Friday, May 31, 2013

Florida Governor Scott Signs Legislation Protecting Victims of Human Trafficking

Governor Scott Signs Legislation Protecting Victims of Human Trafficking; Highlights Public Safety Funding
St. Petersburg, Fla. – Governor Rick Scott today signed legislation to protect Florida families at Drug Free America Foundation, Inc. He also highlighted funding for the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). 

Governor Scott signed HB 1325 and HB 1327 to protect the privacy of victims of human trafficking.

Governor Scott said, “As a father of two daughters and a grandfather, I take the health and safety of Florida’s families seriously. We’ve made great progress in making our communities safer and FDLE recently reported that Florida is at a 42-year crime low, DCF also currently licenses three safe houses for human trafficking victims, with plans to add four more in the coming months.

“While these figures demonstrate that we are improving efforts to protect Florida families, the reality is that even one violent crime is too many. By signing these bills into law, we are continuing our commitment of protecting victims of abuse and making our communities even safer.”

The Florida Families First 2013-2014 budget included critical issues for the Department of Juvenile Justice’s Roadmap to System Excellence. The Florida Legislature approved all of the DJJ Roadmap budget priorities, including nearly $11 million for prevention and diversion services.

The Florida Department of Children and Families began implementing the Safe Harbor Act in January, allowing the state to treat victims of human trafficking as victims instead of criminals and will be announcing a set of priority initiatives related to Human Trafficking by the end of the year.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Uniform Crime Report reported decrease of violent and non violent crime. The Florida Families First 2013-2014 budget includes $850,541 dollars for 12 additional crime laboratory analyst positions to keep pace with increasing requests for DNA evidence analysis, and $1.2 million to replace Genetic Analyzers to process DNA evidence. 
For a video of Governor Scott, click HERE.


Senator Jack Latvala said, “The cooperation of the Legislature and the Governor in passing these bills illustrates our obligation and commitment to protect those who have been victims of human trafficking. It is through this collaboration that Florida leads the nation in anti-human trafficking efforts.”

Senator Anitere Flores said, “The victims of human trafficking deserve the opportunity to heal from the trauma they have experienced without being subjected to public record requirements. Due to the collaboration of the Governor and the Legislature, victims will now be able to begin their journey of recovery in peace.”


Representative Ross Spano said, “The passage of this bill reflects a commitment by the Governor and legislature to protect those who are victimized by such heartless crimes. By offering victims of human trafficking the opportunity to expunge their criminal records, they will be afforded the opportunity to recover and succeed.”

Representative Darryl Rouson said, “Protecting the victims of this heinous crime is an initiative supported by all members of the Legislature and the Governor. The attention that is being given to this issue will not only help current victims, but also protect future victims by preventing this crime from growing."


Department for Children and Families Secretary David Wilkins said, “This past January, the Safe Harbor Act took effect, allowing children who are rescued from prostitution to get help from DCF's child welfare professionals instead of being placed in juvenile delinquency. But this is just the beginning, and there is still much work to be done. I want to thank Governor Scott and the Florida Legislature for their continued support in our fight against human trafficking with the passage of these two bills, giving victims a better chance at a brighter future.”

Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters said, "The Florida Families First Budget funds DJJ's priorities, placing a particular emphasis on front end services that help youth avoid involvement in the juvenile justice system. These investments will enable DJJ to help more of our state's at risk and troubled youth succeed, ultimately contributing to the safety of communities across the state."
Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey said, “Governor Scott is working to provide law enforcement the resources necessary to protect Florida families, visitors and businesses. The Florida Families First budget will expand FDLE’s DNA capacity improving our turn-around time and allowing us to keep pace with increasing demand.” 

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Police in Brooklyn Are Told Not to Seize Condoms of Prostitutes

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/nyregion/brooklyn-wont-use-condoms-as-evidence-against-prostitutes.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Police in Brooklyn Are Told Not to Seize Condoms of Prostitutes

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It has been a paradox of New York City government long assailed by aid groups for sex workers: the Health Department hands out millions of condoms to stem the spread of deadly diseases, while the Police Department collects condoms as evidence in arrests for prostitution.

