Vanguard: Soccer's Lost Boy

In light of the recent World Cup in South Africa, Vanguard, the television documentary series, recently aired an episode focusing on the dirty underground of the soccer world. Boys from poverty-stricken regions of West Africa are being trafficked by the thousands by sports agents who promise to fulfill the young boys’ hopes that their soccer skills will lead to international stardom through European soccer leagues. However, the vast majority of boys who are taken from their countries by agents are not signed to professional teams. Instead, they are abandoned by their agents in places like France and Morocco. With very few options available, some even turn to prostitution as a means of survival.

VANGUARD:

Although FIFA and other soccer organizations have done very little to halt this trend, Jean Claude Mbvoumin, a former professional soccer player, founded an organization called Foot Solidaire which attempts to raise awareness about the issue and end the exploitation of thousands of young footballers across the globe.

Three Charged in Sweden Human Trafficking Case

*This article never specifically mentions why this is a case of human trafficking and NOT smuggling. The journalist never specifies what actions qualified the crime as human trafficking and in doing so blurs the line between human trafficking and smuggling which are two fundamentally different actions.

From The Local:

September 25th, 2008

Three men have been charged for arranging to have 49 foreign citizens smuggled into Sweden.

The human trafficking victims were allegedly taken across the European continent through Denmark and then over the Öresund bridge to Skåne in southern Sweden.

The suspects are said to have cooperated with accomplices in France, according to charges filed on Thursday in Malmö District Court.

The victims who asked for help to enter Sweden each paid 10,000 kronor ($1,515) to the smugglers.

The men are charged with organizing and carrying out human trafficking.

Two other men were also charged with the latter crime.

According to the charges, the men are suspected of conducting their human trafficking operations in cooperation with several different groups, including with a man who has already been convicted in Denmark, as well as another man not included in the charges.

The charges cover seven separate instances of human trafficking which took place between February 13th and June 16th of this year.

One of the men is also charged with serious forgery crimes. At his home police found a USB-memory stick with digital images of Arabic-language identity papers bearing official stamps.

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EU Backs French Immigration Pact

From the BBC:

EU ministers have agreed in principle to a French plan aimed at reforming immigration rules across the union.

"The interior ministers gave their unanimous accord on the principles, the objectives, the presentation and the structure of the pact," said French Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux.

The pact aims to make it easier for legal migrants to fill job vacancies in Europe and integrate. With its ageing population, Europe has a continuing need for migrant labour in many sectors.

The French news agency AFP says the pact allows for migrant "regularisations" on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with national laws. It also calls for repatriation agreements with countries where necessary and for the European Commission to draft an EU plan for common EU-wide asylum procedures to be in place in 2012, AFP reports. "We're talking about targeted and coordinated immigration - in other words, which takes account of countries' needs and their ability to host migrants, based on dialogue with the countries of origin," Mr Hortefeux said.

Spain and Malta have been struggling to cope with boatloads of African would-be immigrants in recent years. Meanwhile, the European Commission and human rights groups have expressed concern about the Italian government's plan to fingerprint tens of thousands of Roma (Gypsies) living in makeshift camps across Italy.

The EU has already adopted new rules for detaining and expelling illegal immigrants. The "returns directive", due to take effect in 2010, allows states to hold illegal immigrants for six months, extendable by another 12 months in certain cases.

Earlier this month South American heads of state jointly condemned the returns directive. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans live and work in Europe, many of them illegally.

In 2005, Spain said illegal immigrants could claim work and residency papers if they could present a six-month work contract and evidence that they had lived in the country since August 2004.

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