An older woman panhandles on a street in San Salvador. Criminal trafficking groups take advantage of vulnerable people, such as the destitute, to force them to beg. But in Central America, 80 percent of the victims of trafficking are women and girls, for purposes of sexual exploitation. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Nov 8 2019 (IPS)

Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world – as a major source of migrants heading towards the United States.

Human trafficking has had deep roots in Central America, especially in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, for decades, and increasingly requires a concerted law enforcement effort by the region’s governments to dismantle trafficking networks, and to offer support programmes for the victims.

The phenomenon “has become more visible in recent years, but not much progress has been made in the area of more direct attention to victims,” Carmela Jibaja, a Catholic nun with the Ramá Network against Trafficking in Persons, told IPS."We know that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are countries with a heavy flow of undocumented migrants, which puts them at risk of becoming victims of trafficking." -- Carlos Morán

This Central American civil society organisation forms part of the Talita Kum International Network against Trafficking in Persons, based in Rome, which brings together 58 anti-trafficking organisations around the world.

Jibaja pointed out that “the biggest trafficking problem is at the borders, because El Salvador is a country that expels migrants,” as well as in tourism areas. The most recognised form of trafficking in the region is sexual exploitation, whose victims are women.

Carlos Morán, Interpol security officer and a member of the Honduran police Cybercrime Unit, concurs .

“We know that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are countries with a heavy flow of undocumented migrants, which puts them at risk of becoming victims of trafficking,” Morán told IPS while participating in a regional forum on the issue, hosted Nov. 4-8 by San Salvador.

The “Regional Seminar on Investigation Techniques and Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Persons” brought together officials from the office of the public prosecutor, police officers, legal experts and other key actors and experts from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the countries that make up the so-called Northern Central American Triangle.

The objective is to strengthen capacities and good practices in the investigation of trafficking, especially when the crime is transnational in nature.

Morán and other participants in the meeting declined to talk about figures on the extent of trafficking in the region, due to the lack of reliable data.

Prosecutors, police officers, government officials, experts and representatives of social organisations from Central America are participating in a special seminar on human trafficking Nov. 4-8 to identify and coordinate joint efforts. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Civil society supports victims

In the countries of the Northern Triangle there are government efforts to develop victim care programmes, but they are insufficient and civil society organisations have had to take up the challenge.

Mirna Argueta, executive director of the Association for the Self-Determination of Salvadoran Women (AS Mujeres), told IPS that “the problem is serious, because we are facing networks with great economic and political influence, and victims are not being protected,” and there are very few programmes to help with their reinsertion in society.

Her organisation has been working since 1996 with victims of trafficking, offering psychological and medical support, and is also an important ally of the Attorney-General’s Office in victim protection work.

AS Mujeres collaborates with the police and prosecutors when victims have to be moved from one place to another, in the most secretive way possible, especially when judicial cases against organised crime networks are underway.

In the past it has also offered shelter to women victims of trafficking, but now the prosecutor’s office does, said Argueta, who is also coordinator in El Salvador of the Latin American Observatory on Trafficking in Persons, which brings together 15 countries.

AS Mujeres’ victim care programme includes, in addition to psychological support, medical assistance which incorporates non-traditional techniques such as biomagnetism, performed by a physician specialising in this area, as well as massage and aromatherapy.

“Experience has shown us that with the combination of these three techniques, recovery is more effective, and care is more integral,” said Argueta.

She added that since the programme’s inception in 1996, it has served some 600 trafficking victims.

They currently offer support to five women, who IPS could not speak to because they are under legal protection, and providing their names or a telephone number for them has criminal consequences.

For the same reason, the public prosecutor’s office also vetoed conducting interviews with victims under its protection.

AS Mujeres also promotes a self-care network.

“When the victim has gone through different stages, we integrate her with other women and they can share their experiences, making it less painful, and helping them with their reinsertion in society,” Argueta added.

She said many victims feel they are “damaged,” or worthless, and they turn to prostitution.

Victims can spend anywhere from six months to two and a half years in the programme, depending on the complexity of each case. For example, there are women with acute problems of depression, suicidal thoughts and persecutory delusions.

According to figures from the United Nations office in Honduras, released in July, 80 percent of the victims of human trafficking in Central America are women and girls.

In El Salvador, 90 percent of cases involve sexual exploitation, according to official figures provided by the public prosecutor’s office during the regional forum in San Salvador.

However, other types of trafficking have been detected, such as labour exploitation, forced panhandling and others.

So far this year, the prosecution has reported 800 victims, cases that are still open.

Mirna Argueta (L), executive director of the Association for the Self-Determination of Salvadoran Women, and Catholic nun Carmela Jibaja, of the Central American Network against Trafficking in Persons, are two activists working to provide care for victims of trafficking, who are mostly women. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In Guatemala, in 2018, the Public Prosecutor’s Office detected 478 possible victims of human trafficking, four percent more than the previous year. There were 276 reported cases, also an increase of four percent.

Children and adolescents continue to be vulnerable to trafficking, as 132 children and adolescents were detected as possible victims of human trafficking, 28 percent of the total, 111 of whom were rescued.

They were victims of illegal adoptions, labour exploitation, forced marriage, forced panhandling, sexual exploitation and forced labour or services. But the most invisible form of trafficking, according to the prosecutor’s office, is the recruitment of minors into organised crime.

Gangs involved in people trafficking

Experts consulted by IPS point out that many trafficking cases are the product of a relatively new phenomenon: involvement in trafficking by the gangs that are responsible for the crime wave in the three Northern Triangle countries.

The gangs have mutated into bona fide organised crime groups, with tentacles in the illicit drug trade, extortion rackets, “sicariato” or murder for hire and now human trafficking, among other criminal activities.

In El Salvador, it is common to hear stories in neighborhoods and towns controlled by gangs about young girls who gang leaders “ask for”, to be used as sex toys by the leaders and other members of the gang, and the families hand them over because they know that they could be killed if they don’t.

But the gangs go farther than that, forcing their victims to provide sexual services for profit, another aspect of trafficking.

Official figures from the National Council against Trafficking in Persons, which brings together government agencies to combat the phenomenon, indicate that in 2018 there were 46 confirmed victims, 43 police investigations and 38 judicial proceedings.

The trials led to four convictions and two acquittals. The rest are still winding their way through court, according to the Council’s Work Report 2018.

The document also reported that the attention to victims included programmes to help them launch small enterprises, as well as measures of integral reparations for families of children and adolescents in the shelters.

Emergency response teams were also coordinated to provide assistance to victims, whether the women are foreigners or nationals.

El Salvador is part of the Regional Coalition against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants, along with Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

Honduras has also provided support for economic reinsertion, offering seed capital to set up small jewelry businesses, among others, said Interpol’s Morán.

At least 337 people from Honduras have been rescued since 2018, including 13 in Belize and Guatemala, according to a report by the Inter-Institutional Commission Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons in Honduras.

Excerpt:

Child labour is a cancer in Nigeria, with children engaged in domestic labour, forced begging, quarrying gravel and armed conflict. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

By Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe
LAGOS, Nigeria, Oct 31 2019 (IPS)

“Human trafficking is when someone is taken from Nigeria to another country to be a prostitute. Or, to do other illegal jobs that are not good for humanity,” said Kingsley Chidiebere, a commercial motorcycle rider in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

He is one of the over 27 Nigerians interviewed so far by IPS who thinks human trafficking is when a “lady goes to Europe to prostitute herself”.

Though a father himself, Chidiebere, like others interviewed, does not know that children are trafficked to other countries and within Nigeria as well.

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) April to September 2018 report indicates females are the overwhelming majority of identified victims in Nigeria. According to the report, most rescued victims are now from Kano State, closely followed by Edo State. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), founded in 2003 in response to the country’s high rate of human trafficking, said while most of the victims of trafficking here are women, children and men now make up a significant portion of trafficked victims compared to a decade ago.

• In a 2014 report,  NAPTIP said children comprised 28 percent of detected victims, and men, 21 percent. 
• NAPTIP said that the two most-reported human trafficking cases here include cases where women are prostituted internationally and the employment of children as domestic workers. In many cases these child labourers also suffer physical abuse. 

Human trafficking and modern day slavery involve the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain and is a $150 billion global industry.

Two thirds of this figure — $99 billion — is generated from commercial sexual exploitation, while another $51 billion results from forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture and other economic activities. 

Nigeria remains a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its 2016 Global Report On Trafficking In Persons says globally more than 500 different trafficking flows were detected between 2012 and 2014.

• In Nigeria, 42 percent of detected victims between 2012 and 2014 were adults, with the remaining numbers accounting for children.
• The UNODC reports 69 countries reported to have detected 21,251 victims from Sub-Saharan Africa between 2012 and 2014. Nigeria had 1,030 detected trafficking victims. Of these, 322 were adults (61 males, 261 females) and 708 were children (458 boys, 250 girls).
• “More recently, reports have surfaced that children in northern Nigeria are being forced by the terrorist group Boko Haram to carry out suicide attacks, the ultimate form of exploitation.
• “Earlier this year, UNICEF reported that suicide attacks by Boko Haram rose 11-fold from 2014 to 2015, and that 20 percent of the attacks were committed by children as young as eight,” the report stated.

Barrister Julie Okah-Donli, the Director General of NAPTIP said parents who give their children away to work as domestics are endangering them. She warned that these kids end up in the hands of human traffickers. 

The 2018 Global Slavery Index Report reveals Nigeria ranks 32/167 of the countries with the highest number of slaves. The report indicates Nigeria produces no fewer than 1,38m slaves. According to Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), the average age of trafficked children in Nigeria, is 15. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

Nigeria’s government agency responsible for tackling trafficking reported in 2016 that 75 percent of children trafficked within the country are trafficked across states, while 23 percent of the kids are trafficked within states. Only two percent of those who are trafficked are trafficked outside the country. The boys in the yellow and pink shirts are pictured transporting goods from the market during school hours. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

In 2006, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report indicated child trafficking was the third-most common crime in Nigeria after drug trafficking and economic fraud. UNESCO highlighted Nigeria’s gross poverty, corruption, conflict, climate change/resulting migration and Western consumerism as factors which increase vulnerability to being trafficked in the country. The boys in the yellow and pink shirts are pictured transporting items they had begged for from the market during school hours. Like most trafficked children they don’t understand or speak English. These boys spend their days begging for money and food. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

In January, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report stating that the number of modern day child slaves constitute almost one-third of all global victims. A young boy works at a shop during school hours selling palm oil from morning to night for the ‘madam’ he works for. He said she brought him to Lagos from a village and away from his family. Where the village from where he comes is, he doesn’t recall. When asked by IPS, he said he did not know his age. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

A report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) reveals shocking statistics: 99 percent of the 4.8 million victims of commercial sexual exploitation in 2016 were women and girls, with one in five being children. The young girl pictured here has never been to school and has marks from flogging over her hand. She timidly tells IPS that rice fell on her hand, but the signs of beating are clear. She lives with the person for whom she sells rice for and does not know her age. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The Global Slavery Index reveals women and girls represented 84 percent of the 15.4 million people in forced marriages, and 59 percent of those in private, forced labour. The Index maintains that modern day slavery is most prevalent in Africa with Nigeria being one of the leading countries where the practice thrives. Africa, has no fewer than 9.24 million modern day slaves with an average vulnerability score of 62/100. When young women and children are trafficked to Lagos from Northern Nigeria, mostly Kano and Kaduna state, they have no where they sleep. Often their traffickers make them sleep in the streets and beg for money which they hand over to the person who trafficked them. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

The International Organisation for Migration says that in Bangladesh victims of human trafficking are either abducted or lured with promises of a better life. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Sarker/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Oct 17 2019 (IPS)

After his father passed away two years ago, the burden of caring for a six-member family rested on the shoulders of the now 19-year-old Farhad Hossain. He had no clue how he would support his family and pay for the education of his four younger siblings. 

Capitalising on Hossain’s plight, a neighbour offered him a “promising job” abroad in Iraq.

Hossain, a resident from Kishoreganj district, Bangladesh, believed that going abroad was the only way for him to earn enough money to advance in life. So, he sold a piece of land and gave Taka 300,000 ($ 3,750) to the neighbour. 

“Few days later, I, along with some 14 Bangladeshis, were flown to Iraq. And when we reached Baghdad airport, two Bangladeshis received us and took us to a den in the desert,” Hossain told IPS over phone from Iraq.

The next day, he said, a gang of human traffickers, including Bangladeshis and Iraqi nationals, detained them in a house and started beating them, seeking a ransom. “We were forced to call to our family members via phone informing to give them the ransom money otherwise they would kill us,” Hossain said.

“But, my family’s [financial] circumstances was not so good [and they couldn’t afford] to pay the money the traffickers demanded. They did not give us food and even water regularly. They beat us three times in a day. I suffered such torture for six months. And when my mother sent the traffickers another amount of Taka 200,000 ($ 2,500), they released me. But many remained detained there,” he said.

Upon release Hossain was able to find work at a petrol station near Baghdad. He earns Taka 25,000 or $315 a month now and sends some of this home to his family.