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Now in Brooklyn, prosecutors have a message for the police: stop taking the condoms.
In a letter sent last week to Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said his office would not use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution or loitering for the purpose of prostitution.
“Accordingly,” Mr. Hynes wrote in the letter, dated Friday, “the collection and vouchering of condoms as evidence by members of your department” in such cases in Brooklyn “should immediately cease.”
Advocates for sex workers have argued that officers’ use of condoms to support their arrestsdiscouraged prostitutes from using condoms, presenting a public health risk. A 2012 reportby the group Human Rights Watch found that such arrests sowed a fear of carrying condoms among sex workers.
Asked about Mr. Hynes’s call for policing changes, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the department agreed that “it is not necessary to seize condoms as evidence of the intent of an individual to engage in prostitution.”
But Mr. Browne added: “We do not rule out their evidentiary value when going after pimps and sex traffickers. If there is a bowlful of condoms in a massage parlor, we want our officers to be able to seize them as evidence against the trafficker.”
While prosecutors are generally wary of excluding whole categories of evidence, there is a growing consensus that condoms should not be part of prostitution cases that do not involve sex trafficking. Prosecutors in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx said that while their offices had no formal policies in place, in practice condoms were rarely if ever introduced in prostitution cases.
“Because of public health policy considerations, it is now the practice of the Manhattan D.A.’s office not to introduce condoms as evidence in individual loitering for prostitution or prostitution cases,”said Erin M. Duggan, the chief spokeswoman for the office.
But the city’s district attorneys — including Mr. Hynes in Brooklyn — said they would continue to view condoms as potential evidence in trafficking cases. (Sex trafficking, a felony charge, is often brought against pimps.)
A vast majority of the nearly 2,500 arrests for misdemeanor prostitution in the city last year — including more than 600 in Brooklyn — never make it to trial and many are resolved at arraignment, said Steven Banks, the chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, with cases dismissed or suspects released after accepting pleas for time served after a night in jail.
“Our front-line staff see these sorts of charges every day,” he said.
The new policy in Brooklyn mirrors, in part, one adopted in February in Nassau County and comes amid continued efforts in Albany to pass a bill, first introduced in 1999, that would prohibit condoms from being used as evidence in criminal court, including in sex trafficking cases.
Nassau prosecutors already reject condoms as evidence, even in more serious cases. “It was very important to me to also extend the ban to traffickers,” said Kathleen M. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney. Without it, she said, “traffickers will refuse to hand out condoms to their workers and in fact prohibit their use,” putting the victims of trafficking at risk.
Indeed, for many advocates in New York City, Mr. Hynes’s policy shift, while welcome, does not go far enough.
“People ask me how many condoms is it legal to carry,” said Andrea Ritchie, a lawyer withStreetwise and Safe. “I tell them that there’s no law against carrying condoms, but it’s true that police and prosecutors will use them as evidence. That’s why we’re pushing for state legislation.”

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Prostituted Persons Testify in Defense of Pimps at Sex Trafficking Trial

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/prostitutes-testify-in-defense-of-pimps-at-sex-trafficking-trial.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Prostitutes Testify in Defense of Pimps at Sex Trafficking Trial

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Vincent George Sr. and his son are on trial for sex trafficking, which carries a possible prison sentence of up to 25 years.

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John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Two women who worked as prostitutes for Vincent George Sr. and his son testified on their behalf on Tuesday. One of the women, Heather Keith, has Vincent George Jr.’s nickname, King Koby, tattooed on her neck.

