Human Trafficking Violators - United States Expands List of Countries

US Expands List of Human Trafficking Violators

VOA - David Gollust | State Department

June 27, 2011

The United States on Monday sharply increased the number of countries said to be failing to meet minimum international standards in the fight against human trafficking.  Lebanon, Venezuela and several African states are among the new countries given failing grades in the State Department’s annual report on trafficking.

Officials here say that despite greater awareness of the problem, human trafficking around the world continues to grow - propelled, in part, by Internet communications being exploited to lure people into sexual slavery and indentured labor.

As a consequence, the State Department expanded from 13 to 23 its list of so-called Tier 3 countries - states that are not seen as making significant efforts to tackle the problem and could be subject to U.S. sanctions.

At a roll-out event for the global report, covering 184 countries and territories, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that as many as 27 million people might be living in slavery.  She said that although many countries have anti-trafficking laws, enforcement is lagging.

“The number of prosecutions worldwide has remained relatively static," said Secretary Clinton. "And so the measure of success can no longer be whether a country has passed laws.  So many have in the last decade.  Now we have to make sure that laws are implemented and that countries are using the tools that have been created for that.”

The report, the 11th issued by the State Department under an anti-trafficking law approved by Congress in 2000, lists several chronic human rights violators as Tier 3 countries - including, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

U.S. Persian Gulf allies Kuwait and Saudi Arabia remain as Tier 3 states, joined for the first time by, among others, six African states, Lebanon, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Micronesia.

Of 13 countries listed last year, only one - the Dominican Republic - was removed from Tier 3 for 2011 because of anti-trafficking progress.

The only penalty authorized under U.S. law is the withholding of non-humanitarian aid, and that has been used sparingly.

Immigrant Women Vulnerable to Sexual Harassment in Workplace

Immigrant Women Especially Vulnerable to Sexual Harassment in Workplace Bernard Shusman | New York - June 18, 2011 Since the earliest days of the Dutch settlers, New York has been the first stop for many immigrants coming into the United States - and in recent years, that has included immigrants from Africa.  More than half a million African migrants have come to the United States since 1980, and many have settled in New York, like other groups before them.   But with them have come serious social issues, especially for young West African women working in the city. One of the main West African immigrant enclaves is in this Bronx, New York, neighborhood.  They are hard-working, religious people, who are making a life for themselves and their families in this new, different environment. Many women work as nannies or domestics, hotel chambermaids or go to school.  And many work in fear, like this woman named Fatou, a home attendant. "I am scared to talk to people, I do not want to lose my job," said Fatou. Fatou says the son of a client tried to have sex with her and it was not the first time it happened on a case.  It was similar, in a way, to the case of former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is charged with attacking a West African chambermaid, and now awaits trial. Dorchen Leidholdt, director of a group called Sanctuary for Families, says her group tries to help immigrant women.   "Immigrant women, especially young women, immigrant women, are especially vulnerable to sexual harassment in the workplace," said Leidholdt.  "Eighty percent of our clients are immigrants.  Most come from Latin America, Asia, Africa, like the victim in this particular case.  And we hear horrifying stories about what they are subjected to by employers." The National Domestic Workers Alliance is calling for an international law banning harassment in the workplace.  Ai-Jen Poo says domestics and chambermaids have the same problems. "The way we like to talk about it in the domestic work industry is, it is almost like our industry is, we call it, 'the wild West,' because almost anything goes," noted Ai-Jen Poo.  "There is no regulation, very little protection, very little standards.  It is often up to the individual workers who are very often isolated to advocate for their rights with very little power to do so." As a college student at John Jay College in Manhattan, Guinea native Marie Toure was told that she could get a higher grade in exchange for sexual favors. "It was a scary situation," said Toure.  "I had to keep my GPA [grade point average] up.  Having a professor do that to you is kind of like scary.  Because if he is in school as a teacher he is supposed to protect you.  But if he is putting you in a situation where you are scared and put in a situation to hurt you.  It is hard to know what to do." Counselor Miriama Diallo is also from West Africa.  She says the psychological effects and dangers in the workplace or at school are real. "The women who share their experience, it is a huge effect.  The psychological that it has on them you cannot describe.  Nightmares, flashbacks, lack of sleep, tearful, profound tearful expressions when they come to these sessions," Diallo noted. New York City's Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, Fatima Shama, says the city and state of New York are trying to reach out to these women and assure them they can get help, whether documented or undocumented.  "We understand the fear, we understand unfortunately what is happening in our communities," said Shama.  "This is why, I think, a conversation like this today, allowing us to truly repeat and remind people there are agencies and people interested in protecting them and their well-being, whether it is immigration, unauthorized around immigration, or other areas where individuals or consumers are not being protected or victimized." According to the Center for Battered Women's Legal Services, the fact that the woman in the Strauss-Kahn case came forward and reported him to the police may be a psychological turning point for immigrant women workers and students.

