Take Strong Action Now to Stop Gender-Based Violence in Haiti

“The way you saw the earth shake, that's how our bodies are shaking now” described one woman of a secondary humanitarian crisis facing the women and girls of Haiti.

As Haiti’s earthquake toppled buildings, it also toppled social structures that provided Haitian women some protection against sexual violence. Rape was widespread before January 12, but the hundreds of thousands of women now living on the streets or in camps, often without their family and neighborhood networks, are more vulnerable than ever.

Special thanks to Harriet Hirshorn for shaping and editing this video and to Sandy Berkowitz for shooting it.

Take a look at more of Harriet's work here: raboteau-trial.info/ and youtube.com/watch?v=SV0nTf78Vwc, and Sandy's work here: vimeo.com/user3252062.

International Women's Day

Today marks International Women's Day. According to the International Women's Day website, "International Women's Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. . . Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements." This year, the UN's theme for International Women's Day is Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All. International Women's Day is an opportunity to reflect on the ways that gender inequalities and gender-based violence facilitate human trafficking.

Though it is impossible, due to the covert nature of trafficking, to obtain exact statistics on victims, FAIR Fund estimates that 80% of trafficking victims are women and girls. In her book, The Road of Lost Innocence, Somaly Mam, a survivor of child sex trafficking in Cambodia, points out that the devaluation and dehumanization of women and girls has created a climate of gender-based violence that allows trafficking to continue and creates situations where women are extremely vulnerable to abuse. Cambodia is not unique in this respect by any means.

Martina Vandenberg, a lawyer who represents trafficking victims and survivors, argues that efforts to prevent human trafficking must include efforts to end gender-based discrimination that makes women vulnerable. Such efforts must also include addressing forms of gender-based violence and exploitation, such as domestic violence, since whenever someone is trapped in a situation of abuse they are particularly vulnerable to trafficking.

In his book, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, Siddharth Kara identifies gender discrimination - along with ethnic and racial discrimination - as one of the main factors that drives the supply of trafficking victims globally (201). He points out that when women lack rights, economic opportunities, educational opportunities, and when violence against women goes unpunished and implicitly sanctioned, women are easy targets for traffickers and are likely to be re-trafficked if they do manage to leave a trafficking situation (129-33).

Women and girls are certainly not the only victims of trafficking, and gender violence and inequalities are not the only factors that shape modern slavery. Nevertheless, efforts to end slavery and prevent trafficking must include efforts to promote women's rights and end gender-based violence. Today as we celebrate women's achievements and progress that has been made towards equality, let us also remember how far we have to go and how much is at stake.

Prevention

By the time someone has been trafficked, we've already failed. Obviously efforts to help victims, empower survivors, and punish perpetrators are extremely vital. At the same time, ultimately we should be working towards a world where trafficking does not occur in the first place. Prevention efforts can be nebulous, though, and even with the best of intentions can do more harm than good. A few weeks ago I attended a panel on preventing human trafficking. Numerous experts who are working in the anti-trafficking movement in various capacities expressed some common themes about what needs to happen to address the roots of trafficking.

Denise Brennan, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Georgetown University, is the author of What's Love Got to Do With It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in Sosua, the Dominican Republic. She is currently working on a book about survivors of human trafficking entitled Starting Over: Life After Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States. Brennan suggests that efforts to prevent human trafficking must begin with efforts to promote the rights of migrants. From her research she has found that migrants are extremely vulnerable to trafficking because even when they are not trafficked, their basic rights are often violated. Since they are treated as though they have no rights, they are also less likely to come forward to law enforcement when they are exploited. Brennan also argued that migrants rights groups must be a part of the anti-trafficking conversation. She also advocated for increased opportunities for human trafficking survivors to connect with one another and to shape the anti-trafficking movement.

Martina Vandenberg is a partner at Jenner and Block LLP, and she does pro bono representation of women trafficked to the US for forced labor, including civil litigation on behalf of survivors. She echoed many of Brennan's points about migrants rights, and highlighted several prevention efforts that have actually been harmful. First, she argued that efforts to discourage migration do not work and ultimately leave migrants more vulnerable when they do migrate.

Vandenberg also said that anti-prostitution efforts are counterproductive, making women more vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation. As a corollary, she pointed out that prostitutes can become victims of human trafficking; the idea that if someone once consented to being a sex worker means that she can never be trafficked is both false and extremely harmful. Finally, she argued against efforts to buy people out of slavery, pointing out that such efforts actually increase the demand for slavery.