“The whole point to our family was just to become better,” said Danielle Geissler, one of the two women who testified on Tuesday. “This wasn’t our lifestyle. This wasn’t something where we said, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this until I’m gray.’ “
Ms. Geissler testified for the defense on Tuesday at the Georges’ trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The Georges’ lawyers have conceded that the father and son were promoting prostitution, but they are fighting the sex trafficking charges, which carry a possible prison sentence of up to 25 years.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has described Ms. Geissler and her colleagues as victims — women who were coerced and intimidated by the Georges and kept in prostitution under the threat of beatings and withheld money.
“While these women were not chained up, they did not have real options,” Kim Han, an assistant district attorney, said during opening arguments two weeks ago.
The case is part of a shift in law enforcement that seeks to treat prostitutes like victims instead of criminals. A state law that passed in 2007 broadly defines sex trafficking by the methods a pimp uses to control a prostitute. The threshold can be met if the pimp instills fear of a beating, but also by more subtle intimidation, like spreading a secret that might subject a prostitute to ridicule, or doing anything “calculated to harm” the person’s health, safety or immigration status.
The prosecution has built its case on hundreds of hours of profanity-laced recorded phone calls between the Georges and the women who worked for them. On one call, Vincent George Jr. is heard threatening to beat one of the women if she fails to “get me my money” or to check in every two hours.
Bridgette Carr, director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, said it was not common for prostituted women to testify for their pimps in sex trafficking cases, in part because many prosecutors declined to bring charges if the women would not testify for the prosecution. But Ms. Carr said it was “not shocking” that women would assist the defense, and may actually be evidence of how effective the pimps were in manipulating the women. Ms. Geissler, 31, testified that she was born and raised in Quakertown, Pa., and met Vincent George Jr. 14 years ago, when she was 17. They began a sexual relationship and she began working in prostitution for him around her 18th birthday, she said. They have an 8-year-old daughter together. She said Mr. George took care of her financial needs while she took several years off from prostitution following their daughter’s birth.
She lived in a house in Allentown, Pa. Ms. Geissler referred to other prostitutes that worked for the Georges as her “wife in-laws.” She said they would drive into Manhattan together and pass out cards offering massages, a cover for prostitution. But they also went skiing in Vermont and took vacations together to Florida.
She testified that she was in love with Vincent George Jr., 35. She also said that Mr. George, after his arrest, proposed marriage to her, another woman who testified, Heather Keith, and two other women. Ms. Geissler said that she and the other women all accepted, and that Mr. George suggested they move to Africa so they could legally marry.
She said she was not a victim, kept the money she made, and never took his threats seriously.
“I let it go in one ear and out the other,” Ms. Geissler said.
Ms. Keith, 26, said she met Vincent George Jr. when she was 19 and working as a stripper and prostitute in the Buffalo area. He moved her to Allentown, helped her kick a cocaine addiction and set her up in a house, she testified.
Ms. Keith appeared in court wearing a tan-and-white striped dress, which accentuated her pregnant belly; Mr. George’s nickname, King Koby, was tattooed on her neck. To show she was not trapped “in the life” by the Georges, she said that she continued working as a prostitute after the Georges were arrested, until she became pregnant.
“I would say that I make my own choices,” she said. “I am not a dumb person. I know what I’m doing.”

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Brazil Lagging in Fight against Human Trafficking

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/05/brazil-lagging-in-fight-against-human-trafficking/&utm_source=feedly?utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer4e54d