Immigrant Women Especially Vulnerable to Sexual Harassment in Workplace

Article and Video form VOA

Former Prostitute Rescues Girls from Sex Trade - Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City

Former Prostitute Rescues Girls from Sex Trade

Rachel Lloyd provides housing, education and job training for exploited teens

Faiza Elmasry | Washington, D.C. April 22, 2011

After escaping a life of prostitution, Rachel Lloyd established Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City to help young women leave the sex trade.

Rachel Lloyd understands why and how young girls become prostitutes. She was once once herself.

"I grew up with a lot of trauma and dysfunction in my family," she says. "So by the time I was like 13, I dropped out of school. I was working full time in factories and restaurants. I began to model, a kind of nude modeling, so I was already on the periphery of the sex industry."

Looking for a new start, Lloyd left her home in Britain for Germany. She ended up working as a hostess in a Munich sex club at the age of 17. After three suicide attempts and one effort by her boyfriend/pimp to kill her, she found shelter in a local American church. She eventually immigrated to the United States and vowed to not only change her life, but also to help young women in need.

Lloyd recounts her story in "Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale; An Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself." Lloyd began that healing process by going back to school when she was 23.

"Once I started getting my formal education, my confidence increased and I began to learn stuff. I got my undergrad in psychology and my grad degree in applied urban anthropology," says Lloyd. "I knew I needed that to have a level of credibility. Otherwise, I would have always been seen as ‘former prostitute Rachel Lloyd who has a story.'"

GEMS

In 1998, Lloyd decided to take action against the problem that had almost destroyed her life.
She founded Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City. The nonprofit has grown from her small apartment to two offices and 25 full-time staff. A 2008 documentary called "Very Young Girls," highlights her work.

"The core of our work is the direct services to young girls and women," Lloyd says. "That looks like street outreach, outreach into detention centers, group homes, anywhere we know that there are young people at risk."

GEMS offers these young people not only a safe refuge and hot meals, but also job training, education and unconditional support. Raising public awareness about the plight of teen prostitutes and changing social attitudes, Lloyd says, are critical to ending the problem.

"If you feel like your family, your community, your place of employment is always going to look at you as a prostitute and you’re scorned and ashamed for that, then you might as well stay because what’s the point of trying to move forward, if people are always going to look down at you?"

GEMS representatives - young women who've made the transition from the street to a new life - go to conferences, detention centers, local high schools and churches to talk about their experiences.

"They are the best advocates, the best peer mentors for girls who may be nervous about speaking up or ashamed or feel like they can never tell anyone," says Lloyd.

Making changes

GEMS also advocates for legislative change. In 2008, the organization played a key role in successfully lobbying New York legislators.

"We actually passed the first law in the country - The Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act - which means that young people under the age of 16 can’t be charged with an act of prostitution," Lloyd says. "It becomes a child protective issue as opposed to a juvenile detention issue."

Lloyd would like to see every state in the country pass similar legislation.

Kudos

In recognition of her efforts, Lloyd has received numerous honors, including the Reebok Human Rights Award.

"This award is actually recognizing probably for the very first time publically that the commercial sexual exploitation is a human rights issue," she said.

For Lloyd, what’s more rewarding than any recognition she receives are the success stories of those young girls, when they leave the streets, get an education, find a job and start a new life.

Former Prostitute Rescues Girls from Sex Trade

Article and Video from VOA

Sporadic Physical Activity Can Be Deadly...