Zahid, who works as a bellhop in Dhaka, has a similar story of trafficking. Last year, one of his relatives convinced him to go to Malaysia, where he was promised a job and told that he didn’t have to pay large sums to migrate. So Zahid, a resident of Dhaka’s Gopalganj district, paid the relative Taka 50,000 (about $ 625) so he could leave the country via irregular means.

Zahid and about 100 people, mostly youth, embarked from Cox’s Bazar, the location of the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. They were to travel a treacherous journey by boat to Indonesia and then on to Malaysia.

After a few days, they reached the shores of Indonesia. Zahid told IPS that instead of travelling onwards to Malaysia, they were kidnapped and taken to a jungle where the traffickers demanded a ransom, threatening to kill them if their families did not pay up. They were frequently beaten by traffickers, Zahid said.

More than a month passed before local law enforcement agencies rescued them and deported them to Bangladesh.

“The damage has already done. My husband returned home. That is why we are not interested to talk about the issue any more,” Zahid’s wife told IPS, wishing not to be identified as they both still remain fearful.

• In 2018, about 8.9 million Bangladeshis migrated internally and around 730,000 left the country through regular channels to work abroad — 12 million Bangladeshis are currently employed abroad.
• But unknown numbers migrate each year through irregular channels, risking exploitation and abuse at the hands of smugglers and traffickers, according to the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2019.
• However, official data shows that over a five-year period from 2013 to 2018 over 8,000 people from Bangladesh, including women and children, were victims of human trafficking — a crime that places migrant workers at risk to physical and mental abuse, harassment, forced labour, forced and illegal marriages, sexual exploitation, illegal trade and in some cases, death.

“Due to unemployment problems and economic inequality existing in the country, a trafficked person doesn’t take much time to calculate their future financial gains and swallow the offer of the traffickers. The victims are either abducted or lured with promises of a better life by providing a lucrative job or marriage offers and false proposals to visit holy places. It is critical for all stakeholders to join hands and work together to combat human trafficking,” Sharon Dimanche, Deputy Chief of Mission for the International Organisation for Migration, Bangladesh, said in a recent statement.

• According to the U.S. Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2019, Bangladesh is on the Tier 2 Watch List for the third consecutive year.
• A Tier 2 ranking means that the country has not met standards of the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 but has made significant efforts to do so.
• To be on the Tier 2 Watch List means is the ranking is similar to Tier 2 but the number of human trafficking victims is significantly high or significantly increasing in that country.

Human trafficking is illegal in Bangladesh.

The 2012 Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act criminalises sex and labour trafficking, prescribing penalties of five years to life imprisonment and a fine of not less than Taka 50,000 ($ 610).

But Shariful Islam Hasan, head of BRAC Migration Programme, told IPS, “The accused do not get punishment in most of the trafficking cases.”

The figures confirm this. Only around 4,446 trafficking cases have been filed under the Act since 2012. Out of an approximate 4,758 arrests there have been only 29 convictions, according to the Human Trafficking Cell of the Bangladesh Police.

“Trafficking is a transnational crime. The existing laws are good enough to prevent trafficking. But we need to implement the laws strictly to bring the traffickers under custody. And, raising awareness is the key issue where we should give intensive emphasis,” Dr Nakib Muhammad Nasrullah, a professor of Law, University of Dhaka, told a recent function observing the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 2019.

However, officials say that the Bangladesh government has taken various initiatives to counter-trafficking like formulating policies, strengthening task forces, and the formulation of various committees such as:

• GO-NGO National Coordination Committee to Combat Human Trafficking,
• Committee to Monitor the National Plan of Action for Combatting Human Trafficking 2018-2022,
• the Rescue, Recovery, Repatriation and Integration (RRRI) Task Force, and
• Vigilance Task Force and Counter-Trafficking Committees (CTC) at district, sub-district and union levels.

Recently, United Nations agencies in Bangladesh established a national migration network to ensure coordinated U.N. country-wide support to the Bangladesh government in implementing the Global Compact on Migration and other relevant policies. 

“People desperately want to go abroad seeking jobs. That is why sometimes they go abroad through illegal channels and become victims of human trafficking. But, the law enforcing agencies here are working sincerely to prevent trafficking incidents,” Alamgir Hossain, additional superintendent of police and spokesman of the Armed Police Battalion, told IPS over phone

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

In Kashmir there are thousands of young women who were sold in their teens by their parents to older men, and now living lives governed by restrictions which many equate to imprisonment. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

Haseena Akhtar was only 13 when an agent told her parents that they could earn a good amount of money by letting her marry a Kashmiri man. The man was, however, three times older than Akhtar, the agent said.

Akhtar’s parents, who lived in the poverty-stricken region of West Bengal (an eastern Indian state), had two other daughters and according to tradition they would have had to bear cost of their marriages. So they let their 13-year-old daughter go with the agent.

Akhtar, who is now 20, ended up here in Kashmir — a landlocked northern region of India caught in the grip of violence and conflict over the past 30 years.

The agent took her to an old part of the city in Srinagar, the region’s capital, and she was married to a middle aged, disabled, Kashmiri man.

“That was not a marriage in any terms. That was a pure selloff. I was sold to a man who couldn’t find a bride for himself in Kashmir because his right leg was amputated after he was injured in a bomb blast some years before,” Akhtar told IPS.

Too many daughters and no boy

A year after the marriage, she gave birth to a girl.

Three more daughters later, and the strong desire by both her husband and her in-laws for a son and grandson was not fulfilled.

By the age of 18 Akhtar was mother to four daughters and relations with her husband and her in-laws had deteriorated.

“I was nothing less than a sex slave for my husband who wanted me to give birth to a boy. When that didn’t happen, I was first ridiculed, then beaten and then dragged out of the home along with my daughters,” Akhtar said.

One of the neighbours provided her with shelter and intervened to talk to her husband and his family. A volunteer organisation also came to her aid and helped her get work as a cleaner in a private firm, earning $100 a month.

When efforts to remedy things with her in-laws failed, Akhtar’s husband  paid her $550 and divorced her.

With a meagre income and four daughters to support, the road ahead for Akhtar looks filled with hurdles.

“I don’t know what I will do and where I will go. I sometimes wonder why being poor makes you vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation,” she said.

It’s so common, its socially acceptable

Akhtar’s story is not unique here.

In Kashmir there are thousands of young women like her, sold in their teens by their parents to older men, who are now living lives governed by restrictions which many equate to imprisonment. 

Infested with violence and Islamist militancy, Kashmir is becoming a safe haven for human traffickers. 

A three-decade insurgency that aims to free the region from Indian rule and the Indian efforts to quell it have claimed at least 100,000 lives, including those of civilians, militants and members of the security forces.

The border tensions and insurgency have killed an average of 1,500 people each year over the last 30 years, according to official records. Here, many former militants, torture victims and people who remain psychologically affected by the conflict didn’t marry at the traditionally marriageable ages of between 25 to 35 years. 

Now much older, these rejected grooms are turning to agents who provide them with young, non-local women whom they can marry — all for the price of just a few thousand dollars.

Aabid Simnanni, a renowned scholar and a social worker who heads an organisations that focuses on human trafficking in Kashmir, told IPS that a majority of the marriages between Kashmiri men and teenage, non-local women end badly due to the generational and cultural gaps. 

“You see the men to whom these young brides are married to are middle aged — 40 to 45 years old. How could you expect such a huge generation gap to disappear? Also, there are cultural, linguistic and many other barriers between the two sides. These things matter a lot in a successful marriage,” Simnanni said.

He said that for the past five years his organisation has been helping women get legal and financial help but that it would be a Herculean task to stop the practice. 

Police won’t investigate because the women are legally married

A senior official in the anti-trafficking cell of the Kashmir police told IPS that it has become almost impossible to catch traffickers as there is no one willing to testify to the crime.

“The victim is usually married to the man by [law] and it is difficult to ascertain the victim’s age as the documents are already forged by the agents. We act only when we receive the complaint against anyone,” said the official who did not wish to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media about the issue. 

He says that there are no records available about the number of brides trafficked to Kashmir as the practice has societal acceptance in Kashmir. 

“The marriage is happens in a broad day light. Though it is an open secret that these girls are sold by their parents for a pretty sum, the relationship they get into is absolutely legitimate and legal in accordance the law,” the official said.

My marriage, my prison

Four years ago, Ulfat Bano, a 14-year-old from India’s Northern state of Bihar was taken to Kashmir by her distant cousin who herself was married to a Kashmiri man. 

Bano’s family was given around one thousand dollars and an assurance that she would marry into a good family. 

Here she was given to a  50- year-old torture victim.

“I was shocked when I saw him first. He was older than my father and I was forcibly married to him. I had no choice,” Bano told IPS.

According to her, her husband was tortured in the early 1990s when militancy against the Indian rule erupted in Kashmir.

His left eye was damaged and for years he could not find a local woman to marry him. His family contacted Bano’s cousin, who was married to one of their relatives, and asked her to find a bride for their son.

Now the mother of a three-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, Bano longs for home every day. 

In the four years since her marriage, she has not been allowed to return to Bihar to see her family.

“Kashmir is nothing less than a prison for me. What good is this life for when you cannot meet your parents and share few moments of joy with them? My husband fears that if he allows me to meet my parents, I won’t return home.

“He is probably right.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

When she was 20 Mary Njambi was trafficked to Saudi Arabia where she thought she would obtain work as a well-paid domestic worker. Instead, she was treated as a slave and was sexually abused. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Oct 3 2019 (IPS)

Six years ago Mary Njambi* received news of a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity far away from her poverty-stricken village situated in the heart of Kiambu County, Central Kenya. She was 20 years old, a single mother and out of work.

“My best friend told me that rich families in Saudia (Saudi Arabia) were in need of house maids. My salary would be 1,000 dollars per month and overtime,” Njambi tells IPS.

Her friend took her to a recruiting agency in downtown Nairobi where all travel arrangements were made at no cost to her.

Three months later, Njambi and 15 other girls made that fateful journey to Saudi Arabia.

“We all separated at the airport and I was taken to my employer’s home. The moment I walked in, a woman started barking orders at me in Arabic even though I did not speak the language,” she says. At this point, Njambi had no way of knowing that she had been trafficked.

Kenya a transit point for trafficking

The 2019 Global Report Trafficking in Persons report released in June by the United States Department of State profiles Kenya as a source, transit point and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour.

Released every year, the report classifies countries into four tiers based on their government’s demonstrated commitment to eliminate human trafficking.

• Tier 1 ranking is the highest and indicates that a government meets the minimum standards of the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000.
• A country such as Kenya, with a Tier 2 rating, has not met these standards but has made significant efforts to do so.
• The Tier 2 Watch List, on which Kenya was placed until 2015, is similar to Tier 2 with the exception that the number of human trafficking victims is significantly high or significantly increasing.
• Tier 3, which is the worst ranking, indicates that a country such as Saudi Arabia has not met minimum standards to eliminate human trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so.

“These efforts include criminalising human trafficking and providing care for survivors,” Victor Amugo, a prosecutor at Kilifi Law Courts, Coastal region which is a hub for human trafficking to Somalia, tells IPS.

According to Wilkister Vera, Kakamega’s County Police Commander in Western Kenya, law enforcers are diligently fighting human trafficking.

“We are targeting the entire network of recruiters, places where victims are held before they are moved, transportation and following the paper trail including work permits and passports,” she tells IPS.

“Systems are also in place to take care of victims through the National Referral Mechanism,” she adds.

Young women and girls the most vulnerable

The Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking, affirms that like Njambi, children and youth are more vulnerable to human trafficking for primarily sexual exploitation and forced labour.

• One in every six victims trafficked is a child,
• Two-thirds are aged 18 through 29,
• 17 percent are aged between 30 and 47, and
• Less than one percent are over 47 years.

“Poverty and gender inequalities are some of the factors that make women and girls vulnerable to human trafficking,” Zuleikha Hassan, Kwale County Member of Parliament, and founder of Tawfiq Muslim Association, tells IPS. “We have to aggressively educate communities to identify human trafficking situations that come disguised as the job of a lifetime.”

Njambi says that back-breaking house work, working for at least 18 hours a day and sleeping on the floor characterised the first few days of employment. It quickly escalated to physical and sexual violence.

Days spiralled into months without a single day off and with no pay. “One day I went to the rooftop and threatened to jump off if they did not take me back home and it worked,” she narrates.

This was in 2013, at that time, news that hundreds of Kenyan girls were distressed and stranded in the Middle East was spreading across the country.

“The lucky ones made it home bruised and battered. Others came back in coffins. In 2014, the government banned Kenyans from travelling to the Middle East for work,” says Dinah Mbula*, who runs a recruiting agency in downtown Nairobi.

“There was a crackdown by the government targeting recruiting agencies but horror stories did not scare desperate unemployed people from going to the Middle East,” Mbula tells IPS.

Victims of trafficking treated like criminals 

In 2000, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the Palermo Protocol), marked an important transition into the modern movement against human trafficking.

Kenya is signatory to the Palermo Protocol, which led to the domestication of the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2010, which came into effect in 2012.

“Section 1 of the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act criminalises sex and labour trafficking,” says Amugo.

