Monday, September 19, 2011

Human Trafficking on the Silver Screen: The Whistleblower




In 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac, a single mother from Nebraska and a seasoned cop, joined the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia, a country still in tumult after its brutal civil war. Her job was to investigate the sex trafficking of young women from Eastern Europe. Once she began collecting evidence from the victims she discovered that a number of U.N. officers – the very people who were supposed to be keeping the rule of law – were themselves playing part in prostitution rings.

Bolkovac told her employers, the American company DynCorp, what was going on. Instead of being lauded for her investigative acumen she lost her job. Her findings were considered bad public relations for the lucrative rebuilding effort.

After a two-year legal battle in England, where the DynCorp office that dealt with peacekeeping related contracts in Bosnia was based, a tribunal ruled that Boklovac was unfairly dismissed, thereby clearing her name.

Read the full article

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