'm Yours" was the finale for Sunday night's concert before a crowd of about 50,000 people at the base of the famous hilltop Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the country's biggest city.

Local artists, including a hip-hop singer, also played at the event organized by the anti-trafficking media group MTV EXIT — for "End Exploitation and Trafficking" —in cooperation with U.S. and Australian government aid agencies and the anti-slavery organization Walk Free.

Myanmar is emerging from decades of isolation under a reformist elected government that took office last year after almost five decades of military rule. It has been one of the region's poorest countries, and its bad human rights record made it the target of political and economic sanctions by Western nations.

But democratic reforms initiated by President Thein Sein have led to the lifting of most sanctions, and the country is hopeful of a political and economic revival. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy opposition leader, was released from house arrest in late 2010 and won a seat in parliament last April.

Mraz called his top-billed appearance at the concert a "tremendous honor."

"I think the country is, at this time, downloading lots of new information from all around the world," he said. "I've always wanted my music to be here, (for) hope and celebration, peace, love and happiness. And so I'm delighted that my music can be a part of this big download that Myanmar is experiencing right now."

Organizers said Mraz was the first international artist to perform at an open-air, mass public concert in Myanmar. Jazz artists Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Charlie Byrd visited the country under U.S. government sponsorship in the 1970s, when it was still called Burma, but played at much smaller venues.

Many in the crowd queued for two hours before being admitted to the concert site. Yangon native Sann Oo, 31, wearing a white T-shirt with a sketch of Mraz, said he was pleased that Mraz had come and that there would be a broadcast of the event.

"His visit can promote the image of Myanmar, because people outside have been seeing the country as an insecure place, and poor," he said. "Now they can see how we look like from the concert. It also opens the potential for more concerts by foreign artists."

Mraz has a history of involvement with human rights and other social causes.

But there was some criticism of his visit by campaigners for Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya community, which has been the target of ethnic-based violence this year that has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes into makeshift refugee camps. They feel Myanmar's government has been complicit in the discrimination, and that Mraz's visit provides it cover with the image of being a defender of human rights.

Mraz said he was aware of the issue, but that if he didn't come to do the concert because someone else had asked him to protest another problem, then that would not help tackle the exploitation and human trafficking issue.

"I understand that there is a lot of wrongdoing in this world," he said. "Today I'm here for this."

Walk Free used the occasion of Sunday's concert to launch a campaign calling on the world's major corporations "to work together to end modern slavery by identifying, eradicating and preventing forced labor in their operations and supply chains." They are seeking to have the companies make a "zero tolerance for slavery pledge" by the end of March next year.

"While many think of slavery as a relic of history, experts estimate that there are currently 20.9 million people living under threat of violence, abuse and harsh penalties," the Australia-based group said in a statement. "Within this massive number, the majority of people - more than 14.2 million - are in a forced labor situation, used to source raw materials, and create products in sectors such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing and domestic work."

Something Good

LEARN in Human Trafficking, Birthday and Hotline

December 14, 2012 at 10:57 AM

Over 64,000 Calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in Just 5 Years!

Continue to link

1-888-373-7888 - The National Human Trafficking Resource Center is a national, toll-free hotline, available to answer calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In the first 5 years, the Hotline has received over 64,000 calls, & identified 8,508 potential trafficking victims, about 1/2 of which were American citizens. Without this resource, trafficking victims would have nowhere to turn. We'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Polaris Project, who runs the hotline.http://www.good.is/posts/over-64-000-calls-to-the-national-human-trafficking-hotline-in-just-5-years

Cool Anti-Trafficking Campaign in Ireland

http://www.turnofftheredlight.ie/action/

WHAT IS TURN OFF THE RED LIGHT?

Turn Off The Red Light is a campaign to end prostitution and sex trafficking in Ireland. It is being run by a new alliance of civil society organisations. Trafficking women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation is a modern, global form of slavery. We believe that the best way to combat this is to tackle the demand for prostitution by criminalising the purchase of sex. 

Well done, H+K!

Human Trafficking: California and President Obama Lay Out New Requirements for Prevention of Human Trafficking and Forced Labor


December 2012 marks the beginning of a new compliance regime. California Attorney General Kamala Harris heads into the new year with a list of targets provided by the California Franchise Board, which identifies those companies that must be compliant with an anti-human trafficking statute that puts their international supply chains in the domestic crosshairs. In addition, President Obama recently signed an executive order that lays out new requirements for government contractors and their subcontractors to prevent human trafficking and forced labor. If your company finds itself out of compliance under either of these new mandates, you run the risk of injunction, civil claims and perhaps the greatest risk to brand protection: the public government statement that your company is supported through its supply chain by a "slave-based" workforce.

With the increased international focus rightly placed on stopping the tragedies associated with the crime of human trafficking, businesses need to evaluate their own policies to confirm compliance with these laws, but more importantly, to make sure they are not unwittingly drawn into larger media scrutiny of this global problem.

Corporate Social Responsibility

The trend toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies that promote good corporate citizenship has greatly accelerated over the past decade. For example, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government launched a CSR Initiative in 2004 based on the "underlying premise that while governments ultimately bear the responsibility for ensuring public welfare, there is a need to construct a new understanding of the roles, responsibilities and boundaries of the private sector, especially major corporations, and to explore new types of partnership, and new governance and business models for creating public value."

In recent years, a number of large companies have joined the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI), which has established corporate codes of practice implementing human rights, ethical labor practices and environmental protection standards. Some companies also have agreed to implement the CSR principles of the United Nations Global Compact, which promotes "ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption." In response to real concerns about labor exploitation in the developing world, many companies have felt compelled to develop CSR policies and procedures to police their supply chains to ensure they are not making or selling products that are tainted by human trafficking, slavery and child labor.

California Transparency in Supply Chains Act

In September 2010 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law California Senate Bill 657, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 (the Act), which is codified in California's Civil Code and Revenue and Taxation Code (Cal. Civ. Code §1714.43; Cal. Rev. & Tax Code §19547.5) and became effective on January 1, 2012. (Cal. Civ. Code §1714.43(e)). The stated purpose of the Act is to "provide consumers with information regarding [companies'] efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains" and to "educate consumers on how to purchase goods produced by companies that responsibly manage their supply chains." This sweeping new legislation requires qualifying companies to detail and publicly disclose the nature and scope of their corporate compliance efforts to eliminate human trafficking, slavery and child labor from their global supply chains.

Although the Act does not define "trafficking" and "human slavery," the preamble to the Act references the federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and the United States Department of Labor report in 2009. Both of these references adopt the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime definition of "trafficking in persons," as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation."