Vandenberg went on to discuss what should be being done to prevent human trafficking, focusing on the root causes. She emphasized that this work is not glamorous, but it is necessary if we are serious about preventing this human rights abuse.

First, we need to work to fight discrimination against women and girls. Statistically, women and girls still make up the majority of trafficking victims, and due to gender discrimination, they are especially vulnerable to trafficking. On a related note, Vandenberg argues that anti-trafficking efforts must go hand-in-hand with work to address domestic violence. She noted that sometimes money is diverted from domestic violence work to anti-trafficking work, which actually can make people more vulnerable to trafficking when they are desperate to leave a domestic situation and lack options.

In a slightly different direction, Vandenberg advocated for due diligence: we need to seriously look at where US' money is going, particularly in military contracts. She also addressed deterrence, including criminal prosecution and civil litigation on behalf of survivors. Finally, she also discussed the importance about educating migrants about their rights and enforcing labor laws.

Ben Skinner, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, journalist, and author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery, focused his remarks on a call to action. He argued that slavery is the main human rights issue of our generation, and how we respond to this atrocity will be a sign of our commitment to a more just world. Preventing human trafficking, he suggested, must start with each of us and the daily choices that we make.

On a personal note, I have been thinking about prevention a lot lately. This summer I am interning with an agency doing casework with people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless. These people are extremely vulnerable to numerous forms of exploitation. The Colorado Advisory Committee on Homeless Youth recently recommended that all agencies that work directly with people who are homeless should be trained on human trafficking, because traffickers target this population. Working daily with people who are homeless has again reinforced for me the importance of comprehensive efforts to address poverty, discrimination, and other factors that make people easy prey for traffickers.

Picture taken by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department.

Exchange On Feminism and Trafficking

In response to a reader's comment:

Hello Anonymous - Thanks for commenting - I love being able to have a conversation and share ideas this way! I want you to know that I genuinely appreciate the tone of your post, and the latitude you afforded my beliefs - and I hope you read my response (and respond!) in a similar light and as part of the important dialogue process that you mention. Now, as far as a response, first let me say that I think you brought up a lot of good points regarding the causes of trafficking and what needs to be done to stop it. I do want to clarify my perspective on being a feminist and fighting trafficking.

You mentioned that you do not believe they can go together, but for me being a feminist is an important part in my personal fight against trafficking so I wanted to elaborate a little on that point. I will spare you an entire dissertation on what feminism means to me (although, after having composed what comes below, maybe I haven't really spared you at all) - but as far as it relates to trafficking, I believe that women deserve equality and a life free of exploitation, especially based on their gender/sex. The commercial sexual exploitation that happens to women who are trafficked is so fundamentally wrong there aren't enough negative words for me to use in describing it. (please note: I'm not ignoring labor trafficking - simply focusing on sex trafficking for the moment, although there is for sure overlap).

I want to respond to your comment in 2 parts - first on feminism and trafficking, and second on the more substantive issues of trafficking that you mentioned. First - I know that feminism and moral values is another matter, but I do want to address your statement that feminists are part of the human trafficking problem because they do not yet have moral values and want to impose their individual values/goals on others. As I mentioned above, I think that for me and probably many others who would identify as feminists, the belief in the rights of women is an important part of the drive to fight against trafficking.

So the question is, how does that belief end up being connected to trafficking in a negative way as part of the problem? To answer that, I think that sometimes feminism and the idea of women's rights - namely personal autonomy (which is at the core of my feminist beliefs) - can often get confused with the idea of sexual liberalization and the separate idea of promiscuity and immoral sexual activity. I think that all of these terms (which, for this sentence at least I take no position on) can get caught up in a polarized moral debate and produce an outcome where feminists stand for the idea of frequent, careless, and meaningless sex. This in turn can lead to a belief that feminists are all pro-prostitution, pro-abortion, and in general espouse beliefs that some consider immoral. (Again - I take no position on this for the moment - and I hope I am managing to set out the argument in objective, if overly simplistic, terms.) From that standpoint, I can understand how feminism could be part of the problem of trafficking - the argument would be something along the lines of feminism promoting a more open and embracing attitude of sex and sexuality for women, which leads to more sex and possibly more meaningless sex and 'hookups', which is not only immoral but also contributes to moral debasement in society, and in turn contributes to both the supply and demand of things like prostitution an pornography, which are forms of trafficking. All together then, these things create a cyclical relationship and an ever enlarging problem with trafficking.