Brazil Lagging in Fight against Human Trafficking

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Trafficking turns people into merchandise. Credit: Amnesty International
Trafficking turns people into merchandise. Credit: Amnesty International
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 20 2013 (IPS) - In contravention of international law, in Brazil trafficking in human beings remains invisible and unpunished, which encourages the practice of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and the trade in human organs, according to experts.
Local laws punish drug trafficking more severely than human trafficking. The sale of drugs carries penalties of between five and 15 years, while trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation is punished with a maximum sentence of eight years, with work release allowed.
“Human trafficking is still an invisible crime. What we have here now is real impunity,” judge Rinaldo Aparecido Barros, a member of the National Council of Justice’s working group on human trafficking, told IPS.
An average of 1,000 persons a year are recruited in Brazil and sent abroad, the public prosecutor’s office said at a public hearing on “Tráfico de pessoas: prevenção, repressão, acolhimento às vítimas e parcerias” – Trafficking in persons: Prevention, repression, care of victims and (illegal) associations – that it held in this city on Friday, May 17.
The goal was to gather and share information about combating human trafficking and to organise joint action to prevent and crack down on the crime. The meeting focused on Brazil’s role as a source country of victims for other parts of the world.
Brazil is also a destination country for victims of human trafficking, and there is internal trafficking of Brazilians for exploitation within the country’s borders as well.
In the last three years, 3,000 Brazilians were transported abroad and subjected mainly to sexual exploitation and slave labour, participants at the meeting described.
“This is a significant number. A large group of people have been deprived of their dignity. The thousands of cases documented every year do not represent the total, because we do not know how many cases escaped our notice,” said federal deputy attorney-general Raquel Elias Ferreira Dodge.
The actual number of victims sent abroad by human trafficking rings is unknown, participants at the meeting agreed.
“We have to work more effectively so that these crimes are condemned without delay. The crime of trafficking in persons injures human dignity,” said Dodge, who is a member of the Higher Council of the federal public prosecutor’s office (MPF).
She said, “Slave labour negates the personhood of the individual and converts the victim into merchandise that can be smuggled and trafficked.”
But hindering the fight against human trafficking in Brazil is the fact that it is only a crime when it leads to sexual exploitation or slave labour, Erick Blatt, the representative of the federal police in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.
“It is very hard to identify the crime; investigations can only be initiated on the basis of reports, without the certainty that illegality can be proved,” said Blatt, who is also the representative of Interpol, the international criminal police organisation, for the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Moreover, when it comes to international trafficking, “most people go voluntarily to the place where they are exploited: the majority do not know that their passports are going to be taken away,” he said.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, for the purpose of exploitation.”
The forms of coercion cited are “abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.”
People smuggling, on the other hand, is limited to profiting from covertly transporting migrants, at their request, from one country to another where legal entry would normally be denied at the border. This is illegal, but no deception may be involved.
Article 231 of Brazil’s criminal code defines the crime of sexual exploitation, and article 149 describes subjection to slave-like conditions. Both crimes are punished relatively leniently, with lighter sentences than for other offences.
The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, adopted in 2000 and ratified by Brazil in 2003, specifically identifies human trafficking crimes and proposes wide-ranging punishments, which Brazil has still not incorporated in its laws.
“We are going against the flow of international legislation. In Brazil, the issue has been inadequately treated. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity that robs people of their human dignity,” Judge Barros complained.
He said the best measures for fighting human trafficking were those that block the assets of the trafficking rings, in order to attack their economic flank.
Trafficking in persons is run by complex international crime syndicates that, in Brazil, recruit poor women who have no opportunities for a better life, lawyer Michelle Gueraldi of the Trama Project, an umbrella group for NGOs that combat human trafficking, told IPS.
These women emigrate voluntarily, often out of the desire to improve their lives, and end up being exploited in Spain, the United States, Portugal and Caribbean countries, among others, she said.
Blatt added that Brazil, in turn, is a destination country for women victims of human trafficking from Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Poland.
“Trafficking in persons is a violation of human rights. The Trama Project is working on prevention and on victim protection. We also receive denunciations of cases, and we find that the majority of recruiters are persons known to and trusted by the victims,” Gueraldi said.
In February the Brazilian government established its Second Plan to Combat Trafficking in Persons, but the challenge is to put these policies into practice, she said.
Blatt admitted that tracing victims of human trafficking across borders is difficult for the local police and for Interpol.
“If communications between the police and the prosecutors are slow here in Brazil, imagine what communications are like between police forces internationally,” he said.
Human trafficking is extremely lucrative. In Europe alone it generates some 3.2 billion dollars a year, according to speakers at the meeting.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says there are at least 2.5 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. A survey by UNODC found that 58 percent of respondents were victims of sexual exploitation and 36 percent of slave labour.


Tuesday, May 21, 2013

A Vietnamese Girl and the Man Who Saved Her

http://www.theworld.org/2013/05/vietnam-human-trafficking/


Duped, Sold into Prostitution, then Rescued: A Vietnamese Girl and the Man Who Saved Her

 
Qui and Phong looking northward toward China where they were forcibly taken. (Photo: Phillip Martin)
Qui and Phong looking northward toward China where they were forcibly taken. (Photo: Phillip Martin)
Reporter Phillip Martin has been investigating human trafficking in various parts of the world and in Vietnam he found a glimmer of hope, as a young woman who was kidnapped and sold to a brothel in China, returns to her family.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Brazil joins Blue Heart Campaign against Human Trafficking

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2013/May/brazil-joins-blue-heart-campaign-against-human-trafficking.html?ref=fs1