The Act requires any company that is a retail seller or manufacturer, does business in California and has annual worldwide gross receipts that exceed $100 million, to disclose its efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from the company's direct supply chain for tangible goods offered for sale. A "retail seller" means a business entity with retail trade as its principal business activity code, as reported on the entity's tax return. A "manufacturer" means a business entity with manufacturing as its principal business activity code, as reported on the entity's tax return. A company is deemed to be "doing business in California" if:

It is organized or commercially domiciled in California.
Sales in California for the applicable tax year exceed the lesser of $500,000 or 25 percent of the company's total sales.
The real property and the tangible personal property of the company in California exceeds the lesser of $50,000 or 25 percent of the company's total real property and tangible property.
The amount paid in California by the company for compensation exceeds the lesser of $50,000 or 25 percent of the total compensation paid by the company.
Any company that is subject to the Act must disclose its actions, if any, in five separate categories:

Verify product supply chains to evaluate and address risks of human trafficking and slavery, and disclose if the verification was not conducted by a third party.
Audit suppliers to evaluate their compliance with company standards for human trafficking and slavery in supply chains, and disclose if said audits were not independent and unannounced.
Require direct suppliers to certify that materials used in the product comply with the laws regarding human trafficking and slavery of the country or countries in which they are doing business.
Maintain internal accountability standards and procedures for employees or contractors failing to meet company standards regarding human trafficking and slavery.
Train company employees and managers who have direct responsibility for supply chain management on human trafficking and slavery, particularly on how to mitigate such risks within supply chains.
The five categories of disclosures mandated by the Act must be posted on a company's website with a conspicuous link on the homepage. In the event that a company does not maintain a website, a written disclosure must be provided to a consumer within 30 days of a written request.

The Act empowers the California attorney general to bring injunctive relief actions against companies to enforce compliance with the Act. The Act directs the California Franchise Tax Board to provide the state's attorney general with a list of companies required to disclose based on tax returns filed for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2011. The initial list was given to the attorney general on November 30, 2012, and a new list will be submitted each year on November 30.

September 25, 2012 Executive Order: Strengthening Protections Against Trafficking in Persons in Federal Contracts

Signed on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Obama's Executive Order is designed to strengthen compliance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) among companies that contract and subcontract with the federal government. Adopting a zero tolerance policy regarding "trafficking" in persons, the order covers a wide range of unlawful activity such as: the use of forced or coerced labor to perform any part of the work required by a government contract; the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery; or the procurement of a "commercial sex act" — which means an act in which anything of value is given in return for sex — or a sex act that is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.

This Executive Order imposes enhanced obligations for contractors and subcontractors to act affirmatively to prevent trafficking and forced labor, including a formal compliance program and annual certifications of compliance. More specifically, this order requires companies working for the U.S. government to comply with a series of basic conduct requirements. These include prohibitions against misleading or fraudulent recruitment practices during the recruitment of employees; charging employees recruitment fees; and destroying, confiscating, or otherwise denying access to employee identification documents (passport, driver's license, etc.). It also requires contractors and subcontractors to pay return transportation costs for employees traveling to take expatriate jobs, permit full audits and inspections, and to notify the inspector general of any non-compliance.

For those companies that sell or contract for goods or services outside of the U.S. — valued at $500,000 or more — each must maintain a compliance plan during the term of the contract which includes:

an awareness program for employees regarding human trafficking
a process for reporting potential violations
a recruitment and wage plan that ensures that wages meet applicable host country legal requirements or explains any variance
a housing plan that ensures that the housing meets host country housing and safety standards or explains any variance
procedures to prevent subcontractors from engaging in trafficking in persons, and to monitor, detect and terminate any subcontractors or subcontractor employees that have engaged in these activities
Creating a Culture of CSR Compliance

These new legislative efforts add to the growing pressure on companies to develop risk management and compliance policies that advance responsible corporate citizenship. Many large companies are likely covered by the above mandates, even if the activities that these companies perform in California or the U.S. are relatively small.

Accordingly, companies must take steps now to create a culture of CSR compliance to ensure their procedures are accurate and reflect well on their corporate reputations. Not only do the mandates require specific actions, but the media and the public at large seem unlikely to absolve organizations that have made little effort to investigate their risks in this area. The mandates require disclosure, but inaccurate disclosures will be a separate and distinct problem in their own right, one that could bring civil liability along with government action. This international due diligence needs to be coordinated with other legal and regulatory compliance obligations so that you can maximize the efficiencies from your existing compliance and internal investigation efforts associated with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other anti-corruption statutes. Companies must be proactive in developing appropriate CSR compliance measures to avoid injunctions or civil actions, stay competitive and ensure that their public image is not tarnished by irresponsible corporate citizenship.

For more information on these legal topics, or to learn about the pro bono work Holland & Knight lawyers are doing to help child victims of human trafficking and how your company can help in these efforts, contact the authors of this alert.

Hyatt to Honor Human Rights Day by Launching Global Training Program to Combat Human Trafficking

Hyatt to Honor Human Rights Day by Launching Global Training Program to Combat Human Trafficking

By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Posted 7:35PM 12/10/12

Hyatt to Honor Human Rights Day by Launching Global Training Program to Combat Human Trafficking
Continually recognized as a "Best Place to Work," Hyatt aims to educate associates on importance of upholding human rights in daily lives, communities and the workplace
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Hyatt celebrates Human Rights Day today by highlighting Hyatt's commitment to respecting fundamental human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To mark Human Rights Day, Hyatt is advancing its campaign against human trafficking by launching a global training program for company associates developed in conjunction with the Polaris Project, an organization dedicated to combating human trafficking.


The program is designed to provide managers and line staff at Hyatt hotels around the world with an understanding of human trafficking, its intersection with the hotel industry and the tools to recognize and report potential situations or victims.
"At Hyatt, we want to ensure our associates know how they can help prevent human trafficking," said Brigitta Witt, VP of Corporate Responsibility, Hyatt. "The training course further bolsters Hyatt's support for human rights and raises everyone's sensitivity to this critically important issue," she said.
This commitment to human rights is aligned with Hyatt's core values and is supported by its publicly available Human Rights Statement, Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, Supplier Code of Conduct, and its Diversity and Inclusion strategy.
Hyatt established Diversity and Inclusion as a core tenet of its U.S. operations more than 20 years ago. Since then, a growing number of programs strive to foster similar ideals and challenge associates to lead by example by embracing diversity and inclusion through associate training, recruiting and retention, as well as bringing our suppliers and developers into the fold.
"At Hyatt, our mission is to provide authentic hospitality by making a difference in the lives of the people we touch every day," Witt said. "It's about finding ways for our associates to relate in unique and personal ways to people of all nationalities and walks of life, whether they are guests, co-workers, business partners or members of the community."
Consistently recognized as one of the top places to work across the country, last month, the Human Rights Campaign once again recognized Hyatt as one of the best places to work for LGBT Equality, granting the company a 100 percent rating on its 2013 Corporate Equality Index for the ninth consecutive year.