Now, having stated what a potential argument could be that connects feminism and trafficking, let me make one point, and then I will leave the feminism/morality debate for another day (although I would still love to talk about it with you - I am very open to hearing what you have to say). Firstly (and I do realize that this is sort of a blanket statement so there are bound to be numerous problems, from all sides, with it), I think that the idea that feminists in general support promiscuity and immoral sexual activity, that in turn feeds supply and demand for trafficking, must necessarily fail because it does not take into consideration the fact that trafficking is a non-consensual occurrence. Even if one accepts that feminists do promote that sort of thing, and that promiscuity is bad and immoral, that one instance of immoral behavior on the part of a woman does not excuse any subsequent immoral and illegal behavior on the part of another person wherein she is a victim and not a willing partner, and it certainly does not mean that she deserves to be a victim of someone else's immoral or illegal behavior.

A related point to this is whether you can have consensual prostitution - or whether all prostitution is in the end a form of trafficking (which all depends on your definition of consent. On that subject, I think Catharine MacKinnon makes an excellent point when she asks whether an act of prostitution or participation in pornography was truly consensual, or a result of lack of choices). I will leave that point for a later post or discussion.

Basically what I am saying is that even if feminists do try to impose their view on others, and even if their view espouses immoral behavior as far as sex, it still does not excuse the immoral and illegal behavior on the part of the traffickers, pimps, and johns who create the supply and demand for trafficking. Thus making a connection between even a feminism that does espouse such views and trafficking doesn't work in my mind. The underlying goal here - which I believe is a goal of feminism - is personal autonomy. People should have control over their own bodies, and do not have the right to infringe on anyone else's autonomy. When a woman is forced into prostitution or any other form of trafficking, her personal autonomy is violated.

Now, for the second part of my response I will keep it short. As far the substantive issues on trafficking that you brought up, I would say that I agree with you entirely. I think that the Archbishop summed up the problem quite well in the quote you included. I have made similar statements on my own many times. Trafficking is a symptom of a much larger problem (and maybe even more than one problem). From my perspective trafficking is intimately tied to poverty as well as the increasing levels of sexually graphic material that we are confronted with in everyday media and the commodification of women. Women and children who grow up in economic poverty have historically been much more vulnerable to exploitation, and these days with the rise of the internet and the bombardment of sexually explicit images everywhere you look, the scope trafficking victims is widening to include people that many would never suspect such as middle class suburban teens.

All of these things are topics I plan on posting on in the future, and I welcome your feedback/comments/dialogue and hope others join in too.

***********************************************************************

Comment posted by Anonymous

When you said that you consider yourself to be a feminist but are at the same time trying to fight human trafficking, my first impression is that the two cannot go together... so please forgive me if I will say something that may sound offensive to you.

I would like to first say, one of the things I have learn over the years and which I also often keep forgetting is that there is two sides to a story, for example we may feel very strong about something but we are not necessarily seeing the other side of the story.

You probably have seen this happening before when you/someone writes about something, and unintentionally someone else is either offended or has a more plausible explanation then what was written.

My first impression about you, because of the statement where you consider yourself to be a feminist but feel very strong to want to tackle the human trafficking issue is that you may not truly understand what being a feminist is... or at least what I consider a feminist to be (The word feminism means many things to many people)... What matters is that you seem to be a person with moral values... feminists to me are part of the human trafficking problem as they are persons who do not yet have moral values but what to impose their individual values/goals onto others... and this is very dangerous for society.

Read the full comment here

Philippines Among Top 5 Nations with Most Trafficking Victims in the World According to NBI

From GMA News:

August 11, 2008

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines is among the top five countries in the world where most human trafficking victims come from, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said Monday.

In the Weekly Kapihan ng Bayan forum in Sulo Hotel, lawyer Ferdinand Lavin, chief of NBI’s anti-human trafficking division, said there are more than 15 million human trafficking victims worldwide and the country has a “good share” of the number.

He said 80 percent of human trafficking victims in the country are females below 18 years old, and that they are usually brought to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and even Cyprus.

“They are usually forced by syndicates to work as househelp, entertainers and even sex workers particularly in the South East Asian region,” Lavin said.

Lavin admitted that tracing human trafficking victims is a difficult task because most of them are “willing victims” and will only seek the help of the government when they experience abuse from employers.

He also said they are having difficulty in tracking down human traffickers especially in Mindanao.

“We can prevent those (individuals) that will use our air and sea ports, but there are also those who use the so-called southern backdoor,” he said.