Although the Trafficking in Persons report affirms that there are now more prosecutions and convictions of traffickers in Kenya, Amugo says that the numbers could rise if all prosecutions were made under the anti-trafficking laws rather than the more lenient immigration or labour violations laws.

Those convicted under anti-trafficking laws serve 15 years to life imprisonment, a fine of not less than 50,000 dollars, or both.

“Victims of human trafficking are treated like criminals. That is why recruiters continue doing their job because they know chances that a victim will report to the police are next to zero,” Mbula expounds.

Kenya bans and then lifts ban on citizens working the Middle East

Also, this East African nation has lifted the ban on its citizens travelling to the Gulf for work.

The Kenyan government signed bi-lateral agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates and lifted the ban in 2017.

The government insisted on re-vetting recruitment agencies after lifting the ban. But Mbula says that more than 1,000 agencies were vetted and only 100 were cleared but because of corruption “we are still in business with or without a license.”

From early 2019, Kenya allowed Saudi Arabia to recruit domestic workers again.  

According to the Ministry of Labour, at least 130,000 Kenyans work as domestic workers in the Arabian Gulf.

Njambi confirms that it is easier to just disappear in the village than speak out because “people tell you to be grateful you came back alive. There is no support of any kind or counselling.”

She now runs a grocery store at her local shopping centre. 

She says that victims are often compared to others who went to the Middle East and succeeded: “People say your experience was just bad luck and advise you to try other countries like Lebanon. My story is repeating itself everyday because people are desperate.”

*Names changed to protect identity of source

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

A 2009 study found that almost 250,000 children worked in auto repair stores, brick klins, as domestic labourers, and as carpet weavers and sozni embroiderers in Jammu and Kashmir. A new study says financiers in Wall Street, the City of London and other banking centres should play a bigger role in freeing the millions of people who endure slave-like working conditions globally. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2019 (IPS)

Financiers in Wall Street, the City of London and other banking centres should play a bigger role in freeing the millions of people who endure slave-like working conditions globally, according to a new study.

A group of experts known as the Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking say that banks and other finance bodies can adopt policies to reduce the 40.3 million men, women and children who are victims of forced labour.

Their 172-page report, Unlocking Potential: A Blueprint for Mobilising Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking, calls for more financial probes into people-smuggling rings and greater support to those freed from slave-like conditions. 

“Slavery and human trafficking are big business, reckoned to generate 150 billion dollars every year over the broken backs, hearts and dreams of people young and old,” said Dutch foreign minister Stef Blok, who was involved in the report.

The report paints a bleak portrait of modern slavery, which sees one in every 185 people globally forced to work in an illicit sector that compares in scale to the trade in illegal drugs and counterfeit goods.

Modern forms of slavery include debt bondage, where workers are forced to toil for free in service of a debt, forced marriage, domestic servitude, and forced labour, in which workers face violence or intimidation.     

Modern-day slaves can be found doing everything from begging to gold-mining, but the biggest sectors in the 150-billion-dollar-a-year global business are housework, manufacturing and construction. A quarter of those involved are children. 

James Cockayne, a co-author of the report and policy analyst at United Nations University, said human trafficking and slavery represented a “tragic market failure” . 

“Modern slavery leaves us all worse off because it treats people as disposable objects rather than full economic and social agents,” said Cockayne. 

“We collectively lose out on a huge amount of potential that is currently locked up.”

Tackling the scourge will be a struggle, says the report. Getting the number of exploited workers down to zero by 2030 will involve releasing 10,000 victims of modern slavery every day for the next 11 years.  

Financial institutions can help to achieve that target by boosting resources for financial probes into people-trafficking rings and lifting the lid on firms that turn a profit through slavery, according to the report’s authors. 

Banks can get better at spotting the illicit cash flows linked to people-smuggling rings, and can cooperate more with other institutions to identify and combat the abuse of some of the world’s most vulnerable people. 

As well as turning people into slaves, trafficking ringleaders have also been known to hijack the financial identities of their victims for money laundering purposes. Once they regain their freedom, some victims also find that they have low credit ratings. 

Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Price for his microfinance scheme and assisted on the commission, says banks should invest more in digital and social finance schemes to make poor people less vulnerable to traffickers.

“Large numbers of people around the world remain unbanked,” said Yunus.

“We must … create social businesses, that is, businesses dedicated to solving problems without seeking monetary returns personally, focusing on reducing, and ultimately eliminating the human trafficking and modern slavery.”

The report was driven by the Liechtenstein Initiative, a public-private partnership with the participation of Barclays, Bank of America, HSBC, Wells Fargo, BMO Financial Group and other well known finance brands.

“The financial sector possesses huge potential to help end modern slavery and human trafficking and to maintain the integrity of the international financial system,” added Blok.

“It can create moral capital markets, and can therefore be a powerful force for good, first and foremost by supporting the victims of these criminal business practices.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Zubedah Nakitende was trafficked as salve labour to a family in Jordon. Her employer gave her a cream for her injured fingers that was actually turned out to be acid. Nakitende’s fingers were so badly injured they had to be amputated. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Sep 18 2019 (IPS)

In 2017, Zubedah Nakitende’s electronics shop was robbed with thieves taking her entire stock. But she had heard from a colleague about lucrative jobs in Jordan and decided to take on work as a domestic helper, earning an income of 740 dollars a month.

“I was desperate, I had debts. So I said let me go and work to pay those debts,” Nakitende told IPS.

She made contact with a trafficker, known by the pseudonym Abu Ahmad, with whom she communicated by phone. On his advice she travelled by road to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where she was given an illegal visa and flown to Jordan.

But she ended up placing her life in the hands of a criminal network that sold her as slave domestic labour. And in the end she lost four of her fingers and never earned the money she had hoped to to pay off her debts.

East Africa’s trafficking transit point

• According to the United Nations Refugee Agency’s Refworld, Kenya has been identified as a transit point for Ethiopians and other East Africans seeking work in South Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
• The Ugandan government, despite criticism, has encouraged externalisation of labour in order to attract foreign exchange in the form of remittances. Remittances from Ugandans abroad, according to the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Youth Affairs (UPFYA), increased from 1.6 billion dollars in 2016, to 2.0 billion dollars in 2017. 
• In 2017, the government lifted a ban on Ugandans travelling abroad for domestic work, despite reports of abuse and trafficking.
• Since then there has been a surge in labour recruitment agencies targeting the export of labour to countries like Oman, Jordan, UAE, Malaysia and China. As of 2018, over 105 private companies were licensed by Uganda’s Gender and Labour Ministry to recruit workers for external employment.
• Nairobi-based labour recruiters recruit Ethiopian, Rwandan, and Ugandan workers through fraudulent offers of employment in the Middle East and Asia. But women recruited through these agencies end up in sex slavery or forced labour in the Middle East and China, among others.

She was forced to work through the pain

Nakitende was herself forced into salve labour. Her passport was taken by the domestic recruitment agency in Jordan and she was taken to a home in the city to work.

One day she told her employer that her hands ached. Her boss gave her a liquid, which Nakitende thought would ease the pain. Instead it turned out to be an acid that burnt her fingers.

She was in deep pain but her employer forced her to work saying, she “had been bought for that purpose”.

Eventually she was sent back to the recruitment company that facilitated her employment so she could receive treatment. But the medication could not relieve the pain. “It instead worsened the situation as the palms turned black and swollen,” Nakitende said.

In the end she was taken to a specialist who recommended she return to Uganda “because I would no longer be able to work”.

Upon return home she went to hospital for treatment. But her fingers were so severely damaged that the only course for her was amputation.

“I went to Jordan knowing that I was going to work but I returned with a permanent injury. I did not get any money. The trafficker even took the money that had received to facilitate my treatment,” she recalls.

Healing the psychological wounds 

Nakitende has just completed psychosocial support and rehabilitation by Willow International — a nonprofit organisation with an office in Uganda’s capital that provides rescue and restoration support to survivors of trafficking.

Flavia Amaro, a programme officer with Willow International, told IPS that some of the victims have been referred to the Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital in Kampala for treatment for a range of mental issues that mainly related to depression.

She said 15 women were receiving counselling and treatment at the time of the interview. One woman, she said, would always stand still, without moving. “From our assessment, we realised that she was locked up in a very cold room for a longtime,” said Amaro.

Uganda’s efforts not enough to end trafficking

• Uganda is one of the countries battling to end trafficking. It has been also identified as the destination for persons trafficked for sexual exploitation, with women originating from countries like conflict-ridden Burundi, among others.
• In its 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report, the U.S. State Department said Uganda does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it was making significant efforts.
• According to the Ugandan government, authorities intercepted a total of 599 Ugandans, 477 females and 122 males, attempting to depart to countries that officials assessed as high risk for trafficking and where travellers were unable to adequately explain the purpose of their travel.
• According to the U.S. Trafficking in Person Report, Uganda reported that of 145 trafficking investigations, there were prosecutions of 52 defendants in 50 cases, and convictions of 24 traffickers in 2017 under the country’s 2009 anti-trafficking act. This is compared to 114 investigations, 32 prosecutions, and 16 convictions in 2016.
• The report observed that corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action.

Airport and immigration officials implicated in trafficking crime

Security officers at Uganda’s border with Kenya, at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport and officials from the Civil Aviation Authority and immigration departments have been accused of colluding with traffickers to facilitate the travel of trafficked persons.

Jessica (not her real name), a survivor of trafficking, told IPS that her travel to Jordan was facilitated by ground staff and immigration officials at Entebbe Airport. She said the trafficker who helped her leave Uganda for a job as a domestic worker in Jordan had been in contact with them.

Jessica, who worked as slave labour and was beaten on several occasions, was eventually rescued by her member of parliament. She posted a video explaining her ordeal on social media and reached out to Ugandan legislator, Louis Gaffa Mbwatekamwa. Mbwstekamwa travelled to Jordan, with permission from parliament, and brought her home.

Uganda’s Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control spokesperson Jacob Siminyu did not rule out the fact that some immigration officials were working with traffickers for personal gain. He said the directorate worked with the police and other agencies to ensure that trafficked persons were not allowed to exit Entebbe Airport.

Not enough money to bring trafficked survivors home

• The U.S. trafficking report also suggests the need to fully implement the protection and prevention provisions of Uganda’s 2009 Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act.
• Among the recommendations was the need to allocate funds for victim protection, the track and refer how victims for appropriate care or assistance and expansion of protective services for victims through partnerships with NGOs
• It suggested the need to implement strong regulations and oversight of recruitment companies, and improve enforcement, including by continuing to prosecute those involved in fraudulent labor recruitment.

The Commissioner of Police Anti-Human Trafficking National Task Force, Moses Binoga admitted that there were intuitional challenges in the implementation of the trafficking law but noted the level of awareness about trafficking persons has increased since the law was enacted.

He revealed that a number of convictions of the traffickers after a number of judges were trained about the crime of trafficking. But there remain challenges.

“The existing processes and systems of assisting victims are not sufficient enough. For instance, [there aren’t] sufficient funds for paying fines and return air tickets for all the reported stranded victims in foreign countries,” Binoga told IPS

Damon Wamara is the country director of Dwelling Places, a non-government organisation dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of internally trafficked women, agreed that Uganda has a good law against trafficking in persons but implementation was a big challenge.

He said the Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force was poorly staffed yet it has to handle over 11,000 victims that either need rehabilitation or repatriation annually.

Special courts needed for safe testimony and convictions

Uganda’s High Court judge Margret Mutonyi recently told IPS that there is need for Uganda to establish a special court to handle issues related to trafficking in persons. She said the current court system was too adversarial and tended to leave the victims more traumatised.

“The ordeal they go through affects them mentally, physically and psychologically. Some think there is nothing to protect or defend. Their dignity and integrity is affected profoundly. They don’t think there is any punishment that can atone their hearts,” she said.

Mutonyi agreed with other activist groups pushing for a victim-witness protection legislation in Uganda.

Civil society groups in Uganda have argued that the absence of such a law has hindered investigations and prosecutions because perpetrators can threaten and blackmail victims and witnesses, discouraging their participation in trials.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

The darkest underbelly of human existence hides right in front of us – modern day slaves are the foundation of the third largest criminal economy on the planet.

As media consumption in the West is drawn to negative, sensational and explosive headlines, sinister realities escape our attention. This applies to reporting on human trafficking in the developing world, where stories center around organ trafficking, sweat shops and the sex industry.

The International Labour Organization estimates that 21 million men, women and children are enslaved and trafficked around the world today. Close to 70% of these people are exploited in industrial sectors like mining, construction, agriculture and domestic work, creating profits of $150 Billion annually.

3.7 million people are victims of of forced labour in Africa, but the Asia-Pacific region accounts for the largest number of modern day slaves in the world, at 11.7 million people.

In a digitally desensitized society, we fail to comprehend the scale of a problem that exists in plain sight.

According to the U.S. State Department, “human trafficking can be found in a favourite restaurant, a hotel, downtown, a farm, or in [a] neighbour’s home.”

In the United Kingdom, an estimated 136,000 people are exploited with poor wages and atrocious living conditions. The National Crime Agency finds victims predominantly from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, working in car washes, construction, farming and food processing. Disturbingly, it suggests that someone going about their normal day in the UK will come across a victim of human trafficking but will never recognize them as such.