Additionally, Hyatt's employee network groups promote basic business networking of Hyatt colleagues who share a common cultural heritage, race, gender, age or interest. These groups and other initiatives have resulted in countless awards and accolades in recognition of Hyatt's commitment to a diverse workplace.
Most recently, Hyatt was selected as the No. 2 place to work in Chicago in the Chicago Tribune's "2012 Top 100 Workplaces" list following a survey of Chicagoland associates from eight area hotels and the company's corporate headquarters.
From Baltimore to Orlando, from Chicago to Austin, and from Denver to Santa Clara, Hyatt hotels are among the "Best Places to Work" and are continually recognized as a leader in promoting and nurturing a diverse workforce.http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/10/hyatt-to-honor-human-rights-day-by-launching-globa/?a_dgi=aolshare_twitter

News from Jamaica

Gov't launches revitalised human trafficking education drive
Sunday, December 09, 2012 | 1:57 PM


SCORES of Corporate Area residents, particularly students, were sensitised about the scourge of human trafficking when the National Task Force Against Trafficking in Persons kicked off its renewed public education programme on December 7 at the Half-Way-Tree Transport Centre in St Andrew.
Under the chairmanship of the ministries of national security and justice, the task force has embarked on the revitalised campaign, in recognition of the fact that a targeted, well-sustained education programme, is vital in preventing and protecting the most vulnerable from falling victims to human trafficking.

National Security Minister Peter Bunting, pointed out that one of the challenges of tackling human trafficking is that the issue is “not at the top of mind of most Jamaicans or most persons in the world,” hence the necessity to create greater awareness about this “modern-day slavery”.
“A critical success factor will be raising people’s awareness and our whole communication programme (including) lectures conducted by members of the security forces, social workers, etcetera, will all be geared around giving them information to be able to recognise human trafficking offences,” he said.
Bunting said that sensitisation is important as many people do not fully understand or recognise human trafficking. He reminded that the key element of human trafficking is not so much the movement of people, but the exploitation aspect. “It is exploitation either through force or trickery or some other means,” he noted.




http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Gov-t-launches-revitalised-human-trafficking-education-drive?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Gov-t-launches-revitalised-human-trafficking-education-drive?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#ixzz2EeFo8OVE

Gift Ideas from Kristof

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Gifts That Change Lives
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 5, 2012 11 Comments


Looking for an unusual holiday gift? How about a $60 trio of rabbits to a family in Haiti in the name of someone special? Bunnies raise a farming family’s income because they, well, reproduce like rabbits — six litters a year! Heifer International arranges the gift on its Web site (heifer.org).

Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground

Or for $52 you can buy your uncle something more meaningful than a necktie: send an Afghan girl to school for a year in his name, through the International Rescue Committee (rescue.org).

Yes, it’s time for my annual holiday-giving guide. The question I most often get from readers is “what can I do?” This column is an answer. As in past years, I’m highlighting small organizations because you’re less likely to know about them.

Shining Hope for Communities (shininghopeforcommunities.org) was started by Kennedy Odede, a slum-dweller in Nairobi, Kenya, who taught himself to read. A visiting American gave him a book on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and it inspired Odede to organize local residents to fight against social injustice — particularly sexual violence, because his 16-year-old sister had just been raped.

Odede now runs an outstanding girls’ school in the heart of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, along with a clinic, a water and sanitation program, and job training classes. That slum school is one of the most hopeful places I’ve ever visited.

After I wrote about Shining Hope in 2011, Times readers contributed $180,000, leading to a huge expansion so that Shining Hope (mostly through the clinic) now serves some 36,000 people. Another nearby slum, Mathare, has invited Odede to start a girls’ school there if he can find the resources.

Dr. Hawa Abdi (vitalvoices.org/hawafund) runs a hospital, school and refugee camp in war-torn Somalia. She became an obstetrician-gynecologist partly because her mother had died in childbirth, and she has focused on helping rural Somali women.

The land around her 400-bed hospital, outside of Mogadishu, has become an encampment serving up to 90,000 people made homeless by war. Hawa has provided water, health care and education, and when students transfer to Mogadishu they are up to three grades ahead of children there. Hawa also is battling female genital mutilation, and she runs a jail for men who beat their wives.

An extremist Muslim militia with 750 soldiers attacked the hospital two years ago, saying that it was against religion for a woman to run anything substantial. Hawa stood up to the attackers and — because ordinary Somalis sided with her — she was able to force the militia to back down. Then she made the militia write her an apology!

Yet Hawa’s hospital and school are struggling financially. Vital Voices, a Washington organization supporting women’s rights, has set up a tax-deductible mechanism to keep Hawa’s work going.

Polaris Project (polarisproject.org) is a leader in the fight against human trafficking in the United States. One of its most important projects is a nationwide hot line, with interpreters on standby for 176 languages, for anyone who sees people who may be trafficked. It’s             (888) 373-7888      . This year alone, Polaris says, it has helped more than 3,200 victims get services through the hot line.

Polaris, based in Washington, has also been a powerful advocate for tougher laws around the country — those that target pimps rather than just the girls who are their victims. Polaris says that this year alone it has helped 17 states pass laws on human trafficking. And Polaris has supported nearly 500 trafficking survivors as they start new lives.

Fair Girls (fairgirls.org) is also based in Washington and fights sex trafficking at home and abroad. Its founder, Andrea Powell, braves dangerous streets and disgusting Web sites for hours in search of girls enslaved in the sex trade, and she is fearless about confronting pimps and prying girls from their grasp.

Earlier this year, I wrote about one of the trafficking survivors Fair Girls has helped: Alissa, the street name of a Boston girl whose cheek is scarred where a pimp gouged her with a potato peeler as a warning not to run away. Alissa ultimately testified against her pimps and sent them to prison. Now, with Powell’s mentoring, she is helping other girls escape that life as well.

Fair Girls also trains trafficking survivors to make jewelry, which makes nice gifts and is available on the group’s Web site.

                                                                                  •

ICE Joins The Good Fight

ICE launches radio PSA outreach campaign to combat human trafficking

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent this bulletin at 11/14/2012 03:43 PM EST
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) today announced the start of a national radio public service announcement (PSA) campaign to generate awareness about human trafficking.

The PSA will air today through Saturday on 24 English and 19 Spanish language radio stations in the following cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Saint Paul, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Juan, Seattle, Tampa and Washington.

ICE's Hidden In Plain Sight campaign is part of the Department of Homeland Security's Blue Campaign and its goal is to alert the public about the existence of human trafficking in communities nationwide and prompt a call to action for individuals who encounter possible victims. Additional information on human trafficking is available here.

ICE has focused its efforts to educate the public about the plight of human trafficking victims. For this outreach effort the agency is turning to radio stations for assistance in generating awareness about human trafficking in the United States as well as for everyone to look for signs of this crime and report possible trafficking situations to safeguard victims.

If anyone knows or suspects someone is being held against their will, ICE strongly urges them to contact the ICE tip line at             1-866-DHS-2-ICE      . Individuals can also view the television PSA by clicking here.

No Victim? Don’t Give Up

No Victim?  Don’t Give Up
Creative Strategies in Prosecuting Human Trafficking Cases Using Forfeiture by Wrongdoing and Other Evidence-Based Techniques
Jennifer Gentile Long, JD and Teresa Garvey, JD


The challenges presented in the course of investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases can be daunting. Among the most common and difficult of these obstacles is the inability or unwillingness of victims to participate in the process. This reluctance may be based upon a variety of factors, including the victims’ fear, shame, distrust of law enforcement, and a real — or perceived — lack of alternatives to trafficking as a way of life. Sometimes the unwillingness of victims to participate arises from their relationships with their traffickers, who may exploit love and intimate relationships to recruit their victims. The undercurrents in such cases involve many of the same dynamics prevalent in dating, intimate partner, or sexual violence as well as child abuse. Also present, however, is the traffickers’ significant financial interest in the victims, as well as the traffickers’ increased exposure to state and federal criminal charges if detected. Accordingly, trafficking victims face enormous pressure not to engage the criminal justice system and serious negative consequences if they do choose to seek help.