Read the full article

Philippines: Cagayan de Oro, Bukidnon Top Trafficking Cases

A Traditional Sunday Meeting of Filipino Maids in Hong Kong

From the Sun Star:

By Annabelle L. Ricalde
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

CASES of human trafficking this year are high in Bukidnon province and Cagayan de Oro compared to other places in Northern Mindanao, said the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) Task Force Against Human Trafficking.

As of June 2008, 38 percent of human trafficking victims came from Bukidnon and 35 percent from Cagayan de Oro, CFO data show. Another 20 percent of the victims live in Gingoog City, 16 percent in Ozamis City, and 11 percent Misamis Oriental.

The figures only account for the cases handled by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)-Northern Mindanao, so the actual number of 138 victims could be higher, said lawyer Golda Myra Roma of the CFO.

Roma said that of the total number of victims, 117 are minors and almost all of them are females.

She said women are more preferred by human traffickers because of "the availability of the labor force for women."

The "jobs" offered for women often include forced prostitution, while others land into forced labor, slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs, she added.

Senator Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada meantime said the number of unemployed workers falling prey to human trafficking syndicates has risen in the last two years.

Estrada, concurrent chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, said that international syndicates have been preying on desperate workers who are trying to get employment abroad.

Meanwhile, Roma named Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Brunei and Japan as the top haven of trafficked persons from the Philippines. She said these countries do not have comprehensive laws against human trafficking, unlike the Philippines.

She said that cases of human trafficking in the country have been going down since 2006, although the number remains alarming.

She said that the victims often would lose interest in pursuing the case because of the delayed and long process of the prosecution.

Read the full article

In Search of the Whole

By Merissa Nathan Gerson
July 24th, 2008

My body, as an invadable entity, is coveted by the wounded. To seek relief there are people out there who want to rape me, take me, dominate me, and somehow leave feeling satiated. This occurred to me walking home the other night. I was alone and there were two men walking close behind me. I thought about the fear, a womanly fear, of sexual abuse.

What is it, I wondered once they were no longer close behind me, that makes rape so common? While aware that rape goes both ways, men raping women, women raping men, the fear of a random attack alone late at night in a small mountain town, this fear of rape, for me, is wholly grounded in my female physicality.

To rape a woman, among other things, is to rob her of power. I imagined women's bodies as holders of the sacred, of immense force, the capacity to create, the embodiment of every rapists very origin. To rape is to return to the place you emerged from. To rape is to angrily take back the womanhood that you left, that you do not contain. This fear of physical invasion is a constructed piece of my identity as woman.

Rape and human trafficking are grounded similarly in their connection to social constructs of gender and sex. It is not so simple as patriarchy. It is not so clean as a weaker and stronger sex. The sex trade industry is the manifestation of a deeper imbalance in each culture where it is found. It is the manifestation of repression, the embodiment of the unspoken.

I recently went to an all-nude strip club in Boulder and was surprised by how little it disturbed me. Naked and worshipped, solely for the object form of their bodies, were glistening hairless women. This was a simply reaffirmation of everything I knew to be true in society. On the gendered bodies of men and women we project power roles, dynamics of deprivation, lack of expression, and ultimately, a deep form of idol worship.

I do not condemn the stripper, the john, the rapist. I condemn the socio-economic and socio-cultural structures that create these small worlds. A strip club is no different than a Facebook advertisement telling me to lose thirty-seven pounds in thirty days. Both are byproducts of a social world that emulates masculinity and represses femininity, leaving both the man and woman at a loss.

In Jungian psychology there is the concept of wholeness via the incorporation of the anima and the animus. A man, to be a whole man, needs to incorporate the feminine, or anima. Whereas a woman, to be her complete self, needs also to incorporate the male, or animus. The divisive gendered nature of our world, living in binary and black and white, does not permit this "wholeness." Without wholeness the people functioning within and running this country are fragmented.

In raping a woman, a man implies, by default, his own wounded nature. In damaging another, he exhibits his own inner ruin. Pain is passed between people when unresolved. For this, we have a human trafficking problem. For this there are self-hating women, with a counterpart of self-hating men.

Our sex industry is only the mirror of our social selves, fragmented, gender biased, the disempowerment of women by disempowered men. It is a ricochet effect; he who oppresses is himself bound. And we, the community around the oppressors and the victims, are equally tied up. The denial of feminine power is a blanket indicator of a social ill affecting every member of our society.



Further reading:

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
By Bell Hooks

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
By Susan Faludi

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
By Donna Haraway

Also:

See the Swedish film "Together" and note their treatment of addiction and abuse. Same with the film "Celebration." Both of these films illustrate the humanity of the oppressor and the devastation caused by unresolved pain.