Brazil joins Blue Heart Campaign against Human Trafficking

Brazilian Blue Heart Campaign launch with UNODC's Executive Director Yury Fedotov, Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo and singer Ivete Sangalo. Credit: Isaac Amorin10 May 2013 - Brazil is the latest country to join the Blue Heart Campaign against Human Trafficking, with singer Ivete Sangalo appointed as a national UNODC Goodwill Ambassador and face of the campaign. There are millions of victims of human trafficking across the globe. The campaign aims to mobilize Brazilian society against this crime.
The launch was marked at a ceremony in the Brazilian Ministry of Justice yesterday, 9 May 2013, and counting with the presence of UNODC's Executive Director Yury Fedotov, Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo, Ms. Sangalo and several senior government representatives. During the event, the singer was officially appointed by Mr. Fedotov: "Ivete Sangalo is one of the most respected, popular and successful artists in Brazil. Her music transcends Brazilian borders. Now she will be able to lend her beautiful voice to those who have no voice".
Ms. Sangalo explained that her role as the campaign's ambassador in Brazil will be to bring to the public the facts about this invisible crime, and remind people of the power of transformation they hold through denunciation. "The Blue Heart is a way of making the red heart beat", she said.
Minister of Justice Cardozo said the campaign puts into practice one of the main commitments of the Brazilian National Plan to Combat Trafficking in Persons, published recently: "The most important thing is to avoid this crime. Prevention is a key aspect of the campaign, so people can be conscious, denounce and allow actions to be taken to prosecute the criminal and protect the victim."
UNODC's Executive Director said: "No country can escape from this terrible crime, which directly violates the most fundamental human rights. Trafficking in persons can happen in your country, in your city, in your street and even in your own house. That is exactly why the Blue Heart Campaign was created, to raise awareness at a global level about this problem that is all around us. Therefore, all the nations have the responsibility of confronting trafficking."
Launch of Blue Heart Campaign in Brazil, 9 May 2013According to Mr. Fedotov, in order to eradicate this crime, a comprehensive and coordinated approach is needed at national, regional and global levels.
With the slogan "Freedom can't be bought. Dignity can't be sold. Denounce trafficking in persons", the campaign adds Brazil to the international advocacy movement against this crime. One of the key activities will be an awareness raising video featuring Ms. Sangalo to be aired on Globo Television, reaching out to millions of viewers.
As part of the campaign, a website site was created and flyers, posters and pins will be distributed in centers and offices for combating trafficking in persons all over the country. The Secretariat for Human Rights, the Secretariat for Women's Policies and television giant Globo TV are also partners.
For the Brazilian National Justice Secretary, Paulo Abrão, the use of Blue Heart as common and universal symbol allows for wide social mobilization and facilitates the identification of centers of support to victims and denunciations. Mr. Abrão explained that the slogan is a statement to Brazilian society that human beings are not commodities, and that the government is determined to combat trafficking in persons.
Implemented by UNODC in 10 countries, the Blue Heart Campaign seeks to encourage involvement and inspire action to help to stop the crime of human trafficking. It allows people to show solidarity with the victims of such trafficking by wearing the Blue Heart, an international symbol against human trafficking.
Trafficking in persons is a crime that ruthlessly exploits women, children and men for countless reasons, including forced labor and sex.
In Brazil, between 2005 and 2011, 514 denunciations of human trafficking were investigated. Two thirds - 344 - of the enquiries were related to forced labour. The other 157 are for international trafficking and 13 are for internal trafficking - a form of human trafficking in which the number of denunciations is quite low.  One of the aims of the campaign is also to mobilize society to denounce human trafficking via hotlines established in key regions.