A 2018 report by the Global Slavery Index found that almost half a million (403,000) people are trapped in modern day slavery in the United States – seven times more than previously reported. The index also highlights forced marriages, noting that women and girls make up 71% of people trapped in modern-day slavery today.

The persistence of this tragedy is at the root of its being addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. The Global Sustainability Network, an international consortium that works closely with the Vatican and Church of England, is one of many organizations attempting to bring a seismic shift in awareness and a willingness to act to save human dignity.

With individuals, educators, charity institutions, businesses and Governments each taking incremental steps towards realizing The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, it will be possible to curb this nefarious business.

Seventy-two percent of trafficked victims in Canada are under the age of 25, and 51 percent of trafficked girls have been involved in the child welfare system. Courtesy: Dmitry Schemelev/Unsplash

By Nadia Kanji
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2019 (IPS)

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation has been steadily increasing in Canada. The most recent statistics indicate that 2016 had the highest recorded rate of human trafficking, with one police-reported incident for every 100,000 people in Canada. Despite these staggering numbers, reported cases make up just a small part of a larger, secretive industry where most incidents of sex trafficking fall under the radar.

The effects of this are relatable for Rhonelle Bruder who, after facing discrimination and bullying in her small hometown outside of Toronto, Ontario, decided to drop out of high school and move to the city.

When she ran out of money, she started living in youth shelters and was later on introduced to a man who would become her trafficker.

Bruder told IPS that initially he was kind and attentive, and provided her with a sense of belonging. When the conversation came up about how she could make money to get back on her feet, he told her she would be able to buy a condo and travel if she danced for just a couple of months.

“He was pitching a dream, a dream I was desperate to believe because the reality of my life was unbearable. I was willing to believe almost anything he said because he provided me with both a sense of belonging and was a protective figure in my life,” she said.

Once women are trafficked, pimps typically enforce a debt trap, telling girls and women that they need to pay off their debt to them for things like entering the country or paying for motels.

This was true for Timea Nagy, another survivor of this industry. At the young age of 20, while living in poverty in Hungary and facing a large amount of debt, Nagy responded to an advertisement in the newspaper to work as a babysitter in Canada. What looked like a legitimate recruitment agency was, in fact, a way to lure her into the sex industry against her consent. 

“We were starved, sleep deprived, and threatened constantly,” she states in her newly-released memoir Out of The Shadows. 

Nagy also states that she was frequently sexually assaulted until she managed to escape with the help of two people at the club where she worked. Her trafficker was eventually charged with sexual assault but was found not guilty.

Law Enforcement

Nagy, now a social advocate who works to bring about changes in the Canadian Justice System around human trafficking, says that law enforcement is more lax in Canada compared to the United States. Convicted traffickers in the U.S. are given 155-year sentences, whereas in Canada, traffickers will get an eight-year sentence at the most for the same crime. 

Human trafficking is currently the third-largest crime in the world.

Both Nagy and Bruder state that there is too much of a focus on law enforcement to deal with this issue, and not enough on preventative measures and reforming services in vulnerable communities.

“A lot of the focus is on helping survivors which is important. But we also need to be educating young people so that they aren’t vulnerable to traffickers,” Bruder told IPS. “Had there been someone to talk to, or if I had guidance, maybe I wouldn’t have left home. There need to be interventions in young people’s lives before they go down these paths.” 

Many pointed to the child welfare system as being one of the most targeted places for sex traffickers. 

“The child welfare system is a trafficker’s Costco,” Nagy told IPS. “They know where the group homes are and that children don’t feel welcome. No one reaches out to them the way pimps do.”

Traffickers typically wait outside of youth shelters and target them as soon as they age out of the child welfare system, knowing that they are often vulnerable. Seventy-two percent of trafficked victims in Canada are under the age of 25, and 51 percent of trafficked girls have been involved in the child welfare system.

Bruder added that social media sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, and MeetMe are new recruiting grounds for traffickers.

“Young people post everything about their lives online, so it’s not hard for traffickers to identify the most vulnerable victims and begin the grooming process,” she said.

First Nations Women and Girls

This is especially true for Indigenous youth in Canada, where there exists a colonial legacy of separating First Nations children from their families and placing them in residential schools to forcibly assimilate them into a settler culture. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged and apologised for this cultural genocide, but a closer look reveals that this has taken on a new form.

“There are currently more Indigenous children in the welfare system than there were in residential schools,” said Elana Finestone of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. “These are the intergenerational effects of residential schools, [basically] colonialism passed on through generations,” she told IPS.

Traffickers target First Nations youth in this way, by waiting outside shelters and nearby bus stops. Finestone added that First Nations’ communities are often over policed and under protected.

“If women report physical violence, the police might not take it seriously, assuming they are homeless and alone and no one cares.”

Canada’s National Inquiry to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women was released this past June and demonstrates the disproportionate impact of human trafficking on Indigenous youth. In 2016, nearly half of the trafficking victims were Indigenous women and girls, although they make up only four percent of the population. 

“The focus needs to be on accessible services for Indigenous women and girls, with Indigenous-led community services,” Finestone said. “We cannot forget the feminisation and radicalisation of poverty [and how it intersects with this issue]. People need more choices to earn an income.”

Other efforts have focused on providing resources to front line service providers. The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking launched a multilingual hotline for trafficking victims across Canada this past May.   

The centre’s CEO Barbara Gosse said law enforcement is currently maxed out on this issue and under-resourced, which needs to change. The hotline, which is strictly confidential, was created to collect data on the incidence of human trafficking in Canada and assist victims and survivors with a localised response. 

Moving Forward

Through therapy, meditation, and mindfulness, Bruder says she is finally able to speak out about her experience. She is the founder of a grassroots organisation called the RISE Initiative which supports at-risk youth.

Nagy worked as a mobile care worker for six years with Walk With Me Canada Victim Services to help law enforcement approach victims. She left that position and is now focused on rehabilitation of survivors through a social enterprise called Timea’s Cause. She believes there needs to be a national trauma-informed employment program for survivors. 

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

A 2009 study found that almost 250,000 children worked in auto repair stores, brick klins, as domestic labourers, and as carpet weavers and sozni embroiderers in Jammu and Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS 

By Umar Manzoor Shah
 SRINAGAR, India-administered Jammu and Kashmir, May 9 2019 (IPS)

Mubeen Ahmad was nine years old when his mother sold him into service to a mechanic for the petty sum of few thousand Indian rupees. His mother had found it hard to support the family after his father, a labourer, was killed during one of the anti-India protests in Jammu and Kashmir in 2008.

So Ahmad learnt how to repair deflated tyres and erratic car engines instead of attending school. “I was made to work amid the freezing cold during winters and there was no one to whom I could have narrated my ordeal,” the 20-year-old, who now owns a shop in Srinagar, the state’s capital, tells IPS.

Rights activist Aijaz Mir tells IPS that children like Ahmad can be found on almost every street in Kashmir as a majority of homes here have lost their sole bread winners because of the ongoing conflict in the region.

Jammu and Kashmir, a northern Indian state known for its picturesque tourist resorts and majestic mountains, has long been embroiled in a violent secessionist movement.
The seven-decade dispute over Kashmir has become a humanitarian nightmare. It is the cause of wars and conflicts between nuclear rivals Pakistan and India, and remains the reason for an ongoing armed rebellion against New Delhi’s rule.

The Kashmir dispute is the oldest unresolved disagreement on the United Nation’s agenda.
Over the last 30 years, an estimated 100,000 people—including civilians, militants, and army personnel— have died in the region as the armed struggle for freedom from Indian rule continues.

“Nobody talks about this dark and dreadful side of the conflict which is consuming our children in hordes. We have found that the families of the victims too don’t want to send them to school because there is no one who could earn at their dwellings,” Mir tells IPS.

In 2018 alone there were 614 incidents of violence in the state, resulting in the deaths of 257 militants, 91 security forces and 38 civilians.

Both India and Pakistan have gone to war over the territory twice, in 1947 and 1965, and fought a smaller-scale conflict in 1999 and again in February when a Kashmiri militant rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a convoy of Indian paramilitary forces, killing at least 40 soldiers in the worst attack in the region in three decades.

As recently as Monday, May 6, violence disrupted the ongoing elections as militants hurled grenades at polling stations in the southern part of the state.

Violence and death are a part of life here, but children are the silent sufferers in this bloody conflict.

On the outskirts of Srinagar, 13-year-old Shaista Akhtar is busy weaving designs on a traditional rug. It is 9 am and she will not be stopping her work to leave for school anytime soon.

Five years ago, Akhtar was was studying in grade 3 when her father—a carpenter by profession—was caught up in an attack by Islamist militants. It was the day her life changed.

The grenade that was meant for the army continent had missed its target, landing instead on the road Akhtar’s father was travelling on. He, and two others, died on the scene.

The death of her father is faintly imprinted in her mind and all she remembers of the time are the wails of her mother and two elder sisters.
After his death, her two elder sisters decided to quit their studies and began to work like their mother in order to support the family.

Akhtar was sent to a local weaver who taught her how create the tapestries unique to Kashmir’s colourful, traditional rugs and shawls. Two years later, by the time Akhtar was 10, she had learnt her trade.

“I earn almost INR 3500 [50 dollars] every month. The only satisfaction I derive out of my work is that I help my family to sustain. Otherwise, I yearn to go to the school, study sciences and mathematics along with other kids there,” she tells IPS.

But Akhtar’s story is not unique.
According to government figures, there are over 175,000 children actively involved in child labour in the state, which has a population of 12 million.

Mir says the actual number of child working could be much higher as government figures only reveal the reported cases and a majority of the child labour cases go unreported due to the fear of punishment.

An independent report titled “Socio Economic and Ethical dimensions of Child Labour in Kashmir” conducted in 2005 by Professor Fayaz Ahmad claimed that at the time there were more than 250,000 children in the state working in auto repair shops, brick klins, as domestic labourers, and as carpet weavers and sozni embroiderers.

One of the prime reasons for child labour was poverty, the report stated.

A 2009 study conducted by the Department of Sociology, University of Kashmir, reveals that about 66 percent of child labourers have only studied until the eighth grade. It further states that 9.2 percent of child labourers are between five and 10 years old, while 90 percent of them are between 11 and 14 years old.

The study also points out that once children start earning money, 80 percent of them stop attending school.

Inam-ul- Haq, 13, is one of those children who had to stop attending school to earn an income. He works as a helper at a roadside eatery in southern Kashmir, earning no more than 1500 INR (21 dollars) a month.

He began working to support his younger brother and bed-ridden, diabetic mother after his father died in the 2016 street protests. More than 90 civilians were killed during the six-month, anti-India protests.

“My mother is diabetic and younger brother a five year old kid. Who could have earned for them if not me?” Haq tells IPS, adding that even if his earnings are meagre, he is content that his family doesn’t starve or go to bed hungry.

In Kashmir, the 1986 Child Labour Act bans the employment of children below the age of 14. But according to Zahid Mushtaq, an editor at the local Srinagar newspaper, it is very rare that culprits are brought to book.

“The reason is simple. Family of the child and the child himself doesn’t testify in the court that he is working anywhere. In most of the cases, the victim is so poverty stricken that officials do not initiate action against the accused as it could cost the child his job,” Mushtaq says.

Mushatq also blames the lack of rehabilitation centres and failed government policies as being among the reasons for the spiralling number of cases of child labour here.  According to Mushatq, victims of violence are eligible for government’s financial assistance but the incredibly slow processing of these cases means that they gather dust as the victims suffer further.

For Akhtar, she knows that studying is the key to a good life. A life where she will be respected.

“I dream of becoming a teacher and teach kids English. As I am not studying at present, my life would remain as it is. There will be nothing good the world would offer to me.”

So instead she prays “that some help may descend from the heavens so that I wouldn’t have to earn and can go to school.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in West Africa. Credit: CC by 2.0/Linda De Volder

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, May 3 2019 (IPS)

On a bus in Cotonou, Benin’s commercial capital, four Nigerian girls aged between 15 and 16 sit closely together as they are about to embark on the last part of their journey to Mali, where they are told that their new husbands, whom they never have met, await them.

They started off from their homes in Eastern Nigeria where their parents had reportedly agreed that they be “commissioned” to become the wives of Nigerian men living in Mali.

“Four compatriots asked me to bring them young wives because they want to get married. I’m sure they will be happy,” a human smuggler, who only identifies himself as Wiseman, tells IPS as the bus prepares to depart for Bamako, Mali’s capital. IPS is not allowed to speak to the young girls, who appear anxious.

When asked if the girls’ parents are aware they have to travel to Mali, Wiseman says: “I negotiated with them and gave them something as a down payment for their dowries, which will surely help them [the parents] start a small business or buy seeds for farming. These kids should count themselves lucky because they will work and perform wives’ duties, so their lives should improve big time.”

But nobody knows the real intentions of the men who ”commissioned” these girls. Or if they exist.

Pathfinders Justice Initiative, an international non-government organisation dedicated to the prevention of modern-day sex slavery, says Nigeria is a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking with Benin City, in Nigeria’s Edo State, being an internationally-recognised sex trafficking hub. 