National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum Releases New Study on Trafficking

From the NAPAWF:

The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) recently released, *Rights to Survival & Mobility: An Anti-Trafficking Activist's Agenda*, a new report highlighting the disproportionate impact of human trafficking on Asian and Pacific Islander women and girls. Human trafficking is the third most profitable underground enterprise, rivaling the drug and arms trade. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that the largest group of persons trafficked into the U.S. are from East Asia and the Pacific.

"This is an extremely critical time to discuss the impact of human trafficking on API communities, especially in light of the pending reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act," says NAPAWF's Anti-Trafficking Project Director, Liezl Tomas Rebugio. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, HR 3887, offers extended protections for foreign domestic workers but also attempts to transform anti-trafficking legislation to prostitution legislation. Specifically, HR 3887 expands the Mann Act--a federal law that prohibits the transportation of persons across state lines for the purpose of prostitution--to include prostitution activity within states, and calls prostitution "sex trafficking". Essentially, this creates a new federal prostitution crime and identifies all prostitution as "sex trafficking", even if *force, fraud or coercion* is not present.

This limited approach to human trafficking is a strategy that NAPAWF is highly critical of. *Rights to Survival & Mobility* broadens the discourse on human trafficking to include root causes, such as poverty, gender-based discrimination, globalization and militarism. Furthermore, NAPAWF links the anti-trafficking movement with other social justice movements such as worker's rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights and human rights.

Download the report here

Kidnapping of Women on the Rise in Pakistan

From the Daily Times:

ISLAMABAD: Seventy-six kidnapping cases of women were registered by 14 police stations of the federal capital in the last 14 months compared with 13 cases of men, data gathered from police stations revealed.

The kidnapped women, married and unmarried, were abducted for various reasons.

Requesting anonymity, a police official said that women kidnapping incidents were increasing in the capital due to failure of police and other law-enforcement agencies to crack down on organized gangs dealing in human trafficking. He said parents were also responsible for the rising incidents of kidnapping.

The official said in most cases girls married against their will absconded with men of choice, instigating parents to label such cases as kidnapping to save their face. He said better understanding between parents and their daughters could avoid such cases.

Malik Naveed Fazal advocate said that lack of understanding between parents and their daughters had caused an increase in divorce rate and court marriage cases.

Naeem Mirza, the Aurat Foundation, director said that the main reason for rising women kidnapping cases across the country was that internal human trafficking was yet to be included into the human trafficking law. He said law-enforcement agencies need to crack down on the internal kidnapping gangs, as most of them were linked with international human traffickers.

Shehnaz Bukhari, a women rights activist, said that the main reason for rise in women kidnapping cases was the inability of the state to implement the human trafficking law. She said corruption in police department was another reason for rising women kidnapping cases.

UN Council Hails Bahrain Human Rights Actions

By Sandeep Singh Grewal

From All Headline News:

GENEVA, Switzerland- Bahrain made gender equality, women's empowerment and protection of migrant workers its main bragging points Monday as the country became the first to come under the scanner of the UN Human Rights Council here.

The three-hour interactive Universal Periodic Process session, shown live on the Web, was led by Dr. Nizar Al Baharna, minister of state for foreign affairs, who headed the Bahrain delegation. He was accompanied by lawmakers and senior government officials.

Bahrain is the first country whose human rights record will be reviewed at the Council. Forty-eight countries are scheduled to undergo the UPR process.

Representatives of member states praised Bahrain's report and said it was a model for other countries to follow.Women's empowerment was one of the main issues raised by member states.

Sameera Rajab, member of the Bahrain Shura (Consultative) Council said, "There is a law enacted which provides maternity leave for women. We will also continue to amend legislations which discriminate women."

Bahrain's only women parliamentarian, Lathifa Al Gaoud, added that "The parliament is studying a bill which enables women to work from their home. The MP's also voted unanimously for setting up a National Human Rights Commission."

Al Baharna revealed that the Commission was approved by the Bahrain cabinet and would be set up this year.

The minister also spoke about the new press law and freedom of expression and association. He added that Bahrain was considering a law to give more rights and privileges to female domestic workers.

Bahrain's report was also praised by the representative from the United States, who said the kingdom had made efforts to integrate Shias in the community and to protect expatriate workers.

However it was not all praise. Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab, who attended the session, told AHN on Monday, "It is a great disappointment that Arab countries hijacked the process by consuming time praising the report rather than raising key issues. I am also not happy with the response from Indian and Bangladeshi representatives who only praised and did not speak about protection of migrant workers," he said.