Click here to read more.http://www.aequitasresource.org/S_Issue_7_No_Victim-Dont_Give_Up.pdf

Addressing Modern Slavery in the ASEAN Region

Addressing Modern Slavery in the ASEAN Region


Fact Sheet
Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
November 20, 2012


With its partners at home and around the world, the United States is committed to enhancing efforts to end human trafficking, a crime President Obama has called a “debasement of our common humanity…which must be called by its true name—modern slavery.”
Together with the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and in partnership with civil society, the United States looks forward to enhancing regional efforts to protect and rehabilitate trafficking survivors, bring traffickers to justice, and raise awareness so that trafficking can be stopped before it starts.
During the ASEAN-U.S. Leaders’ Meeting, held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on November 19, 2012, President Obama and the 10 ASEAN heads of state agreed to improve cooperative efforts to tackle modern slavery, including the forced labor and sex trafficking of women, men, and children. The United States agreed to work with ASEAN members to harmonize legal frameworks in defining and prohibiting human trafficking, increase cross-border joint investigation, and build capacity for a standardized response to trafficking victims’ needs. To advance these objectives, the United States pledged $500,000 in technical assistance and training for ASEAN and its member states.
This new commitment complements these existing U.S. Government programs in the region:
In Cambodia, the United States works with the Royal Government of Cambodia and civil society to provide psychological support and other services to address trauma and other mental health needs of victims of sex and labor trafficking. Assistance also provides economic support to trafficking victims through training and job placement.
In the Philippines, the United States helps build the capacity of frontline service providers and funds victim support activities, which makes prosecution efforts more effective and increases conviction rates. The programs support awareness campaigns as well as comprehensive and integrated protective services to trafficking victims to ensure they gain new life skills and reduce their vulnerability to re-trafficking. In addition, the Partnership for Growth between the Philippines and the U.S. will promote inclusive growth that is focused on generating meaningful employment and income opportunities for the traditionally neglected segments of the population—those most vulnerable to human trafficking.
In Vietnam, U.S.-funded efforts have led to valuable research on victim protection and prosecution procedures, and key pilot projects have improved shelter conditions and services provided to victims.
In an anti-trafficking prevention effort across the region, USAID funds MTV-EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking), a global multimedia campaign. In Southeast Asia, the program raises awareness of trafficking among youth and vulnerable populations to prevent human trafficking in Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, and will open in Burma in December through a public concert held in Rangoon’s People’s Square. Since 2006, MTV EXIT has produced 30 major concert events, 76 television and online programs, and dozens of outreach activities and has engaged over 700,000 regional youth. Beginning in late November, ASEAN and MTV Exit will host a Youth Session to provide training in social media to combat TIP and build regional networks to further enhance awareness. Read more at mtvexit.org/liveinmyanmar.
BURMA: This September, President Obama made a public commitment to enhancing the United States’ partnership with Burma on trafficking in persons, as part of our continued support for Burma’s ongoing reforms.
“Last week I was proud to welcome to the Oval Office not only a great champion of democracy but a fierce advocate against the use of forced labor and child soldiers—Aung San Suu Kyi. And as part of our engagement, we’ll encourage Burma to keep taking steps to reform—because nations must speak with one voice: Our people and our children are not for sale.”
To honor this commitment, and in light of the progress made by the Government of Burma on combating trafficking in persons over the last two years, this week the Governments of the United States and Burma announced a new joint plan to counter trafficking in persons, which will include the establishment of a formal, senior-level dialogue. The United States is committed to enhancing Burma’s progress through the sharing of technical knowledge and best practices, heralding a new era of U.S.-Burma cooperation.
Areas of cooperation under the joint action plan include:
Identifying trafficking offenses;
Investigating and prosecuting trafficking offenders;
Providing victims with access to services in line with existing international guidelines; and
Preventing Burmese citizens from being subjected to sex trafficking or forced labor either within the country’s borders or abroad.


The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department.
External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.

News from the Department of Justice

Alex Campbell, 45, of Glenview, Ill., a former northwest suburban massage parlor owner was sentenced today to life in federal prison for various crimes including sex-trafficking, forced labor, harboring illegal aliens, confiscating passports to further forced labor and extortion involving four foreign women whom he mentally and physically abused while forcing them to work for him, the Justice Department announced today. The defendant, who operated the Day and Night Spa on Northwest Highway in Mt. Prospect, Ill., used violence and threats of violence to force three women from the Ukraine and one from Belarus to work for him without pay and, at times, little to no subsistence between July 2008 and January 2010.

Campbell, also known as “Dave” and “Daddy” and who called himself “Cowboy,” was also ordered to pay approximately $124,000 restitution by U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman. There is no parole in the federal prison system.

Campbell was convicted at trial in January of this year of three counts each of forced labor, harboring illegal aliens for financial gain and confiscating passports and other immigration documents to force the victims to work and one count each of sex trafficking by force, and extortion. He faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of life on the sex-trafficking count alone, and the judge also imposed maximum prison terms ranging from five to 20 years on each of the remaining counts, to run concurrent with the life sentence.

“Alex Campbell abused women by violently coercing them into labor and commercial sex. By working together with law enforcement and community groups, those women were able to testify about that abuse,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Today’s sentence is a victory not only for the Department and the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force, but also for those women who so bravely came forward and told the truth about their exploitation.”

Cellphones Reshape Prostitution in India, and Complicate Efforts to Prevent AIDS

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world/asia/indian-prostitutes-new-autonomy-imperils-aids-fight.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y


Cellphones Reshape Prostitution in India, and Complicate Efforts to Prevent AIDS

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times
Sex workers in Mumbai’s long-established red-light district, where brothels are dwindling.
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: November 24, 2012


MUMBAI, India — Millions once bought sex in the narrow alleys of Kamathipura, a vast red-light district here. But prostitutes with inexpensive mobile phones are luring customers elsewhere, and that is endangering the astonishing progress India has made against AIDS.

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Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times
Champa, at right, a brothel owner in Mumbai, has seen her profits decline as cellphones have made prostitutes more independent.
Indeed, the recent closings of hundreds of ancient brothels, while something of an economic victory for prostitutes, may one day cost them, and many others, their lives.

“The place where sex happens turns out to be an important H.I.V. prevention point,” said Saggurti Niranjan, program associate of the Population Council. “And when we don’t know where that is, we can’t help stop the transmission.”

Cellphones, those tiny gateways to modernity, have recently allowed prostitutes to shed the shackles of brothel madams and strike out on their own. But that independence has made prostitutes far harder for government and safe-sex counselors to trace. And without the advice and free condoms those counselors provide, prostitutes and their customers are returning to dangerous ways.