Nigeria ranks 32 out of 167 countries with the highest number of slaves (1,38 million), according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index report. While Nigeria has the institutional framework and laws against trafficking, at least one million people are trafficked there every year, according to the country’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

NAPTIP, working in collaboration with Malian authorities, recently said that nearly 20,000 Nigerian girls were forced into prostitution in Mali. The girls were said to be working in hotels and nightclubs after being sold to prostitution rings by human traffickers.

Children the most vulnerable

In West Africa, children remain the most vulnerable to trafficking.

The latest Global Report On Trafficking In Persons by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that young boys and girls where among those most  trafficked in the region. 

At the end of April, Interpol announced that it rescued 216 trafficked victim—including 157 children—from Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Interpol is part of a global task force formed to address human trafficking.

Some of the trafficking victims were working as sex workers in Benin and Nigeria, while others worked all day in markets and at various eating places. Some were as young as 11 and had been beaten, subject to abuse, and told they would never see their families again.

Forty-seven people were arrested.

“Many of the children are shipped actually into these markets to carry out forced labour. These are organised crime groups who are motivated by making money. They don’t care about the children forced into prostitution, working in terrible conditions, living on the streets, they are all after the money,” Interpol’s Director of Organised and Emerging Crime Paul Stanfield said in a video.

Benin, the transit stop for traffickers

Benin, a low-income country, has always been a transit route for west African migrants looking to irregularly make their way to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and finally to Europe.

The city of Cotonou appears to be a huge transit route through which women and girls trafficked to North and West Africa pass as they are transported to various countries of their destination. While Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali have laws against child trafficking, nothing covers trafficking in persons above the age of 18, according to the UNODC report. Niger has no laws against trafficking.

The Economic Community of West African States’ policy of free movement of goods and people seems to make this easier as corrupt immigration officers at border posts look away in exchange for a few euros. When IPS asks Wiseman about border controls, he brushes aside the issue, saying he knows “how to handle them”.  

When asked if he is responsible for the girls’ welfare, Wiseman replies: “I’m not a social worker, I’m a businessman and a helper. I help people to get good wives and lift the girls’ families out of poverty in exchange for money. The rest is history.”

When the incident about the Nigerian girls is described to Hassan Badarou, a community-based caregiver and religious leader from Benin, he says “they could be used as sex slaves by those men or sold to crime syndicates to serve as prostitutes in Mali or even as far as in North Africa.”

“It’s a pity parents allow their children to just leave the country in exchange for a few dollars. All of this wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t poor,” he says.

Poverty, culture and child labour

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in the region. But so too does culture.

In 2014, a female friend of Suzie’s family came to collect the then 12-year-old from her home in northern Benin.

“She promised to help me attend school after working at her home for one year, but she didn’t,” Suzie tells IPS in the local language, Fon, through a translator.

“Things started to go wrong when I started to remind her about that. She stopped paying me my salary and increased the workload and cut my meals down from two to one per day. And she started beating up me every time I protested,” the 16-year-old who lives in Cotonou tells IPS.

As time went by, the women’s male family members, who lived in the same house, started to make sexual advances towards Suzie. She refused the advances but eventually ran away because she could no longer bear the situation. 

No police please

When asked why she doesn’t report the incidents to the police, she says: “I can’t do that. The woman is like my aunt so I couldn’t do it as this would have brought a conflict between the women’s family and ours back home.”

Badarou, the religious leader, explains that he has mediated in cases like Suzie’s.

“If you see the way these women ill-treat these girls, it should make you cry. I have documented many cases of abuse and have tried to mediate between some of these women and the girls.”

But he’s never reported any of these cases, however abusive, to the police.

“The only thing you cannot do is to report these cases to the police. We are all brothers and sisters of this country and we believe in solving our problems in harmony and peace through dialogue. Besides, it’s not our culture to report everything to the police. I blame West African governments for allowing this thing to go on and on to the extent of becoming a cultural norm institutionalised deep in the fabric of society. It’s now hard to break it,” he says.

Badarou explains that the actions are cultural.

“In the face of this deeply-entrenched culture of ”helping each other” by ”handing over” your girls to someone well established who is living in the cities, even the United Nations and children’s organisations sometimes have no choice but to turn a blind eye. I’m not saying they are not doing anything about it, but you can’t break up someone’s culture, especially in a region such as this where grinding poverty rules,” he says.

Richard Dossou seems to agree. He tells IPS that his uncle’s friend, a father of 18 children, is looking for “Good Samaritans” from Benin to take in some of his girls as he is unable to provide for them. 

“I’m planning to travel to their village to negotiate with him with a view of taking even one, not as a wife, but as a maid. Then we will see how it will lead us. We help each other like this to fend off poverty and misery in this region,” Dossou says.

While Benin’s poverty hovers at about 40 percent, a report released in 2018  by the World Poverty Clock said in Nigeria a total of 86.9 million people are living in extreme poverty.

The fine line between cultural norms and child trafficking

Asked if this West African practice of “handing over” girls is a cultural norm of lifting families out of poverty, Jakub Sobik, communications manager for London-based Anti-Slavery International, tells IPS via email: “What you describe above are cases of child trafficking, when children are being recruited or harboured with a view of exploiting them.”

“Slavery doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is underpinned by many factors, including poverty, discrimination, lack of access to education and decent job opportunities, the lack of rule of law, as well as practices that are culturally accepted in societies,” he explains.

He says that it is often the case that parents are “deceived about the conditions their children will be offered, and send them away in a genuine belief that they will get a better chance of education and life opportunities in surroundings of cities and perhaps better-off societal circles.” 

He adds that in some societies children working is culturally accepted, because it has been the norm for generations. “We have a lot to do to change that and offer children childhoods, education and opportunities in lives they deserve.”

As the bus continues on the final journey that is meant to lift the Nigerian girls out of ”poverty” to ‘’freedom”; back in Cotonou Suzie wanders the city’s dark streets hand in hand with a Zemidjan—a motorcycle taxi driver—who appears to be aged between 40 and 50 and whom she describes as her boyfriend.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

“They forcefully took us away and kept us like prisoners,” Lydia Musa, a former Boko Haram captive who was abducted at the age of 14 during an attack on her village in Gwoza, in Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State, tells IPS. Musa and two other underaged girls were captured and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters in spite of their protests that they were too young to marry.

“You must marry whether you like it or not they told us as they pointed guns at us,” the now 16-year-old girl recalls.

Boko Haram’s violation of the rights of women and children paints a larger picture of human trafficking, forced marriages and enslavement in Nigeria.

As the extremist group enters the 10th year of its insurgency, it remains formidable enough to abduct women and children at will, continuing “to prey on women and girls as spoils of war,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria country researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This West African nation has the highest incidence of Africans being trafficked through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The north and north eastern parts of the country, where Boko Haram is active, have high incidences of forced marriages, while across the country there are frequent cases of young girls being ‘traded’ as modern day slaves.

The group, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is reputed to be among the five-deadliest terror groups in the world. It has been involved in a violent campaign for strict Islamic rule in north east Nigeria and in parts of the neighbouring states of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. More than 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. Hundreds of women and children have been abducted since the group’s insurgency started. But Boko Haram’s most well-known abduction occurred in April 2014, when 276 female students were taken away from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State.

The abduction started a global campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

A few months after the Chibok girls were abducted, Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would sell them. “I am the one who captured all those girls and I will sell all of them,” he said in an online video in which he justified human slavery. “Slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.”

Consequently there have been other mass abductions of children in the region since the Chibok incident. In March 2015, Boko Haram fighters abducted more than 300 children from Zanna Mobarti Primary School in Damasak; while 116 female students from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, were abducted in February 2018 during an attack on the school.

“The way Boko Haram hold women and children against their will is by itself a form of slavery,” Rotimi Olawale of the group Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) tells IPS. The group is involved in a powerful campaign for the speedy and effective search and rescue of the Chibok girls and other abducted women and children.

Olawale says Boko Haram is also using captives, like the Chibok girls, as “valuable bargaining chips” to collect ransoms and secure the release of their members held in Nigerian prisons. While many of the Chibok girls are still missing five years after their abduction, others escaped or were released by Boko Haram in deals made with the Nigerian government. But 112 girls are reportedly still missing.

In an apparent reference to Boko Haram, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry and committed other grave violations against children.

Accounts by others who escaped from Boko Haram’s captivity confirm this.

Ali Mohammed is also a former Boko Haram captive. He tells IPS that while in captivity he saw Boko Haram members using captive girls as sex slaves. “At night they freely go to where the girls are kept to pick them for sex,” he explains.

Another former Boko Haram captive who preferred to be called Halima says male children born through sexual slavery are being breed to be the new generation of Boko Haram fighters. Halima, who gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl), tells IPS how Boko Haram members always celebrate when a baby boy is born in their camps.

“Once they realise it is a male baby they will start shooting their guns into the air in happy mood saying that a new leader has been born,” she says.

“After I delivered the babies, they carried the male in jubilation and were chatting Allah Akbar, in contrast, they did not show any joy with the female, they did not even touch her.”

Boko Haram’s abduction of young persons are in part aimed at turning them into fighters. UNICEF says between 2013 and 2017 more than 3,500 children, most of whom were aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups who used them in the armed conflict in north east Nigeria. UNICEF says the true figures are likely to be higher because its figures are only of those cases that have been verified.

Musa confirms that while in captivity she saw abducted boys being trained to be Boko Haram fighters. “In the mornings, they normally teach them how to shoot guns and carry out attacks,” she says, adding that some of the boys were just 10 years old.

Boko Haram is also known to train children to become suicide bombers. A UNICEF report in 2017, says between January and August of that year, 83 children, mainly girls, were used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers. The UN’s children agency said this figure was four times higher than it was for 2016.

Attempts to use legislation to address such abuses as child marriage, sexual abuse, trafficking and abduction have failed in the past. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act as a legal documentation to protect children from these abuses. Currently the country’s constitution does not have a minimum age of marriage. Though the Child Rights Act set the marriageable age as 18, it failed in part because a number of Nigeria’s 36 states refused to domesticate the law.

“It was also a failure in states where it was adopted because it only existed on paper and was not enforced,” Betty Abah, a women and children’s rights activist, tells IPS.

In 2016, Nigeria’s male-dominated senate voted against a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. The bill in part prohibits trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children. The bill, which also prohibits forced marriage, set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

According to UNICEF, 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18. Some of the lawmakers who voted against the bill cited such grounds as their religion which permitted underaged marriage.

“It sends a very bad signal that we have a long way to go if those who are supposed to make laws to protect women and children feel these laws are not necessary,” Abah says.

In the meantime, Musa, may have fled the captivity of Boko Haram but she is too terrified to return home. She now lives in Maiduguri, which is also in Borno State and about 130 kms from Gwoza.

She tells IPS she is home sick. “I am always praying for the crisis to end so that I can return home, for now I cant go back because I don’t want to risk being taken away by Boko Haram again.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Teenage girls harvest tomatoes on a farm in the state of Sinaloa, in northern Mexico. It is in this part of the country that migrant workers, mainly from the southern states, work in exploitative conditions facing serious violations of their rights. Credit: Courtesy of Instituto Sinaloense para la Educación de los Adultos (Sinaloa Institute for Adult Education)

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 9 2019 (IPS)

“They mislead the workers, tell them that they will be paid well and pay them much less. The recruiters and the employers deceive them,” complained Marilyn Gómez, a migrant farm worker in Mexico.

Gómez, a member of the Mixteco Yosonuvico of Sonora Cerró Nublado cooperative and the mother of two girls, told IPS that the migrant workers are forced to buy whatever they need in their employers’ stores – “where everything is super expensive” – because they aren`t allowed to leave the farm.

“There’s no social security, no contracts, we work very long hours. They take advantage of the fact that people need work,” said Gómez, who began to work in the fields with her family at the age of 13, picking grapes and vegetables in the northern state of Sonora."There is a recruitment chain in which the recruiters offer people work and an advance payment to draw them in, but there is no contract. In some places, they don't get paid until the end of the work period." -- Mayela Blanco

The 27-year-old migrant worker and activist, who has worked sick and has frequently worked for more than 12 hours a day for just a few dollars, has harvested fruit and vegetables near the town of Miguel Aleman, part of the municipality of Hermosillo, about 1,600 kilometers north of Mexico City.

Her account illustrates the working conditions of migrant farm workers, who provide substantial returns to their employers and who put vegetables and fruit on the tables of Mexican and U.S. consumers.

They are generally peasant farmers who migrate temporarily or permanently from the southern states to harvest export crops in central and northern Mexico.

They routinely suffer violations of labour rights, and of their rights to housing, education, health and a healthy diet.

And they lack work contracts, adequate working conditions, social security and overtime pay, according to the report “Violations of the rights of agricultural day laborers in Mexico“, launched on Mar. 21 in Mexico City by the National Network of Agricultural Day Labourers, to which Gómez belongs.

In Mexico, migrant farm workers or day labourers are the main victims of slave or forced labour, according to this and other local and international studies. The National Network, made up of workers’, indigenous and academic organisations, has identified cases of labour exploitation, human trafficking and forced labour and/or services.