The UPR process calls for all UN member states to be reviewed over the next four years.

Read the full article

Human Rights Study Reports Human Trafficking and Corruption In Palau

By David Miho

From Pacific Magazine:

A U.S. State Department report has highlighted people trafficking, corruption by government officials and domestic violence as matters for concern in its annual review of human rights conditions in Palau.

The report notes that in 2007, charges were brought by Palau’s Attorney General against four foreign nationals for human trafficking to advance prostitution in a local karaoke restaurant. All were convicted, with fines, restitution and jail terms. Charges were also brought forth against state officials for misuse of public funds for personal benefit by the Special Prosecutor, with the former governor of Airai ordered to pay over $5,000 in restitution.

Cases are still pending against a Koror State legislator, 23 current or former legislators of Kayangel State for misuse of public funds and against the governor of Melekeok State on similar charges.

Charges of misuse of per diem by the Special Prosecutor against current and former members of Palau’s Congress have also been filed with most pending trial. In addition, a officer of the Bureau of Revenue, Customs and Taxation was charged and convicted of accepting a bribe and fined in addition to a jail sentence.

The State Department also voiced concern over domestic violence involving women and child abuse with alcohol and drug abuse as contributing factors. In addition, the report alluded to reports of illegal prostitution being a problem with women from China and the Philippines working in karaoke bars as hostesses and prostitutes.

While crediting the Palau government for responding to such incidents, the U.S. State Department acknowledged that enforcement capabilities were lacking due to few qualified personnel and inadequate funding.

UN Vienna Forum Part 6: Quantifying Human Trafficking

As anybody who is active in the field of counter-trafficking knows, reliable statistical data on human trafficking represents one of the biggest challenges to building an effective response to the problem. The last session that I attended at the Vienna Forum directly dealt with this issue. It consisted of seven panelists in two intervals. The first three panelists spoke about their experiences gathering data that is a bit more accessible, for example, the number of people who have been prosecuted for trafficking or victims that have already received assistance. The second three panelists dealt more with obtaining the numbers for victims that have not been found or have come forward.

Lima, Peru

Peru
The first speaker was Andrea Querol of CHS Alternativo in Peru. Ms. Querol spoke about the creation and implementation of a system for Registration and Statistics of trafficking in persons and related crimes (RETA) that links NGOs, international organizations, law enforcement, and government ministries and collects all of the available statistics as well as register new cases for the police to follow up on.

The RETA Process includes:

• Awareness raising,
• Training (Peru has over 1300 police stations plus 24 special units),
• Sustainability,
• A claims hotline that was started by the IOM, and transferred to the Human Rights Department of Ministry of Interior.

This hotline allows for the various actors taking part in the system to open new claims for investigation. Once the data is entered as a claim, an alert goes out on the new case, and the information on the original claim is locked in and cannot be changed. This is to prevent any sort of corruption from interfering with the case. The claims process is the first process of the RETA system, which is then followed by the investigation process.

Tirane Square, Albania

South Eastern Europe
The second speaker was Enrico Ragaglia of ICMPD, who presented on Data Collection and Information Management under the Programme for the Enhancement of Anti-trafficking Responses in South Eastern Europe, which runs from September 2006 to October 2008. It builds off of other projects as Romania and Albania already have databases. The final purpose was to make sure all governments have the necessary tools to understand the scope of problem.

The objectives were to strengthen the capacities of South Eastern European countries to systematically collect and manage data, out of which developed 2 distinct databases: victim-centered and perpetrator-centered. The expected results were a regional criteria for collection; two nationally owned databases which requires active participation on the part of the government; a manual on database usage; trainings on database usage; and, lastly, technical and maintenance support.

The participating countries include Albania, BiH, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Kosovo.

For the victim-centered database, the government actors mostly come from specialized ministry departments. For the perpetrator centered database, on the other hand, it is mostly the office of the prosecutor, as well as law enforcement and Ministry of Interior offices that are involved.

The information and advantages of the program are meant to work for government institutions, data contributors, policy makers, researchers. After looking at the advantages and disadvantages of collecting aggregate versus disaggregate data with the system, they decided to go with disaggregate data. The data entry, however, requires the written consent of victims. Data of the traffickers goes all the way from investigation to post-trial.

Challenges
Of course, they have faced some challenges in the implementation of this project, including a lack of cooperation and info sharing within the governments (among ministries), the impact of corruption, and working within the different legal frameworks arising from different interpretations or adoptions of the Palermo Protocol, which effects the set of indicators depending on legal definitions. The project has also been affected by political issues and commitment, as well as clashes between the figures from the governments (making the numbers too low) and NGOs (making the numbers too high). Some other issues include avoiding the duplication of cases, handling the sensitivity of the data, and the fact that further training is needed.