Studies show that prostitutes who rely on cellphones are more susceptible to H.I.V. because they are far less likely than their brothel-based peers to require their clients to wear condoms.

In interviews, prostitutes said they had surrendered some control in the bedroom in exchange for far more control over their incomes.

“Now, I get the full cash in my hand before we start,” said Neelan, a prostitute with four children whose side business in sex work is unknown to her husband and neighbors. (Neelan is a professional name, not her real one.)

“Earlier, if the customer got scared and didn’t go all the way, the madam might not charge the full amount,” she explained. “But if they back out now, I say that I have removed all my clothes and am going to keep the money.”

India has been the world’s most surprising AIDS success story. Though infections did not appear in India until 1986, many predicted the nation would soon become the epidemic’s focal point. In 2002, the C.I.A.’s National Intelligence Council predicted that India would have as many as 25 million AIDS cases by 2010. Instead, India now has about 1.5 million.

An important reason the disease never took extensive hold in India is that most women here have fewer sexual partners than in many other developing countries. Just as important was an intensive effort underwritten by the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to target high-risk groups like prostitutes, gay men and intravenous drug users.

But the Gates Foundation is now largely ending its oversight and support for AIDS prevention in India, just as efforts directed at prostitutes are becoming much more difficult. Experts say it is too early to identify how much H.I.V. infections might rise.

“Nowadays, the mobility of sex workers is huge, and contacting them is very difficult,” said Ashok Alexander, the former director in India of the Gates Foundation. “It’s a totally different challenge, and the strategies will also have to change.”

An example of the strategies that had been working can be found in Delhi’s red-light district on Garstin Bastion Road near the old Delhi railway station, where brothels have thrived since the 16th century. A walk through dark alleys, past blind beggars and up narrow, steep and deeply worn stone staircases brings customers into brightly lighted rooms teeming with scores of women brushing each other’s hair, trying on new dresses, eating snacks, performing the latest Bollywood dances, tending small children and disappearing into tiny bedrooms with nervous men who come out moments later buttoning their trousers.

A 2009 government survey found 2,000 prostitutes at Garstin Bastion (also known as G. B.) Road who served about 8,000 men a day. The government estimated that if it could deliver as many as 320,000 free condoms each month and train dozens of prostitutes to counsel safe-sex practices to their peers, AIDS infections could be significantly reduced. Instead of broadcasting safe-sex messages across the country — an expensive and inefficient strategy commonly employed in much of the world — it encircled Garstin Bastion with a firebreak of posters with messages like “Don’t take a risk, use a condom” and “When a condom is in, risk is out.”

Surprising many international AIDS experts, these and related tactics worked. Studies showed that condom use among clients of prostitutes soared.

“To the credit of the Indian strategists, their focus on these high-risk groups paid off,” said Dr. Peter Piot, the former executive director of U.N.AIDS and now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A number of other countries, following India’s example, have achieved impressive results over the past decade as well, according to the latest United Nations report, which was released last week.

But now that mobile phones are untethering prostitution from brothels, those targeted measures are threatened. At the same time, the advent of cellphones seems to be expanding the sex marketplace — luring more women into part-time sex work and persuading more men to pay for sex. Cellphone-based massage and escort services are mushrooming across India.

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“There may now be clients who may not have otherwise availed themselves of the services but do so now because it is easier and more private,” said Suneeta Krishnan, a senior epidemiologist with Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina.

The changes have led to a steep drop in business on Delhi’s Garstin Bastion Road and have nearly destroyed Mumbai’s Kamathipura district, where brothels had thrived since the 18th century.

Champa, a wrinkled madam with silver toe rings, bangles on her wrists and henna-dyed hair, has for 50 years owned a brothel in a narrow lane here. But like many other industries where information technology has undermined the role of middlemen between buyers and sellers, Champa’s business is withering.

“It’s the end of Kamathipura,” Champa said with a resigned wave as she squatted on the floor of her entryway.

She once had as many as 20 prostitutes living in her nine-bedroom brothel; she now has three, she said. Worse, at least from her point of view, the women working for her collect their own fees and offer her just $2 a day to rent one of her tiny bedrooms. As recently as five years ago, Champa — she has just one name — collected $2 for every client served.

As Champa spoke, several garishly dressed young women walked through the brothel’s tiny foyer to sweep and water the hard dirt floor just outside. The lane was teeming with laborers, uniformed schoolchildren, and veiled matrons. The prostitutes soon settled onto benches and teased the men getting haircuts at a nearby outdoor barbershop.

There were once 75 brothels on this lane; now there are eight. Kamathipura had as many as 50,000 prostitutes in the 1990s but now has fewer than 5,000, according to city officials and nongovernmental organizations.

Kamathipura’s destruction is partly a tale of urban renewal. India’s rapid development has turned former slums into sought-after addresses, and rising land values led many brothel owners to sell out.

But just as important has been the spread of cellphones into the hands of nearly three out of four Indians. Five years ago, cellphones were still a middle-class accouterment. Fierce competition led prices to plunge, and now even trash pickers and rickshaw drivers answer pocket phones.

But not all has changed. Vicious madams still exist, human trafficking is still rampant, village girls are still duped into the trade, and some brothels still thrive. Most prostitutes are illiterate, come from lower castes and are poor. But cellphones have given them a measure of power they did not have before.

“I’m happy that mobile phones are so popular and that I have this opportunity,” said Kushi, a mother who got into secret, part-time prostitution after she left her abusive and alcoholic husband. (Kushi is her work name.) She has three to four clients a week and charges each about $20, she said, compared with a typical price of $4 in cheap brothels.

“Cellphones allow the women to keep much more of their money,” Mr. Niranjan of the Population Council said. “But they make H.I.V. prevention programs more challenging.”

More to Be Grateful For in Greece Today

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/337290


Romanian human trafficking ring dismantled in Greece
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Katerina
By Katerina Nikolas
Nov 20, 2012 - 22 hours ago in World
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A Romanian human trafficking ring has been dismantled by Greek police. Ten Romanian citizens, including two minors, were released from squalid living conditions. They had been forced to work 12 hour days with no wages.
Greek police in Argolis, Athens, arrested four Romanians, two men and two women, and are searching for another Romanian and two Turks that were running an organized human trafficking ring. Those arrested held the identity cards of 31 Romanians, five passports, a shotgun and over €10,000.
The Star reported the traffickers lured their Romanian compatriots to Greece with the promise of agricultural work, promising they would receive free accommodation and wages of €25 per day. The Department for Combating Human Trafficking reported those trafficked received no wages and were housed in squalid conditions in a stable, for which each person was charged €50 per month.
According to Ta Nea the Greek operation to break the trafficking ring was instigated after reports of 41 Romanians being smuggled into Greece via a Turkish tourist bus appeared.
The 10 victims were in a bad physical and psychological condition. They are now under the protection of the Greek police and the Department of Organized Crime and Human Trafficking.
Gov.net reports Romania is a source of human trafficking "for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor."