Sporadic Physical Activity Increases Risk of Heart Attack
VOA - Carol Pearson | Washington April 01, 2011

Photo: VOA
Millions of people find themselves in the emergency room each year due to a heart attack because they overdid it during an exercise routine, or a bout of love-making, March 2011

Doctors the world over tell their patients to exercise for better health. But people who seldom or never exercise need to be extra cautious about engaging in strenuous physical activity. A new study shows that for these people, a sudden burst of activity, like jogging or sex, can be deadly.

You hear this often: "Check with your doctor before you start a new exercise program." A new study shows the wisdom of that advice.

Each year, millions of people find themselves in the emergency room after a heart attack because they overdid it during an exercise routine, or a bout of love-making.

Regular cardiovascular exercise reduces the risk of heart problems. But for the couch potatoes of the world - people who are sedentary - suddenly launching into a cardio program or having sex can lead to a heart attack.

Doctors at Tufts University Medical Center in Boston studied the problem and found a direct link between exercise and heart attack for these patients. Doctors Jessica Paulus and Issa Dahabreh reviewed 14 studies of the exercise-heart attack connection, mostly involving men between the ages of 55 and 64.

"For those individuals who were unaccustomed to regular physical activity or who did not typically exercise, this risk was much higher than for those individuals who were regular exercisers," said Paulus.

The study showed the greatest risk is during the activity and for up to two hours afterward. Should anyone interpret this as an excuse not to exercise, however, Paulus said they should think again.

"If they are unaccustomed to exercising but they’d like to start becoming more physically active, they should do so very gradually and under the care and supervision of a physician."

Dr. Dahabreh also pointed out that regular exercise is good even for people who have a higher risk for heart attack, because it conditions the heart to beat more slowly during a strenuous workout or sexual activity.

"People who exercise frequently, regularly, several times per week, will then have a much smaller increase (in heart rate) while they are involved in these specific activities," said Dahabreh.

The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.



Sporadic Physical Activity Increases Risk of Heart Attack
Article and video from VOA

Human Trafficking Training Pays Off

Annual human trafficking training pays off
February 10, 2011

By Clem Gaines

Planning Division

02/10/2011 - BALTIMORE, Md. - An environmental specialist in the Planning Division never expected the Department of Defense training in "Recognizing Human Trafficking" to affect her personally.

However, after hearing a longtime friend talk about the strange things he had observed at his new job, she became suspicious that it was all a front for human trafficking.

Gina Bergner was recently in California for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conference when she reconnected with a friend who works as an accountant for a refugee assistance program.

He had recently been hired to resolve various contracting and financial matters for the nonprofit organization, and had become suspicious of its labor practices and accounting methods.

"My friend didn't know if it was incompetence or malfeasance, but within a few months, he knew something was not quite right," she said.

The organization assists refugees from disaster zones and war-torn areas in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.

The refugees are given a variety of assistance, including job and language training, medical care and housing. The agency receives both public and private funding, and its staff includes an international collection of refugee relocation experts, social and health workers, and support personnel.

In conversation, Bergner's friend mentioned a number of "red flags" from the training.

All of the refugees were women and children. All of them were from desperately impoverished and war-torn regions of the world. And all of them were completely dependent on the organization for relocation assistance.

One manager drove very expensive cars, and after working hours, he was routinely accompanied by groups of young refugee women. Another manager seemed to spend most of his time arranging to move women and girls between housing, but none of the expenses were noted in the organization's paperwork.

"At first, my friend was concerned about the organization's potential financial improprieties," Bergner said. "He didn't want any part of that. But after we talked a bit, a lot of things started falling in place, and it seemed like there was more going on than shady contracts and fraudulent billing."

Having recently taken the human trafficking training online, Bergner decided that this sounded like a "perfect set-up" for human trafficking. With this in mind, she went to a computer search engine and typed "how to report human trafficking."

In just a few clicks, she arrived at the website to report human trafficking and other crimes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She filled in what she recalled from her conversations with her friend.

An FBI agent contacted her the next business day.