Further information:

Campanha Coração Azul (Brazilian Blue Heart Campaign website)

Friday, May 17, 2013

Human Trafficking Victims Find a Voice Through Painting

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Learn in Human TraffickingArt and Creativity

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Human Trafficking Victims Find a Voice Through Painting

In her painting, he is depicted as a tiger. The artist is a Filipina who was forced into prostitution in the UAE. The Tiger is her first client. He hired her for an hour and they got talking.
She risked punishment, but she told him everything - that she had come to the UAE to work as a beautician, but she and her two colleagues were locked in their villa and forced to sell their bodies. She told him how she didn’t want to do it and hoped to escape back to the Philippines.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Egypt calls for international cooperation to address human trafficking

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/05/14/egypt-calls-for-international-cooperation-to-address-human-trafficking/


Egypt calls for international cooperation to address human trafficking

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The United Nations says nearly one third of known human trafficking victims between 2007 and 2010 were children
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The United Nations General Assembly held a high-level meeting on Monday to discuss efforts in combating human trafficking.  (DNE File Photo)
The United Nations General Assembly held a high-level meeting on Monday to discuss efforts in combating human trafficking.
(DNE File Photo)
The United Nations General Assembly held a high-level meeting on Monday to discuss efforts in combating human trafficking. Egypt’s chief delegate to the UN in Geneva, Hisham Badr, delivered a statement to the General Assembly on behalf of the government in which he “stressed the importance of international and regional cooperation in the fight against human trafficking”.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Badr warned the General Assembly of the danger of the spread of such crimes that contribute to the growing contemporary forms of slavery, calling it “incompatible with the simplest norms of universal human rights”.
Badr said there is a need for concerted efforts from the international community to combat the funding of human trafficking operations through the implementation of the Global Plan of Action (GPA), adopted by the General Assembly in 2010.
The GPA was adopted by the General Assembly in the hopes it would pressure member states to take “coordinated and consistent measures to try to defeat the scourge”, the UN reported in 2010.
Badr told the assembly it should also strengthen the international commitment to the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (UN TIP Protocol) adopted in 2000 and ratified by 154 member states as of March.
He also spoke on efforts made by Egypt on a national level to combat human trafficking, which includes the establishment of a national committee tasked to combat the phenomenon in 2007. This committee, Badr said, involves several organs of the state and is tasked with creating “tough legal frameworks to criminalise and punish such crimes” and to strengthen security services’ ability to confront such crimes.
In October 2012, conservative members of Egypt’s parliament had scrapped an article in the constitution which aimed at combating child trafficking. The Salafi parliamentarians argued human trafficking does not exist in Egypt and therefore laws regarding it were not needed in the constitution.
Badr spoke of the “five pillars” of the war against human trafficking; commitment and political will, continued evaluation and revision of existing mechanism, strengthening of cooperation at an international and regional level, coordination with the relevant agencies and authorities and the involvement of all other parties involved, which includes private institutions from the civil society.
There is a need to hone the international will to fight human trafficking through an integrated strategy of cooperation in the implementation of upstream countries along the NileRiver, Badr said. He added that cooperation would lead to an increase in awareness and the exchange of information would contribute to the overall understanding of how human traffickers operate. This in turn would aid in the efforts to eliminate human trafficking and ensure the prosecution of those involved in such crimes.
The statement stressed that one of the fundamental aspects in addressing the root causes of that crime is to strengthen international cooperation to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, particularly the eradication of poverty in the countries where human trafficking originates. The reduction of poverty, according to Badr, would reduce the opportunities for the exploitation of the victims of organised criminal networks.
The UN estimates 2.4 million people are victims of the $32bn human trafficking industry. These victims are pushed into forced labour and domestic servitude, sexual work and serve as child soldiers.
“No effort must be spared to bring to an end the servitude of millions, while helping the survivors rebuild their lives,” General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic said during the opening of the two-day meetings.
“To achieve this, law enforcement officials, border control officers, labour inspectors, consular and embassy officials, judges and prosecutors, as well as peacekeepers, must not only increase their vigilance, but be further sensitised to the needs of victims,” Jeremic stressed.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report published in December 2012 nearly one third of all victims of human trafficking detected around the world between 2007 and 2010 were children.
Yury Fedotov, UNODC executive director, called on member states of the assembly that have yet to ratify the UN protocols and conventions to do so in order for it to be implemented universally.
“This modern form of slavery creates millions of victims,” Fedotov said on Monday. “So far, 175 states are parties to the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and 154 to the Trafficking in Persons Protocol. Fifteen countries have ratified the protocol since the adoption of the Global Plan of Action in July 2010.”