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/337290#ixzz2CrIwCVBF

Australia's Female Prime Minister Promises $50 Million to Fight Against Trafficking

Gillard wants South China Sea code of conduct
PM By political correspondent Louise Yaxley in Phnom Penh
Updated 1 hour 12 minutes ago


VIDEO: Gillard backs Asian free-trade zone (7pm TV News ACT)
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Prime Minister Julia Gillard says Australia wants to see a code of conduct for resolving disputes over the South China Sea.

Territorial disputes over the South China Sea have overshadowed the East Asia Summit in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, where Ms Gillard is meeting regional leaders.

She has already spoken to Japan's prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, and China's leader, Wen Jiabao.

China has been reluctant to commit to starting formal talks on a legally binding code of conduct over the sea.

Ms Gillard says Australia does not take sides in the territorial disputes but argues they have to be resolved peacefully.

"We believe it is in everybody's interest that issues in the South China Sea are managed in a peaceful way in accordance with international law; that's Australia's perspective," she said.

"We do believe that a code of conduct would assist with making sure that any issues in the South China Sea, any conduct there, could be managed in accordance with the code, that is, that the rules and manner of responses would be predictable and knowable.

"That's Australia's position. It's been one of long standing and it's one we'll continue to argue for."

Ms Gillard says it is important to Australia that the issue is resolved.

"We are talking about an area of the world that our shipping needs to go through to take our goods to the world," she said.

During her meeting with Mr Wen, Ms Gillard presented the Chinese leader with a photo of former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam meeting China's chairman Mao Zedong in 1973.

The gift, signed by Mr Whitlam, is to mark the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two nations.

It is likely to be the last meeting between Ms Gillard and Mr Wen before China's new administration comes in next year.

Free trade

AUDIO: Listen to Louise Yaxley's report (PM)
Ms Gillard also says Australia will take any opportunity to push for free trade in the region.

United States president Barack Obama this morning launched the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which involves Canada, Mexico as well as countries on the western side of the Pacific.

Ms Gillard says Mr Obama is being ambitious about its scope and he wants the deal in place by October next year.

Trade Minister Craig Emerson, who is also in Phnom Penh, said Mr Obama seemed set to use his second term in office to push for the deal.

"The president of the United States was very enthusiastic and highly ambitious for the Trans-Pacific Partnership," he said.

"As a second-term president of the United States, it is clear that he wants to get this deal done and, indeed, he wants it to be a high-quality, truly liberalising agreement.

"The importance of that is that it creates more jobs and better jobs in the region and beyond."

Australia is also involved in another push to remove regional trade barriers.

Ms Gillard says Australia is keen to be a part of any group that can reduce tariffs and smash trade barriers.

"It makes sense to be involved in both and to be maximising our efforts in both," she said.

Malaria
During a speech at the summit, Ms Gillard promised $1 million for more work to combat malaria in the region.

She also emphasised that Australia had recently promised $100 million over four years to help cut death rates.

The leaders at the summit will make a declaration committing to a regional response to the growing threat of drug-resistant malaria.

Ms Gillard says Australia is supporting a regional alliance to fight the problem.

"Malaria is a disease which disproportionately affects the poor," she said.

"In fact, in 2010 it was estimated 42,000 people in our region of the world died from malaria. Disturbingly, we are seeing the emergence of drug-resistant strains of malaria."

Ms Gillard has also promised $50 million to crack down on human trafficking.

The money will go towards helping investigators and prosecutors catch people who are exploiting others and force them into work or prostitution.

Cambodia is one of seven South East Asian nations to benefit from the funding.

"Trafficking in persons is a dreadful evil where people are forced into exploitative labour situations, and tragically, young people in particular are forced into prostitution," Ms Gillard said.

"The program I am announcing today will enable us to work with a number of our neighbours to reduce trafficking in people."http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-20/gillard-wants-code-of-conduct-for-south-china-sea/4382768

Trafficking Victory in Thailand

http://englishnews.mcot.net/site/content?id=50aa1af7150ba06f05000008#.UKoqd-RTySp


Human trafficking gang, luring Myanmar women, arrested
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By Digital Media | 19 พ.ย. 2555 18:11 | 16 views | View Comment
BANGKOK, Nov 19 – The Thai authorities today announced the arrest of a human trafficking gang luring Myanmar women into prostitution.

Anti-Human Trafficking Division Commandant Pol Maj-Gen Chavalit Sawaengpud said at a press conference that four persons, two from Myanmar and two Thais, lured three Myanmar women aged 15-19 into prostitution.

The victims were told they were being brought to work at a sewing factory in outer Bangkok but instead they were forced for prostitution in a massage parlour in the capital's Rama IX area. The gang forced the victims' families to pay Bt50,000 each as ‘ransom insurance’.

In a related case, a 32-year-old Thai woman was apprehended as a member of an international human trafficking gang.  

She lured other Thai females to work in Oman, telling them they would work as Thai massage therapists earning Bt100,000/month. A Thai massage business there was opened only as a front.

Gen Chavalit said Thailand will cooperate with the Omani authorities in order to arrest the ringleader and others still at large.  

Meanwhile, the Anti-Human Trafficking Division cooperated with the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women helping five Thai women lured to Indonesia by a Singaporean who promised massage therapist jobs to them.

The victims were forced to pay the man luring them Bt70,000 each and secretly tried to contact their families until they received help.

The Thai courts issued an arrest warrant for the Singaporean suspected to have already fled Thailand. (MCOT online news)

Panel: Atlanta ‘hub’ of human trafficking

http://www.neighbornewspapers.com/view/full_story/20835413/article-Panel--Atlanta-%E2%80%98hub%E2%80%99-of-human-trafficking?instance=buckhead&utm_source=Social%20Ventures&utm_medium=Hootsuite&utm_campaign=SV%20News%20Feed
Panel: Atlanta ‘hub’ of human trafficking
by Caroline Young
November 14, 2012 02:15 PM | 1026 views | 0  | 6  |  |
One may hear the words “human trafficking” and believe it only happens somewhere far from home.

“This is an issue that knows no boundaries. It doesn’t matter where you live, what you look like, your background,” said Nekia Hackworth, assistant U.S. attorney for Georgia’s northern district.

Human traffickers run rampant throughout all areas of Atlanta, according to a panel of six who spoke Tuesday for Say-So, a conversational salon, at The Link Counseling Center’s National Resource Center in Sandy Springs.

“I had a 15-year-old girl that lived in Sandy Springs,” said Richard Randolph, investigator with the Fulton County District Attorney’s office. “This young lady skipped school and rode the MARTA train with her friends. She was picked up by a 42-year-old man that had a nice [car] with some rims. He said he wanted to take her on a date.”

Randolph said the man changed the girls’ identity by giving her a new birth certificate and Social Security card, and told her to remember everything.

“He got her an I.D. at the department of motor vehicles. … He recruited her and got a hotel in her name and forced her to have unprotected sex,” Randolph said.

Although the girl ended up getting herself out of the situation safely, it is more common for girls to get sucked into lives of prostitution, and the average age range is 12 to 14, according to Camilla Wright, head of the human trafficking unit for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.