Omdurman, Sudan

Africa
Lastly, for the morning session was Babacar Ndiaye, UNODC West Africa who spoke about the ECOWAS Plan of Action and the attempt to set up an efficient data collection system at the national, subregional, and international levels.

Based on existing data on investigated cases, this is the number of people trafficked in West Africa over the last four years:
2003- 2900 ppl
2004- 2900 ppl
2005- 4800 ppl
2006- 4900 ppl

Overall:
Children- 85% female, 15% male
Adults- 99% women

Someone later questioned why the numbers were so highly skewed towards women when there were many cases of, for example, child soldiers, which mostly affects boys. The answer that Mr. Babacar gave was that the discrimination in gender statistics doesn't come from the statistics themselves, but from legal definition of a victim of trafficking, which in some countries does not include male victims.

The legal framework in which the countries operate in include the ratification and implementation of the following documents:
• ECOWAS Convention A/P1/7/92 and A/P1/8/94
• Palermo
• The adoption of national laws (11 out of 16 countries have passed laws)

From this framework, task forces were established in 2007 and annual reports are now being turned in. The first comprehensive report will come this year.

Some more figures:
Arrests by citizenship (In order from most arrests to least):
1. Benin (the reason for this could be the active police force and prosecution in-country)
2. Chad
3. Sudan
4. Togo
5. Nigeria
6. Burkina Faso
7. Niger
8. Mali
9. Cameroon
10. Liberia
11. Ghana
12. Senegal

Total number of arrests:
2005- 540 arrests
2006- 810 arrests



The challenges faced in this project include a lack of political will, lack of ownership, poor coordination, donor driven priorities, poor public administration services, and, especially, a lack of culture of info sharing so that governments and government agencies do not coordinate enough. There will be a second post to cover the rest of the material from the other four participants in this panel discussion.

Vietnam's Desire for Baby Boys Skews Gender

From MSNBC:

8/31/07, HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam's preference for boys over girls is further tipping the balance between the sexes in Asia, already skewed by a strong bias for boys among Chinese and Indians. The trend could lead to increased trafficking of women and social unrest, a U.N. report says.

Vietnam is now positioned where China was a decade ago, logging about 110 boys born to every 100 girls in a country where technology is readily available to determine the sex of a fetus and where abortion is legal, according to research released this week by the U.N. Population Fund. The sex ratio at birth generally should equal about 105 boys to 100 girls, according to the report.

"The consequences are already happening in neighboring countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan. They have to import brides," said Tran Thi Van, assistant country representative of the Population Fund in Hanoi, adding that many brides are coming from Vietnam. "I don't know where Vietnam could import brides from if that situation happened here in the next 10 or 15 years."

'Marriage squeeze' predicted
The report, which looked at China, India, Vietnam and Nepal, warned that tinkering with nature's probabilities could cause increased violence against women, trafficking and social tensions. It predicted a "marriage squeeze," with the poorest men being forced to live as bachelors.

Gender imbalance among births has been rising in parts of Asia since the 1980s, after ultrasound and amniocentesis provided a way to determine a fetus' sex early in pregnancy. Despite laws in several countries banning doctors from revealing the baby's sex, many women still find out and choose to abort girls.

"I have noticed that there have been more and more boys than girls," said Truong Thi My Ha, a nurse at Hanoi's Maternity Hospital. "Most women are very happy when they have boys, while many are upset if they have girls."

In China, the 2005 estimate was more than 120 boys born to 100 girls, with India logging about 108 boys to 100 girls in 2001, when the last census was taken. However, pockets of India have rates of 120 boys. In several Chinese provinces, the ratio spikes to more than 130 boys born to 100 girls.

Reports of female infanticide still surface in some poor areas of countries and death rates are higher among girls in places like China, where they are sometimes breast-fed for shorter periods, given less health care and vaccinations and even smaller portions of food than their brothers, the report said.

It estimated Asia was short 163 million females in 2005 when compared to overall population balances of men and women elsewhere in the world. It said sex ratios at birth in other countries, such as Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also should be closely monitored to avoid uneven trends there.

Earlier research has documented the gender imbalance in the region. A UNICEF report last year estimated 7,000 girls go unborn every day in India."It's very difficult to imagine what's going to be the exact impact of these missing girls in 20 years," said Christophe Guilmoto, an author of the report presented this week at a reproductive health conference in Hyderabad, India. "No human society that we know has faced a similar problem."