The latest National Survey of Occupation and Employment, from 2017, placed the number of migrant farm workers at 2.9 million, while the governmental Programme of Care for Agricultural Day Laborers put the figure at 1.54 million, plus 4.41 million family members who follow them as they move about.

The government of leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1, dismantled the programme and has not yet put in place its successor.

Regional context

There are 1.95 million victims of slave labour in the Americas, five percent of the world total, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, produced by the non-governmental Walk Free Foundation, based in Australia.

Forced labour represents 66 percent and persons, especially women, in forced marriage, account for 34 percent. The region has, on average, a prevalence of 1.9 people living in modern-day slavery per 1,000 inhabitants.

Participants in the Network of Agricultural Day Labourers – including Marilyn Gómez (C) – take part in the Mar. 21 presentation in Mexico City of a report that illustrates the modern-day slavery conditions faced by migrant workers in Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

And one-third of the victims of forced labour were in debt bondage, while the Latin America and Caribbean region accounted for four percent of all exploited labourers in the world.

While Haiti, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic had the highest rates, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia had the absolute largest numbers of people in situations of slavery.

In Brazil, Latin America’s giant, with a population of 208 million, 369,000 people were living in modern-day slavery, representing 1.8 per 1,000 inhabitants.

In Mexico, the second largest regional economy with 129 million inhabitants, 341,000 people were living in slavery conditions, or 2.71 per 1,000 people, while in Colombia, the fourth largest regional economy with a population of 45 million, the figure was 131,000, or 2.7 per 1,000.

Modern-day slavery includes human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, and commercial sexual exploitation, according to the Walk Free Foundation.

For Mayela Blanco, a researcher at the non-governmental Center for Studies in International Cooperation and Public Management, migrant farm workers in Mexico are vulnerable to falling prey to trafficking for labour exploitation.

“There is a recruitment chain in which the recruiters offer people work and an advance payment to draw them in, but there is no contract. In some places, they don’t get paid until the end of the work period,” Blanco told IPS.

There are a growing number of studies on this phenomenon in the Mexican countryside, and there has been no improvement for day labourers.

The “2018 List of goods produced by child labor or forced labor“, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, includes reports on people forced to work in the production of chili peppers in Mexico.

“Many of these victims report being recruited by middlemen, called enganchadores, that lie to workers about the nature and conditions of the work, wages, hours, and quality of living conditions,” the document states.

Cases of forced labour in chili peppers production predominantly occur on small and medium-sized farms and have been found in states such as Baja California, Chihuahua, Jalisco, and San Luis Potosi, according to the report.

“Once on the farms, some men and women work up to 15 hours per day under the threat of dismissal and receive subminimum wage payments or no payment at all,” it adds.

Meanwhile, “Some workers face growing indebtedness to company stores that often inflate the prices of their goods, forcing workers to purchase provisions on credit and limiting their ability to leave the farms,” the report says.

In Mexico, the company stores on factories and rural estates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were known as “tiendas de raya”, where the workers were forced to buy their provisions – just like the company stores of today.

The U.S. list also includes cattle ranches and peanut farms in Bolivia, textile factories and logging companies in Brazil, and Brazil nut harvesting and the logging industry in Peru.

Washington bans the entry of goods produced with forced labour, under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, in force since 2016 and based on the old Tariff Act of 1930.

Since 2015, the governmental National Human Rights Commission has issued at least six recommendations for violations of the rights of migrant farm workers, which are non-binding proposals.

In one of them, issued in 2018 for violations of several human rights for trafficking in persons, such as child labour in the form of forced labour, the Mexican Commission highlighted abuses against at least 62 migrant workers belonging to the Mixtec indigenous people, including 13 adolescents.

The members of the indigenous group, originally from the central state of Guerrero, were harvesting cucumbers in the western state of Colima.

Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, number eight, which promotes decent work, sets among its targets the implementation of “immediate and effective” measures to eradicate forced labour, ban modern forms of slavery and human trafficking, and ensure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour.

Despite some advances and international commitments, Latin America and the Caribbean are making only moderate progress in the fight against this phenomenon.

The Global Slavery Index gave the region an average rating of “B” and indicated that Argentina, Chile and Peru improved their status compared to 2016, while Brazil, Mexico and Central American countries remained the same.

Blanco says the conditions faced by migrant workers in Mexico are seen as normal and that they are not considered victims. “They run the risk of losing their jobs. We have not seen a response from the authorities,” she said.

Gómez, who is still a migrant worker harvesting fruit and vegetables but now in decent conditions, said the government should intervene. “The institutions don’t do what they are supposed to do; we are asking that they take action and ensure our rights,” the activist said.

The National Network made recommendations such as a census of employers, the monitoring of working conditions, a comprehensive programme to address the issue and a census of migrant workers.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Women and girls from Myanmar are increasingly being trafficked as “brides” to China. Aung Ja* was 18 when a woman from Myitkina, northern Myanmar, convinced her to take a ‘factory’ job in China. She was rescued in 2017 and is taking part in a UN Women-supported trafficking prevention programme. Photo: UN Women/Stuart Mannion

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2019 (IPS)

Women and girls from Myanmar are increasingly being trafficked as “brides” to China, a human rights group found.

In a new report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented numerous cases of women and girls from Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan States who were trafficked and forced into sexual slavery in China, as well as the alarming lack of law enforcement on the issue.

“Myanmar and Chinese authorities are looking away while unscrupulous traffickers are selling Kachin women and girls into captivity and unspeakable abuse,” said Acting Women’s Rights Co-Director at HRW and author of the report Heather Barr.

“The dearth of livelihoods and basic rights protections have made these women easy prey for traffickers, who have little reason to fear law enforcement on either side of the border,” she added.

Over the past 40 years, conflict in Kachin and norther Shan states has caused long-term displacement and left many struggling to survive.

As humanitarian aid is largely blocked by Myanmar’s government, internally displaced people (IDPs) living in camps do not receive enough food and renewed fighting has pushed families to the brink of desperation.

Since many men are taking part in the conflict, women often become the sole breadwinners for their families and have no choice but to seek work across the border in China. But often they are enticed under false pretences, falling prey to traffickers.

“Those living in the camps are without money or anything. Not being able to make ends meet, it is women and girls who pay the price,” said a worker from Kachin Women’s Association (KWA) which assists trafficking victims.

Another Kachin activist echoed similar sentiments, stating: “Normally the target is the family who are facing financial crisis…but now the [brokers] are targeting the IDP camps. It’s a better place to gather people. They are in one space. Most of the brokers are involved as relatives or acquaintances.”

HRW found that out of 37 survivors interviewed, 15 were recruited by friends and 12 by an acquaintance. Another 6 were recruited and sold by their own relatives.

Many of the trafficking survivors interviewed were sold for between 3,000 and 13,000 dollars. Once delivered to their “buyers,” they were often locked in a room and raped frequently so as to make them pregnant.

Survivor “Brides”

After fleeing conflict in Kachin State and living in an IDP camp, 16-year-old Seng Moon was told of a job as a cook by her sister-in-law in China’s Yunnan province.

In the car, Seng Moon’s sister-in-law gave her something she said prevented car sickness causing Seng Moon to fall asleep immediately. She told Human Rights Watch that she woke up with her hands tied behind her back and was left with a Chinese family.

“My sister-in-law left me at the home…the family took me to a room. In that room I was tied up again…they locked the door—for one or two months…each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me,” Seng Moon said.

After another couple of months, she was told that she was married to the Chinese man who continued to be abusive.

Once Seng Moon was pregnant and gave birth, the husband said,“No one plans to stop you. If you want to go back home, you can. But you can’t take my baby.”

After two years, she was able to escape with her son.

Other survivors however were forced to leave behind their children. Of the people interviewed, eight left behind children.

Some trafficked women and girls were also forced to be both “brides” and labourers.

Ja Seng Nu was held for almost a year on a watermelon farm near Shanghai, locked in a room, physically abused, and raped every night by the son of the family who owned the farm “because [they] wanted a child as soon as possible.”

At the same time, she had to get up very early, cook breakfast for the farm’s workers, and then work in the fields all day.

Those who were caught trying to escape usually faced even more abuse.

Mai Mai Tsawm, who was trafficked at 21, told HRW that she met a woman who tried to run and after being caught by her “husband,” he tied her neck and hands to the end of a motorbike and dragged her behind the bike.

Tsawm said she did not know whether the woman had survived or not.

If they are able to escape successfully, many trafficked women and girls have difficulty grappling with trauma and face stigma within their communities.

“Most victims face terrible situations. They come back, and they are totally different from us. They are just gazing, staring…People who just came back don’t even dare to go outside and show their faces…They feel guilty for being [trafficked],” a KWA worker said.

A Long Road to Justice and Recovery

Among the reasons for the rise in trafficking has been attributed to the “woman shortage” in China.

According to the Chinese government’s 2000 census, there were over 120 boys born for every 100 girls between 1996 and 2000. The World Health Organization has stated a normal ratio at birth is approximately 105 boys to 100 women.

The estimated 30 to 40 million “missing women” in the East Asian nation is partly due to its one-child policy which led to a preference for boys.

The gender imbalance is leaving many Chinese men without wives. In fact, by 2030, projections show that 25 percent of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have married.

Despite evidence for trafficking, HRW expressed concern over the lack of law enforcement and services to prevent trafficking and help those who have been trafficked.

The organization found that law enforcement officers in both China and Myanmar made little effort to recover trafficked women and girls, and those that sought help to find missing relatives were turned away and told that they would have to pay if they wanted they police to act.

HRW also reported that when trafficking survivors escaped and ran to the Chinese police, they were sometimes jailed for immigration violations rather than treated as crime victims.

“The Myanmar and Chinese governments, as well as the Kachin Independence Organization, should be doing much more to prevent trafficking, recover and assist victims, and prosecute traffickers,” Barr said.

“Donors and international organizations should support the local groups that are doing the hard work that governments won’t to rescue trafficked women and girls and help them recover,” she added.

HRW also urged for both China and Myanmar to develop formalized recruitment pathways for people from Myanmar to safely travel and legally obtain employment in China and establish measures to encourage reporting of suspected trafficking.

They also stressed the need to provide comprehensive services to survivors to combat stigma and provide access to livelihood support such as education and training and end the practice of jailing trafficking survivors.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

An estimated 40 million people were living in modern slavery around the world in 2016, and women and girls are disproportionately affected. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Modern slavery and human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries and one of the biggest human rights crises today, United Nations and government officials said.

During an event as part of the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), government officials, UN human rights experts, and civil society representatives came together to discuss the staggering trends in human trafficking as well as steps forward in the fight against modern slavery.

“Given that slavery was officially abolished in the 19th century and pretty much every country in the world has outlawed it, the trends are really alarming,” Liechtenstein’s Ambassador to the UN Christian Wenaweser told IPS.

“Modern slavery is one of the defining human rights crisis of our time… it is very much an international and transnational phenomenon so we can do this together. We have to tackle it together,” he added.

An estimated 40 million people were living in modern slavery around the world in 2016, and women and girls are disproportionately affected.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 71 percent of victims of modern slavery are female.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that out of the detected trafficking victims, 49 percent are women and 23 percent are girls.

The vast majority of victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation, while others are exploited for forced labor and forced marriage.

“The gender dimensions of the practice cannot be ignored. Modern slavery and human trafficking constitutes gender-based violence against women and girls… gender inequality is a both a cause and a consequence of this phenomenon,” said Australia’s Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer.

Panelists also noted that women and girls are especially vulnerable to exploitations in situations of armed conflict.

Nadia Murad, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is UNODC’s Goodwill Ambassador, was among thousands of Yazidi women who were kidnapped by the Islamic State (IS).

Many are forced to be sex slaves, and reports found that IS even uses social media sites such as Facebook to sell Yazidi women as sex slaves.

While Murad was able to escape, an estimated 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still enslaved.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has also kidnapped women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. A report by the Henry Jackson Society found that Boko Haram members would impregnate women in order to produce the “next generation of fighters.”

“Boko Haram’s fighters do not capture people, their standard procedure was to kill the men and treat the women and children as booty to be bargained over and sold for profit,” said Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.

“These examples show that trafficking and sexual violence, including sexual slavery, are not just incidental but systematic, institutionalised and strategic,” she added.

However, new international initiatives are underway to fight modern slavery and human trafficking including some by the financial sector.

“That which we walk by, we endorse. I think that’s really critical for all of us, especially in the financial sector itself that while we may not actively participate in trafficking, if we walk by or turn a blind eye…then in a sense we are endorsing it,” said the Commissioner of the Financial Sector Commission against Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Frederick Reynolds.

Ambassador Wenaweser also highlighted the role of the financial sector, stating: “Modern slavery is essentially the economic exploitation of people. You make people into a commodity and you make a lot of money, so the role of the financial institutions is really key.”

Globally, modern slavery generates 150 billion dollars annually.

In fact, one of the major drivers behind sexual trafficking is revenue.

According to the Henry Jackson Society, IS alone generated up to 30 million dollars in 2016 through abductions. As the group struggles to finance its operations due to the decrease in revenues from other sources such as oil sales and taxation, modern slavery may increase.

The Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking hopes to combat this illicit industry.