"I didn't know if anyone would take any interest in my report," she said, "so I was pleasantly reassured when I got a call back within about 12 hours. That's how it's supposed to work."

Her friend, now more aware of the issue, is providing information to the FBI and has decided to stay on at the job in the hopes of helping law enforcement get to the bottom of it all.

"I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would recognize a possible human trafficking situation," Bergner said. "I thought that training was for personnel on R&R overseas, but you never know. The number of people required to take the DoD training should help get the message to all the dark corners of the world - including some in our own country."

The training link is accessed via Army Knowledge Online at https://www.us.army.mil/. In the search dialog box, type "Combating Trafficking in Persons" and select the briefing at the next screen.


Annual human trafficking training pays off
Artice from the web site of the Baltimore District, US Army Corps of Engineers
http://www.nab.usace.army.mil/News/20110210_Annual%20human%20trafficking%20training%20pays%20off.htm

Human Trafficking in the USA

Human Trafficking Isn't Just Across Borders
Peter Fedynsky | New York February 07, 2011 - VOA

New York City's borough of Queens, which is home to the city's two major airports, is among the top five regions in the United States for human trafficking, according to U.S. officials. But local officials who combat the problem say a victim does not necessarily need to be transported to be trafficked. Foreign and domestic targets of trafficking are equally subjected to the psychological deceptions of pimps.

According to estimates by the U.S. State Department, as many as 17,000 people, mostly women and children, are transported to the United States each year and forced to work as prostitutes, part of a world-wide phenomenon known as human trafficking. An even greater number of Americans are trafficked, even if they never leave their own neighborhood.

Lori Cohen, an attorney with the Center for Battered Women, explains. "In fact, in neither the federal or the state definition of trafficking is transport anywhere involved. Right here in New York City, you don’t have to cross a state boundary; you don’t even have to go out of your own borough."

Activists say another misconception is that human trafficking necessarily involves kidnapping or brutal force. The U.N. definition of trafficking includes recruitment by "deception," or "abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, for the purpose of exploitation."

Rita Abadi, a manager at the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program in New York, said troubled young women, in the United States or overseas, often are approached by someone who appears loving, who listens to their problems and lures them with the dream of being taken care of. It could be a promise of providing shelter, or a big city job.

"Actually, what this promoter is doing is to know about her life, know about her family, know about her friends," said Abadi. "And this is what is going to be used very, very soon against these girls as a means of control."

Abadi said victims often are impoverished, or lost and desperately lonely, leading to mistaken trust in someone who pretends to listen.

"It’s very, very hard to explain that there is this really, really very unhealthy connection, but this is in some way the only connection they are able to establish."

Sheila White, a Queens native, managed to escape from her pimp and now counsels other girls. White said she left a home where her mother turned to alcohol to cope with violent beatings by the father. After being raped in foster care, she attempted suicide and was placed in a mental institution. White was 15 years old and hardly aware that pimps existed apart from a flashy stereotype.

"I was introduced to this guy, and, for the first time in my life, at that point, I felt like I had someone to listen to me. He listened to all that I had been through. He was very caring and loving towards me. And, at that point, I believed he was going to be my boyfriend."

Having no place to go and no one to talk to, White said, she allowed the man to sell her as a prostitute. Eventually, the young woman managed to turn her life around, and is now a counselor with the Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in New York, an agency that helps girls as young as 12, who have been targets of trafficking.

Cohen said the boyfriends, husbands and even fathers who victimize women engage in what she calls a profound betrayal of love. Cohen said there are instances of women being kidnapped, but, more frequently, they are kept as sex slaves with threats of reprisals against family members. Cohen said debt bondage is another means of control used most commonly against Asian women.

"The women themselves may have debt that needs to be repaid at incredibly high rates that would be impossible for them to ever repay it. Or their family members back home have now been held in these predatory loans, where the family members are entirely dependent on a young woman working here in the United States to pay off this debt."

Cohen said human trafficking also involves demand - customers who pay for sex. She supports enactment of laws to imprison such people. Current legislation targets prostitutes, not clients. But Cohen notes that fewer clients would mean fewer victimized women.

Human Trafficking Isn't Just Across Borders
Article from VOA