The reasons boys are favored over girls are complex and deeply rooted in Asian society. In many countries, men typically receive the inheritance, carry on the family name and take care of their parents in old age, while women often leave to live with their husband's family. In India, wedding costs and dowries are usually required of the parents of the bride, and sons are the only ones permitted by the Hindu religion to perform the last rites when their fathers die.

"My husband took me to a private clinic to be checked. I broke down in tears when I saw the result because I knew this is not what my husband wanted," said Nguyen Thi Hai Yen, 33, recalling when she discovered her second baby was a girl. "But he was good. He told me it was OK."China has a one-child policy, while Vietnam encourages only two children per family after relaxing an earlier ban on having more.

Such limits have led many women to abort girls and keep trying for sons who can carry on the family lineage.The report calls for increased public awareness, more government intervention and steps to elevate women's place in society by promoting gender equality.

Saddam’s Unrepentant Judge

An Iraq High Tribunal member talks about Saddam Hussein's trial



*This is a powerful interview which depicts the brutality of the Hussein regime. It also delves into the issue of "honor killings" when rape victims are killed by a family member to restore family honor.

From Newsweek:

Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa is a member of the Iraq High Tribunal, which was created to prosecute crimes that occurred under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Khalifa presided over the conviction of Saddam Hussein and the so-called Anfal trial, which specifically dealt with the crimes committed against Iraqi Kurds. The Anfal decision, as it is known, named six of Saddam's highest officials as responsible for the genocidal campaign that left hundreds of Kurdish people dead. It also designated rape as a form of torture. In one case Khalifa remembers the story of a female prisoner whose baby died soon after she gave birth. The woman was not allowed to bury her child. Instead she was forced to watch dogs rip its tiny body apart and eat it. During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., Khalifa spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Ramirez about the work of the Iraq High Tribunal. Excerpts:

What kind of court is the Iraq High Tribunal?
Our court is an exceptional court, in part, because we are doing very specific work on crimes committed by Saddam's regime. When that mission comes to pass then the court will be dissolved. The Global Justice Center, which has recognized the Iraq High Tribunal's work in the area of women's rights, had you meet Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg. What did you discuss? It was brief, but we learned about the high court in America and the function of the constitution. We talked about the kind of cases they have looked into and jurisdiction. We discussed the number of judges who preside and some history of the court.

When you and the other judges reviewed the information that led you to believe rape was a form of torture in the Anfal decision, what kind of stories helped you reach that decision?
There were many. Kurdish women have suffered a lot. When the ruling authorities at the time used to arrest civilians, they would isolate women from men. That was the first step. Then they would isolate young men from old men. The young men would be taken and killed. The elderly people would be taken to stay with the women. Once this was done then they would start investigations. The elderly ladies, their investigation would not take a long time. The investigation would be concentrated on the young ladies. That is what court witnesses said.

Some of the elderly ladies told us that the investigators would take some of the young women at night saying they wanted to investigate them. In fact, there was no investigation. They were being raped. We asked the elderly women how they knew this. They said that when the young ladies came back they told that they were raped. Another elderly woman had seen the rape occur through curtains. Those who were not raped directly during the investigations were asked to be naked and investigated in that manner.

Another witness we spoke to was arrested under the accusation that he had used foul language against the son of the president. He was beaten and tortured. He was ordered to confess to being a member of an opposition party. If he confessed he was told he would be executed. He refrained. He was a university student. So the security men resorted to another way of getting him to confess. They tortured him with electricity, pulled out his nails and broke his bones. I believe he was even sexually violated. As a means to force him to confess, they brought his mother and sister. The security men then raped them one after the other before him. They expected him to confess, but he didn't. They sentenced him to prison. He was released in 1990. When he was released he found that his mother had been executed. In 1991, during the events of the uprising, he fled. So they executed his father, two of his brothers and three sisters. He had no one remaining. Every member of his family is dead.

Often, if a woman is raped, a family member will kill her in order to restore the family honor. Do you think Iraqis should change their view of rape in general, and not just as it pertains to crimes committed by Saddam's regime?
[Honor killing] happens when a family does not understand and does not have a clear viewpoint of what happened to their daughter. She is a victim. How can she be a victim twice? Iraqi law does not protect those who kill women that are raped. The court should always be on the side of justice when the woman is a victim.

Read the full interview


Thousands of Women Killed for Family "Honor"

From National Geographic:

Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.

Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women's Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.

But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.