Also known as the Liechtenstein Initiative, the Commission is a public-private partnership that brings together leaders from the financial sector, civil society, as well as survivors to find innovative ways to end modern slavery including through anti-trafficking compliance and responsible investment.

“We have chosen this because we are a financial center…and we wanted to put the expertise of our financial centre to a positive and constructive use,” Ambassador Wenaweser told IPS.

In September 2019, the initiative will provide a roadmap with actionable steps and concrete tools for the financial sector.

While the financial sector alone cannot solve the complex issue, Reynolds noted that they are a key part of the solution and highlighted crucial actions such as the increased exchange of information between the financial sector and law enforcement.

Patten pointed to the need to address root causes of human trafficking including gender discrimination as well as the importance of a survivor-centred approach.

“[Survivors’] testimonies can inform and strengthen our responses to improve prevention…Women and girls cannot be reduced to currency in the political economy of armed conflict and terrorism. They cannot be bartered, traded, trafficked..because their sexual and reproductive rights are non negotiable,” she said.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Urmila Bhoola, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations, which diligently monitors human rights violations worldwide, believes that centuries-old slavery still exists worldwide.

The UN mandate on “contemporary forms of slavery” includes, but is not limited to, issues such as: traditional slavery, forced labour, debt bondage, serfdom, children working in slavery or slavery-like conditions, domestic servitude, sexual slavery, and servile forms of marriage, according to Urmila Bhoola of South Africa, the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

In an interview with IPS, Bhoola pointed out that slavery was the first human rights issue to arouse wide international concern.
But it still continues today—“and slavery-like practices also remain a grave and persistent problem”.

She said “traditional forms of slavery have been criminalized and abolished in most countries, but contemporary forms of slavery are still prevalent in all regions of the world”.

Still, many UN member states who are suspected of such human rights violations refuse to permit international experts—designated as UN Special Rapporteurs — to either investigate allegations or even formally visit these countries, according to published reports.

Asked about these constraints, Bhoola said she he has so far visited Niger, Belgium, Nigeria, El Salvador, Mauritania, Paraguay and, lastly Italy, in October 2018.

Her mandate includes the implementation of Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states that ‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.

She said “country visits’ are only conducted upon invitation from governments”.

“I have issued requests for country-visits to many countries but due to the mandate’s name and focus, member states are often reluctant to invite the mandate on contemporary forms of slavery, to conduct a visit,” said Bhoola, who was appointed Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council back in May 2014.

In this sense, she pointed out, member states may not openly refuse a visit but may not reply to country-visit requests.

“This is, in my view, a pity, as my aim is to engage constructively with governments, and to support them in their efforts to end contemporary forms of slavery”.

In fact, some of the countries that are afraid of being named and shamed, perhaps because they are listed as countries where slavery is prevalent in global reports, “have many good laws and practices that others can learn from.”

The findings obtained through the country visits are contained in the country visit reports, which are publicly available.

Excerpts from the interview

IPS: The ILO says over 40 million people – 71 percent of them women and girls – are subject to various forms of modern slavery, including human trafficking, child soldiers, forced and early child marriages, domestic servitude and migrant labour. Can these malpractices be criminalized by national legislation or by an international treaty? How feasible are these measures?

BHOOLA: Several international treaties prohibit slavery and related practices, such as the 1926 Slavery Convention and its Protocol; the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29); the ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105); the ILO Protection of Wages Convention, 1949 (No.95); the ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189); the ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138); the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182); the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949). A complete list can be found here.

International treaties can make an important difference in a country, as States need to periodically report on progress achieved in implementing the treaties’ provisions once they have ratified a treaty or convention. If a State does not have the means to effectively fulfil its obligations under a treaty or convention, it should seek international assistance.

However, slavery is considered to be a customary norm of international law that requires elimination by States irrespective of whether they have ratified the 1926 Slavery and 1956 Supplementary Conventions. All States are therefore required to prohibit slavery and its different forms, such as slavery like practices or servitudes, in domestic legislation.

In order to eradicate slavery effectively at the national level, States must also invest in sustainable development and in the protection and promotion of all human rights.

Many States have committed to achieving target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because ending slavery and creating decent work for all requires a multifaceted approach.

This requires them to develop comprehensive national responses to contemporary forms of slavery, which should combine the effective rule of law, robust institutional and policy frameworks, ending discrimination and inequality, including gender inequality, protection of labour rights, oversight of the business sector and ensuring full and equitable access to justice where rights have been violated.

Ending contemporary forms of slavery is therefore an integral part of the broader struggle to combat poverty, underdevelopment and gender inequality and achieve human rights-based development and justice for all.

IPS: As a UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, how far does your mandate extend? Can you name and shame countries? Or is that an action that can be taken only by the Human Rights Council?

BHOOLA: Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council and they either have a thematic or a country-specific mandate. As Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, I am mandated to address country-specific concerns either publicly or privately. All Special Rapporteurs are mandated to address confidential communications to States and/or to issue public statements and public thematic reports which are presented on an annual basis.

Also, I issue a public report on every country visit containing the findings of the mission as well as recommendations to the State visited and to other stakeholders. I report to both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly and when these reports are presented governments engage with one another, including the government that has been the subject of a visit, and it is this constructive dialogue that is far more useful in my view in addressing gaps in compliance.

IPS: How many businesses comply with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights? Since most forms of slavery occur in the private sector, how effective are these voluntary– not mandatory– guidelines in preventing modern forms of slavery in the work place?

BHOOLA: The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights were developed to clarify the different roles and responsibilities that States and companies have to address business impact on human rights

The Guiding Principles do not constitute an international instrument that can be ratified by States, nor do they create new legal obligations. Instead, they clarify and elaborate on the implications of relevant provisions of existing international human rights standards, some of which are legally binding on States, and provide guidance on how to put them into operation.

National legislation will often exist or may be required to ensure that these obligations are effectively implemented and enforced. This, in turn, means that elements of the Guiding Principles may be reflected in domestic law regulating business activities.

Even though the Guiding Principles are not legally binding, protecting human rights against business-related abuse is expected of all States, and in most cases is a legal obligation through their ratification of legally binding international human rights treaties containing provisions to this effect.

The State duty to protect in the Guiding Principles is derived from these obligations. In many States it is reflected—fully or partly—in domestic law or regulations on companies. Companies are bound by such domestic law. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights exists above and beyond the need to comply with national laws and regulations protecting human rights. It applies equally where relevant domestic law is weak, absent or not enforced¹.

The Guiding Principles also validate the duty of States to protect against and redress business-related human rights harms. In the context of contemporary forms of slavery, this duty to protect could translate into a smart mix of measures to ensure that businesses engage in their responsibility to respect human rights, including through undertaking human rights due diligence throughout their supply chains and remediating the adverse impact of their operations on human rights.

At the very minimum, States should ensure that businesses realize the implications of purchasing products or services that have in any way been linked to forced labour or other contemporary forms of slavery.

To date, States have adopted diverse approaches to addressing this issue, which include ensuring criminal, civil and tort liability for business related human rights violations, setting up mechanisms to regulate such compliance in trade and consumer protection and addressing it in government procurement.

Disclosure and transparency can also feature as legal obligations rather than being limited to voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives² .

Although it is not possible to measure compliance by all companies, there are some key initiatives that should be cited, such as the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), which aims to identify which companies perform best on human rights issues. More information on this initiative and its more recent results can be found here.

Another important initiative with a focus on slaver is KnowTheChain, which identifies and shares leading practices, enabling companies to improve their standards and procedures. This initiative also aims to help companies protect the wellbeing of workers by incentivizing companies and identifying gaps in each sector evaluated. KnowTheChain published its first set of benchmarks in 2016, and the second set, covering more than 120 companies, in 2018. For more information, visit their website.

IPS: With the spread of technology worldwide, more and more women and girls are lured into human trafficking through technology, including Facebook. Does the UN have the means to fight this? Or is there a remedy at all?

BHOOLA: The UN has various anti-trafficking conventions and mechanisms to address human trafficking. There is also a mandate on trafficking in persons, especially women and girls, which focuses on these issues specifically. In order to avoid overlaps between our mandates, my mandate focuses on one of the outcomes of human trafficking, which is labour exploitation specifically.

IPS: The UK has a “call to action to end forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking”. How effective is this? And are there any other countries with such action or legislation?

BHOOLA: The Call to Action to End Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking was launched on the 19th September 2017 during the 72nd Meeting of the UN General Assembly, and it has been endorsed by the 84 Member States and Observer States.³

The Call to Action outlines practical actions that countries can take to achieve Target 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including to ratify and ensure the effective implementation of relevant international conventions, protocols, and frameworks; to strengthen law enforcement and criminal justice responses in order to rapidly enhance capacity to identify, investigate, and disrupt criminal activity; to put victims first; and to eradicate forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking, and the worst forms of child labour from [their] economies […] by developing regulatory or policy frameworks, as appropriate, and working with business to eliminate such practices from global supply chains⁴ .

Information regarding government’s action following the endorsement of the Call to Action can be found here. Despite the positive progress, more needs to be done.

We cannot treat these issues of forced labour, contemporary forms of slavery and human trafficking in isolation, as these are complex crimes, and we need to reach out across borders and across mandates. The Call to Action provides the framework for countries to join up to share best practice and work together, and highlights the need for private and wider public sector engagement to deliver real change.

The United Nations University, in partnership with Alliance 8.7, have developed a knowledge Platform with funding from the UK Government which will accelerate the scientific study of “what works” and host an online data base with information on country action to support research and best practice: www.delta87.org/call-to-action

Australia has followed by passing its Modern Slavery Act in December 2018. The law requires businesses above a certain turnover threshold to take steps to identify slavery in their operations and supply chains, and report on the actions they have taken to address those risks.

¹ OHCHR ‘Frequently asked questions about the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/faq_principlesbussinesshr.pdf
² A/HRC/30/35, https://undocs.org/en/A/HRC/30/35
³ A Call to Action to End Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/759332/End-Forced-Labour-Modern-Slavery1.pdf
⁴ https://delta87.org/call-to-action/

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Hassan Hussein, a refugee from Syria, pleads with police to allow his family into a registration centre for migrants and refugees in Preševo, southern Serbia. Credit: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

By Shannon Scribner
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 2019 (IPS)

While natural hazards like hurricanes, exacerbated by climate change, are causing people to migrate, it’s conflict, violence and persecution that have forced more than 68.5 million people from their homes today, exposing them to higher risks and increased vulnerability, especially women and children.

Vulnerable people on the move face massive risks and uncertainty to find safety and opportunity for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, in many cases they are taken advantage of and their rights ignored, forced to work in terrible conditions for little, or in some cases, no money.

Elsewhere, 120,000 people crossed the Central Mediterranean in 2017 – the migrant route with most deaths recorded in the world, and nearly 2,900 migrants recorded killed or missing on that route in the same year.

Most of them traveled on smugglers’ boats departing from Libya, Tunisia or Egypt, risking their lives in search of safety and opportunity in Italy and beyond.

The reality of the harrowing journey in search of safety in Europe came into sharp focus when three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s [initially reported as Aylan Kurdi] image made headlines when he drowned in the Mediterranean after fleeing Syria with his family.

Recently, a little refugee boy from Mali also drowned in the Mediterranean. In preparation for the ill-fated trip, he had stitched a school report to his clothes to show European authorities what a good student he was.

In the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, thousands of Central Americans are arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border, fleeing domestic and gang violence, state corruption and impunity, climate induced droughts, and economic hardship in their home countries.

We see women bearing the brunt of violence and poverty with high levels of sexual and gender-based violence, and alarming levels of femicide. It is not uncommon for a girl and her family to be targeted and even killed by gangs if she refuses to become a gang member’s sex slave.

And once at the border, children have died due to the difficult journey they are taking and as a result of medical care not being available on time.

In the US, there are countless examples of workers being exploited, many of whom are migrants. Oxfam published a report detailing how the poultry industry exploits vulnerable people who have few other options to take on the most dangerous and thankless jobs in the poultry plants.

Because of their precarious situations, most workers are afraid to speak out or do anything that might jeopardize their jobs. Oxfam reported that some workers were forced to wear adult diapers because they did not have adequate bathroom breaks.

As part of Oxfam’s Behind the Barcodes campaign, Oxfam has also worked with laborers in Southeast Asia and elsewhere for more rights and protections. In the seafood industry, workers find themselves in conditions akin to modern slavery.

Female migrant workers especially, who perform jobs like peeling the shrimps for cheap shrimp cocktail you can buy at your grocery store, are often subjected to illegal recruitment and have their travel documents and wages confiscated.

The UN and the international community do acknowledge the plight of modern slavery and the challenges migrant workers face around the world, but more needs to be done.

Unfortunately, instead of helping address and resolve the displacement crisis with thoughtful, humane policies, and a genuine sense of shared responsibility,too many leaders are using scare tactics and depicting migrants and refugees as violent criminals and terrorists, when they are in fact the ones fleeing violence and also have much to offer to their new communities.

These leaders around the globe are doing this with a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law, human rights and global norms that are meant to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.

This was demonstrated in the Trump Administration’s inhumane policies separating children from their families and in trying to deny women who are victims of domestic violence from seeking asylum in the United States.