“Atlanta is one of the hubs for trafficking in the U.S. … Within the first 48 hours, one third of runaways encounter a trafficker,” Wright said. “These girls tell me time after time, they left home because something bad happened. They have to eat and need somewhere to stay. Whether they offer it as a father or a boyfriend, [traffickers] say they’ll take care of them.”

Human trafficking is the third largest moneymaking business in the U.S., according to Jennifer Swain, program manager of STOP CSEC [Commercially Sexually Exploited Children].

“It makes more money than McDonald’s, Google and Walmart together,” Swain said. “7,200 men purchase sex with adolescent girls in Georgia each month.”

As a result of sexually transmitted diseases and violence, most victims do not make it to their 30s, said Dalia Racine, assistant district attorney at the DeKalb County District Attorney’s office.

“These girls and boys need such intensive services because their minds have been completely warped as to their self-value,” said Racine, who works in the Crimes Against Children Unit. “They only think their bodies are something to make money from and they have no other value than that.”

And Wright said most of metro Atlanta’s district attorney’s offices have sex crime units, and penalties to traffickers have been increased recently.She also said the caseload has increased by four times within the last year.

“It’s not that trafficking has increased but awareness has increased,” Wright said. “We are seeing a lot more cases and a lot more people being prosecuted.”

Additionally, Hackworth said exploitation occurs online often on www.backpage.com, and right under the public’s nose. People can help by being the eyes and ears, and becoming more educated on the issue.

“If you see a very young girl with a way older guy, and she’s wearing short shorts and a tank top in cold weather, … you call 911 [or (404) 577-TIPS],” said Hackworth. “It’s a small thing that you can do that might potentially save a young girl’s life. If things don’t look quite right, it may not be right.”


Read more: NeighborNewspapers.com - Panel Atlanta ‘hub’ of human trafficking

TedEx Talk on Human Trafficking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU9TeVofkDo

Matt Friedman reflects upon the breadth and range of human slavery in the world today and how we can all play our part in helping to address this global problem.  Worth the watch.

A Billionaire Takes on the Scourge of Human Trafficking

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/11/08/inside-ebay-billionaire-pierre-omidyars-battle-to-end-human-trafficking/


Inside eBay Billionaire Pierre Omidyar's Battle To End Human Trafficking
This story appears in the November 19, 2012 issue of Forbes.

Pierre Omidyar (Photo: Michelle Clement) is behind a $115 million push to end trafficking. Click for more photos.

Pierre Omidyar looked out over Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley this past February, scanning the horizon with his camera in hand. All the billionaire eBay founder could see for miles were huge, belching chimneys taller than houses and mountains of red bricks drying in the winter sun. Kids of 12 or 13 lugged bricks on their backs to and from these ovens, 80 pounds at a time. Ninety percent of the workers here in Bhaktapur, the heart of Nepal’s brick sector, are slaves. Day after day they incur more debt to the traffickers who found them these jobs and hovels to live in nearby.

As Omidyar walked around snapping photos, he grew more certain that he wasn’t seeing the whole picture. “They don’t let people like us visit the bad kilns,” he says. “I extrapolated. If this is one of the good ones, what does a bad one look like?”

How Pierre And Pam Omidyar Invest Their eBay Billions With Impact
Clare O'Connor
Forbes Staff
9 images
Photos: Inside Pierre Omidyar's Battle To End Human Trafficking
It’s a question he’s trying to make permanently moot. Omidyar and his wife, Pam, are taking their considerable fortune and business acumen and deploying them in an ambitious effort to end modern-day slavery. Nepal, they’ve decided, will be their case study; success would have global ramifications.

This means creating Omidyar-funded options so that Bhaktapur’s children won’t feel compelled to sign the human traffickers’ bogus, exploitative contracts. First up: a $600,000 grant that will pay for 2,500 working kids to leave the dangerous, dirty Nepalese kilns and go to school. Next the Omidyars plan to pay for entrepreneurship and money management training to help 4,000 more brick workers escape slavery.

In the past four years the Omidyars have become the single biggest private donors to the fight against the pernicious but lucrative human trafficking industry. They’ve invested $115 million to date in their Humanity United foundation, which funds 85 antislavery nonprofits as well as on-the-ground projects in five countries, including this first one in Nepal. They’ve pledged to spend another $50 million by 2016.

They’re up against increasingly sophisticated sex and labor trafficking rings, many backed by organized crime, in a business that generates $32 billion in worldwide revenues a year, according to the UN. But the Omidyars have recruited powerful partners that stand the best chance to date to win the battle.

When eBay went public in 1998, Pierre Omidyar “skipped ‘regular rich’ and went straight to ‘ridiculous rich,’ ” he says. He and Pam, a molecular scientist and his college sweetheart from Tufts, decided immediately that they’d give the vast majority of their wealth away within their lifetimes (they’ve since signed the Giving Pledge). Both just 31 then and worth more than $7 billion, it was a serious, overwhelming proposition. It took a few early years of earnest, scattershot check-writing across a handful of charities before they focused on trafficking as a target.

Humanity United was Pam’s idea. While Pierre expanded his auction site into a multibillion-dollar public company, she spent her days holed up in a UC Santa Cruz biology lab doing pharmaceutical research for her master’s degree, rarely surfacing to read the news. “I insulated myself against world events,” she says. During a stay in Pierre’s birth city of Paris in the early 2000s, she had time to flip through a National Geographic and landed on a piece about Darfur, at the time descending into civil war. She was horrified at the stories of Sudanese child soldiers and trafficked refugees. She did some digging but couldn’t find much coverage of modern-day slavery in the press or any evidence of attention from rich philanthropists.


Pam and Pierre Omidyar (Photo: Michele Clement)

Pam decided the couple’s donations to charities like Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam, however generous, were no longer cutting it. Pierre was immediately on board. Sudan would join Nepal on the list of countries they eventually chose to focus their cash on first, along with Congo, Liberia and the U.S., where more than 40,000 women, men and kids are being held as sex slaves, unpaid domestic workers or forced field hands at any given time.

The Omidyars decided they wouldn’t start from scratch unless they absolutely had to. In the U.S. they found a smattering of disparate antislavery NGOs, most of them small and working in isolation. In Florida evangelicals from the faith-based International Justice Mission were trying to free Mexican tomato pickers from forced labor with a group called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. In California social workers from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking were working to free women trapped in domestic servitude in Los Angeles, as well as monitoring a growing problem of unpaid farm laborers upstate. Both groups were lobbying for the same antitrafficking legislation with little funding and no cooperation.

Pierre, Pam and their team at Humanity United found the best of these U.S. antislavery nonprofits, grouped them under one umbrella–the Alliance to End Slavery & Trafficking–and invested $8 million across all 12 of them. They didn’t meddle much, trusting that the new group would know best how to make a joint case to Congress to pass a raft of laws.

It’s the same tenet Pierre remembers invoking as a twentysomething computer programmer: Give someone the right tools and the benefit of the doubt, and they’ll rarely screw you. (It was, he recalls, rather tougher to convince the jaded tech press that his new auction platform wouldn’t be overrun with cheaters and counterfeiters.) “In the early days of eBay I articulated for the very first time this belief that people are basically good,” he says. “Ebay’s success as a company depends on the success of the community of sellers.”