There has been some progress to help migrants and refugees from the UN. In 2016, President Obama hosted a UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants. The Summit led to countries committing to a $4.5 billion increase in global humanitarian funding. Following the Summit at the UN General Assembly, 193 UN member states agreed to coordinate and cooperate to improve the global response to the migration crisis.

They agreed to do such things as ease pressures on countries that host most refugees, like Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. They committed to building refugees’ self-reliance through access to education and livelihoods, expanding access to resettlement and other complementary pathways, and fostering conditions for refugees to voluntarily return home.

They also agreed to start working on a Global Compact for Refugees and a Global Compact for Migration that was recently endorsed at the end of last year.

The compacts include such things as recognition of the need for meaningful participation by refugees and host communities in decision making and commitments to uphold the human rights of all migrants regardless of status.

On the downside, the compacts aren’t binding so there is no way to legally hold endorsers accountable. And, the United States retreated from its leadership role in protecting refugees and withdrew from the Global Compact on Migration.

Overall, the mass migration taking place globally presents opportunities but also huge risks for those who aren’t protected along the way or when they arrive.

Many think of slavery as a thing of the past, but it still exists today, affecting millions around the world, as people make desperate decisions for a better life.

We need more protections and more implementation of the systems we have in place to achieve a more safe and just world for everyone.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Modern Day Slavery. Credit: UN images

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2019 (IPS)

After an exhaustive study of modern day slavery, the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO) concluded there are over 40 million people who are victims of slavery, including 25 million in forced labour and 15 million in forced marriages – with at least 71 percent of them comprising women and girls.

The current figures are reportedly even higher since the release of the 2017 landmark study titled ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery,’ which was a collaborative effort with the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The Chicago-based Safe Haven Network has described human trafficking as “the largest international crime industry– exceeding that of illegal drugs and arms trafficking.”

The United States outlawed the importation of African slaves by an act of Congress back in 1807. But it took another 58 years before there was a complete ban on slavery in 1865 following the end of the Civil War.

In the US, modern day slavery and racial discrimination are two sides of the same coin—and racism has raised its ugly head under the nationalistic banner of “white supremacy” under the current demagogic Trump administration.

Still, despite historic milestones, slavery is still prevalent in a variety of disguises—including human trafficking, child soldiers, forced and early child marriages, domestic servitude and migrant labour—both in the global South (read: developing nations) and the global North (read: Western industrialized nations).

The New York Times ran a frontpage story Feb 23 about a billionaire owner of a famous American football team who was charged on two counts of soliciting sex as part of a wide-ranging investigation into prostitution and suspected human trafficking in the US state of Florida.

The bottom line is: modern slavery is very much alive– and thriving– both in the world’s poorest and richest countries.

Karolin Seitz, programme officer on corporate accountability, business and human rights at Global Policy Forum based in Bonn, told IPS that modern slavery still persists both in countries of the global South and also in countries of the global North.

Especially migrant workers, may it be on orange plantations in Italy or Qatar’s construction sector, are at risk of coerced into exploitative and forced labor.

Modern Day Slavery. Credit: UN images

She said experience has shown that voluntary commitments by multinational companies are not enough.

Some countries, like the UK with its Anti-Slavery Act, Australia with its Modern Slavery Act or France with its loi de vigilance, have come to the conclusion that only binding rules are appropriate, Seitz added.

As the recent World Health Organization (WHO) report on the health of refugees and migrants in the European Region has shown, migrant workers are more likely to work long hours, in high-risk jobs and without necessary safety measures, and to avoid complain¬ing about hazardous conditions.

Those affected by trafficking or forced labor, said Seitz, are often not recognized by the authorities and therefore have no access to justice. Affected individuals can rarely enforce their claims to pay and compensation.

To eliminate competitive advantages based on modern slavery, human trafficking and environmental pollution, human rights due diligence must go beyond national borders, declared Seitz.

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), told IPS that inequality and modern slavery go hand in hand for millions of people.

“Modern slavery is everywhere, from the kafala system in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; from cattle ranches in Paraguay to fisheries in Thailand and the Philippines to agriculture in Italy,” she noted.

“The supply chains of clothes, food and services consumed globally are trained with forced labour, with migrant workers and indigenous people particularly vulnerable to exploitation,” said Burrow, a former President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) (2000–2010).

She said ending modern slavery is possible.

“It’s a matter of political will to deliver legislative changes and freedom of association, which will be driven by the exposure of scandal and campaigning from workers, consumers and unions. Governments needs to stare down corporate pressure, people demand it.”

Dima Dabbous, Director of Equality Now’s Middle East/North Africa (MENA) office, told IPS the ILO estimates that there are 1.6 million migrant women in the Middle East living under kafala sponsorship.

Situated in the Gulf States, Jordan and Lebanon, these workers are particularly vulnerable because they are located within private homes doing domestic jobs such as cleaner, housekeeper or nanny, and are excluded from local labor regulations.

They are bound to one employer and are unable to resign, move jobs, or leave the country without consent from their sponsor, who is able to threaten deportation if their employee questions the terms of their contract, she added.

“This imbalance in power relations has created a system whereby employers are able to exploit immigrant household workers with little risk of consequence”.

As a result, mistreatment such as restricting movement, withholding payment, and physical and sexual abuse are widespread. In extreme cases women have been murdered, said Dabbous, a former director of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World.

In Lebanon, she said, previous lobbying by local and international NGOs has led to some improvements in the type of labor contract that regulates the work of domestic migrant women, such as imposing a period of weekly rest, employers to pay the wage on a regular basis, helpers who are abused complain to the authorities.

However, none of these “improvements” have made any difference because the new contract was not translated into languages spoken by domestic helpers and was not enforced by the Lebanese government.

“Women have continued having their passports confiscated by their employers, are still being denied a day off per week, and have little possibility of complaining about or reporting abuse.”

She said the ILO and other international NGOs (INGOs) should continue their advocacy around the kafala system that binds these migrant women to their employers like slaves.

The international community should also support the local NGOs that work on abolishing or replacing the kafala system.

These NGOs remain very few and underfunded. “The problem is compounded by existing racist attitudes in the Middle East region regarding migrant domestic workers, and this also needs addressing,” said Dabbous.

Seitz of the Global Policy Forum said while still facing shortcomings and difficulties in their implementation, the laws, however, require big companies to publish statements outlining the risk of slavery in their supply chains and actions taken to address this.

Other countries still believe in voluntary measures. The German National Action Plan for the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights lacks any liability, also because of the massive lobbying of business associations.

In order to close the gaps and set common and robust standards globally, states should support the current process at the UN Human Rights Council to establish an internationally binding treaty to regulate transnational and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, she said.

It should require states to establish mandatory human rights due diligence for its companies, to hold companies legally accountable for breaching their due diligence in case of human rights violations and to remove barriers to access to justice for victims of human rights violations by transnational corporations, said Seitz.

Burrow of the ITUC said globally, work is more insecure with a predominance of short-term contracts, and both informal work and modern slavery are growing.

Inequality of income and between those who can access decent work drives people to work under exploitative conditions, and the inequality of the relationship between employer and worker stops you being able to exercise your rights.

“Where wages are low and there is no decent work, where there are no unions to represent workers’ and defend their rights – we see the conditions which lead to modern slavery”, she noted.

The Fight Inequality Alliance of social movements, NGOs and trade unions are deeply concerned by rising inequality and modern slavery.

“A minimum wage on which you can live, decent work, and rights to form unions and collectively bargaining are key to ending the crisis of inequality and ending slavery.”

For migrant workers, recruitment fees from unscrupulous employers trap workers into bonded labour. Migrant workers, many of whom are vulnerable to conditions of slavery can rate the recruitment agencies and companies with the ITUC’s platform.

She pointed out that UN Special Rapporteurs can help expose the scandal of modern slavery, the joint condemnation by four special rapporteurs of Ireland’s migrant fishing workers scheme adds pressure to the legal cases taken by trade unions.

Lasting change will take the rule of law. Due diligence and transparency is the key to ending modern slavery in supply chains.

Where corporations take responsibility for due diligence and consequently make their supply chains transparent, it is possible to establish grievance procedures that can facilitate remedy of any violations of rights at work – from forced labour to paying below the minimum wage.

She pointed out that new mandated due diligence legislation is being adopted in France with other countries including Germany, the Netherlands preparing to follow.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

By Romy Hawatt
DUBAI, Dec 21 2018 (IPS)

The media globally tends to have a bias to negative, sensational and headline grabbing stories and events and this certainly applies to reporting related to human trafficking in the third world. With the abundance of stories around sweat shops, massage parlours and organ trafficking networks happening ‘somewhere else’, the West is generally desensitised, lacks empathy and fails to fully appreciate the scale of the problem which sits right under their noses and in plain sight.

Romy Hawatt

It is a fact that for a variety of reasons, this insidious trade tends to be more hidden away in the West whilst it is generally conducted more openly in developing countries.

“Human trafficking is a global problem, but it’s a local one too,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in 2018 when the U.S. State Department released its 2018 Trafficking in Persons report, which assesses countries around the world based on how their governments work to prevent and respond to trafficking. “Human trafficking can be found in a favourite restaurant, a hotel, downtown, a farm, or in their neighbour’s home.”

Estimates vary depending on the agency reporting and also depends on specific categorisations. The International Labour Organization for example, estimates 21 million people are affected by forced labour whereas other reputable agencies estimate up to 48 million men, women and children are enslaved and trafficked around the world today.

According to the International Labour Organization, 68 percent are exploited in industry sectors like agriculture, mining, construction and domestic work creating profits of $150 billion annually.

There is therefore a gigantic financial motive for the maintaining and the growing of this illicit trade which sadly ‘has always been the way of the world’. The ideal of unalienable rights and universal liberty is actually still a relatively new concept in the history of time.

The proposition is diabolically simple in that some human beings will take advantage of and exploit other vulnerable categories of human beings unless there is a strong disincentive and a massive change in the contributing circumstances.

Whatever the cause and whatever the thinking, modern day slavery and human and human organ trafficking is now far more prevalent in the developed world than either the public knows about or was previously thought. Sadder is the fact that even with the best intent matched with state of the art resources, even the best law enforcement agencies do not appear to be able to keep up with the growing size and scale of the problem.

Even in the U.K., which after all gave the world the Magna Carta in the 13th century, a turning point in establishing human rights and arguably the most significant early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today in the English-speaking world, the numbers of people trafficked is estimated to number in the tens of thousands of victims, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

These victims in the UK are predominantly from places like Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, with a roughly equal balance between men and women in other than the sex industry in which women and girls make up the vast majority of those exploited.

There are also trafficked people of all genders working in more prosaic roles like car washes, construction, agriculture and food processing. They receive very little pay and are forced to put up with poor living conditions.

As a result, the NCA says, it is increasingly likely that someone going about their normal daily life in the U.K., engaging in the legitimate economy and accessing goods and services, will come across a victim who has been exploited in one of those sectors but may never recognise them unless they are educated to the signs.

General indicators of human trafficking or modern slavery tend to be harder to spot in the developed world but can include signs of physical or psychological abuse, fear of authorities, no ID documents, poor living conditions and working long hours for little or no pay.

A 2018 report by the Global Slavery Index estimated that some 403,000 people are trapped in modern slavery in the U.S. – seven times higher than previous figures. In the UK, that figure is estimated at 136,000, nearly 12 times higher than earlier estimates. Andrew Forrest, founder of the Global Slavery Index, called the report “a huge wakeup call.” The report includes forced marriages, noting that women and girls make up 71 percent of people trapped in modern-day slavery today.

The pernicious persistence of modern day slavery is one of the reasons it is addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 and these build off of many of the accomplishments achieved with the original Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) but which did not address human rights, slavery or human trafficking and were often criticized for being too narrow.

In particular, Sustainable Development Goal 8 of the 17 SDGs is the goal to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, whilst Goal 8.7 specifically addresses modern day slavery and human trafficking. It is worth noting that SDG 8.7 is also supported by two other SDG goals. SDG 5 for example aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, while SDG 16 seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

“Because modern-day slavery is a global tragedy, combating it requires international action,” said President Barack Obama, who in 2011 issued a Presidential Proclamation designating each January to be National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. “As we work to dismantle trafficking networks and help survivors rebuild their lives, we must also address the underlying forces that push so many into bondage. We must develop economies that create legitimate jobs [and] build a global sense of justice that says no child should ever be exploited.”

While progress has been made in addressing broader employment issues in some developed nations, such improvements remain overshadowed by the continuing scourge of human slaves being used in the supply chain at both a local and international level.

Whatever the future holds, what is constant is that human trafficking destroys lives, robs people of their dignity and basic human rights as it causes unfathomable misery to the immediate victims, their families and their communities.

Under the circumstances, there must be a seismic shift in awareness and a willingness to act no matter who you are or what community you live in. It is incumbent upon all of us to exercise a higher level diligence and situational awareness aimed at winning the freedom of anyone that is exploited and abused.

With individuals, educators, charity institutions, business and Government each taking incremental steps we can win.

Remember, to save one life is a step towards saving the whole of humanity.

The author, Romy Hawatt is a Founding Member of the Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) pursuing the United Nations Sustainability Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

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