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The Omidyars’ $165 million pledge to Humanity United is just part of the $1.25 billion they’ve given away to date to philanthropic causes–both nonprofit grants and for-profit investments, mostly in companies that would be considered early stage by Silicon Valley standards. The Omidyar Network’s for-profit portfolio spreads $100 million across 28 microfinance operations as well as smaller injections of capital into startups in developing countries: a mobile payment firm in Zambia and a solar lighting venture on the Indian subcontinent, for example. “For some reason people think that doing good is giving money away and business is just business,” says Matt Bannick, who runs the Omidyar Network. “It’s an artificial bifurcation. Businesses can have a social impact. People are earning their livelihoods on eBay.”

So far the slavery alliance hasn’t let the Omidyars down. A year after Humanity United’s grant kicked in, the combined advocacy efforts of these ex-slaves, social workers, lawyers and churches secured 90% of the amendments they’d requested to the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which helps rescued slaves secure visas and protect themselves from retribution from their traffickers. In 2010 the group lobbied for, and won, a landmark $12 million increase in U.S. federal antitrafficking funds.

To antislavery experts, having the Omidyars’ names attached to the cause has helped legitimize it. “These small NGOs are now part of a whole,” says Kevin Bales, who in 1999 published Disposable People , considered a seminal work on modern slavery (and the first book Pam looked for after reading National Geographic ). “They’re not just going cap in hand to senators. If you want a politician to show up for anything, put a billionaire’s name on it.”

The Omidyars’ investment in the alliance also pays for ex-slaves to train as advocates, meeting regularly with politicians to put a clearer face on the misunderstood business of trafficking. FORBES met a member of this national Survivors’ Caucus, Ima Matul, in a former convent in a grubby part of Los Angeles. It’s been converted into a comfortable shelter run by the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, one of the 12 U.S. antitrafficking groups funded by the Omidyars. She’s one of 550 slaves from 58 countries the Coalition has helped rescue.

Indonesian, petite and dressed in corporate casual, Matul perches on a leather sofa in the home’s large living room. Along one wall is a row of desktop computers where Ethiopian residents often watch soaps from their home country on YouTube. In a sunny back garden vines half-obscure a stone grotto containing a shrine to the Virgin Mary, a relic from the home’s convent days. The shelter is ten minutes from West Hollywood, where Matul spent three years as a teenaged domestic slave.

She’d already escaped an abusive arranged marriage at age 16 by the time she arrived in L.A. from the East Javanese city of Malang. Her traffickers, an Indonesian couple expecting baby number two, reeled off a list of expectations as soon as she arrived in their handsome home. She’d be a cook, cleaner, housekeeper, nanny, and gardener, all for a promised salary of $150 a month, which never materialized. She was beaten daily. If the wife found a patch of rogue dirt or dust in the house, she’d smear it across Matul’s face. Unable to speak English, she felt trapped and was repeatedly warned she’d be jailed if she tried to escape, a common tactic traffickers use to control young, naive victims.

When Matul was finally able to run away with the help of a nanny working next door, CAST gave her shelter, helped her train for a job in a law firm and then hired her to teach fellow survivors to lobby legislators. Last year Matul testified before Congress as part of a push to see the Trafficking Victims Protection Act reauthorized. Right now it remains stalled in the House; it’ll be up for discussion in the first session following the presidential election. Among other measures it would make it easier for courts to prosecute traffickers. Matul knows firsthand how important the bill is because the woman who held her captive never spent a day in jail.

Humanity United’s latest milestone has been rather more public than the passage of biennial bills or the funding of Nepalese schools. In a speech at September’s annual Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, President Obama announced a partnership between Humanity United and the White House, backed by $6 million from sponsors including Goldman Sachs in its first big donation to anything slavery-related. “We’re going after the traffickers,” said Obama to a mixture of applause and stunned faces.


The President reeled off new initiatives, all of which will serve to boost Humanity United’s work at the federal level. There’ll be training to help police, Amtrak ticket-takers, teachers and others likely to encounter slaves to better identify them as victims rather than prostitutes or runaways. Tech and Internet companies will be offered incentives to help make the Web safer rather than a tool for traffickers to recruit or sell their wares. There’ll be simpler visa procedures for victims, he said. And, crucially, his administration would be helping take forced labor out of the business supply chain, starting with U.S. government contractors.

“The idea that there are exploitative labor practices that pollute the supply chain, more people are aware of now,” says Pierre, noting also the recent flurry of media attention on Chinese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn. “They are starting to think about, do I want to have a piece of equipment that’s made by people in these horrible working conditions? Sweatshops, basically.”

He had to miss Obama’s announcement, which coincided with an eBay board meeting (it still pays the bills, after all). Pam, however, was in the audience blinking back tears. “It was the longest speech on the topic of slavery since Lincoln was in office,” she says. Not far from Pam sat Ima Matul. Before the address the President had sought out the Humanity United delegation and greeted Matul in her native tongue, the Indonesian language Bahasa. Toward the end of his speech President Obama asked that she stand and be recognized for her work.

Pierre has taken a leadership role among Giving Pledge members and fellow billionaires , teaching how to use entrepreneurial skills to tackle the world’s problems. Former eBay colleague Jeff Skoll and Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have both backed antislavery initiatives through their respective foundations after consulting with Humanity United.

Overseas, Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has been working toward eradicating trafficking in his own hemisphere. He was moved to found the Perth-based nonprofit Walk Free after a close encounter with slavery. His teenage daughter had been volunteering at an orphanage when it emerged the youngsters weren’t being cared for but rather groomed for sex work.

“‘Value add’ is a horrific term when applied to children,” says Forrest, Australia’s third-richest person. “We had a catatonic reaction to it.” He talks regularly with Humanity United executives to ensure the two groups are working in tandem as much as possible. Like Pierre, Forrest is now a full-time philanthropist; he stepped down as CEO of his Fortescue Metals Group to focus on giving his money away. He also shares the Omidyars’ hope that other NGOs, governments and wealthy individuals will start devoting attention and much-needed funds on ridding slavery from the business supply chain, where it remains prevalent. Big-box store chains are especially susceptible to relying on cheap or forced labor in developing countries, often unaware. “It’s the dark side of globalization,” Forrest says.

For Pierre’s part, he’s encouraged by his February visit to Nepal. He stood in the hallway of a brick kiln school funded by Humanity United money, observing from a distance and taking the occasional photo for his amateur portfolio. Pam sat on the floor of the classroom, joining in the lesson. “I would’ve expected, oh, these are terrible victims, and they’re being beaten every day so they’re kind of downcast, like you might see in the movies, walking around with hunched shoulders,” Pierre says. “They’re regular little kids, and the ones who are in school are raising their hands.”

Inside eBay Billionaire Pierre Omidyar's Battle To End Human Trafficking
Michelle Clement
Pierre Omidyar
The eBay billionaire and his wife Pam are the biggest single donors to the fight against trafficking.