Stella Rotaru: Fighting Global Sex Trade

From Al Jazeera:

Stella Rotaru, with her International Organization for Migration, is fighting the international sex trade.

Stella is from Moldova, a former Soviet republic so poor that over one quarter of the population has emigrated. The country is a prime source for girls trafficked into prostitution.

Within a few years, Stella has become the "go to" person for many girls who have been tricked and sold into prostitution with the false promise of a job abroad - often in the Middle East.

As a young Moldovan herself from a similar background, the girls trust her.

This film tells the story of some of these girls and Stella's determination to help them.

Documentary: Dying to Leave

From PBS:

This two-hour WIDE ANGLE special explores the current worldwide boom in illicit migration. Every year, an estimated two to four million people are shipped in containers, shepherded through sewage pipes, secreted in car chassis, and ferried across frigid waters. Others travel on legitimate carriers but with forged documents. An alarming number of these migrants end up in bondage, forced to work as prostitutes, thieves, or as laborers in sweatshops. By listening to the voices of those who pulled up their roots, who risked all, the film will put a human face on what might otherwise be seen as statistical, overwhelming and remote. Focusing on five major stories whose journeys traverse 16 countries from Colombia to China, from Mexico to Moldova this documentary will look into the circumstances that drove these migrants from their homes, describe the difficulties involved in their epic journeys and reveal what awaits them in their new world.

Watch full episode

Special Trafficking Operation Program

New Yorker Special on Trafficking

From The New Yorker:

The upcoming May 5th edition of the New Yorker features a lengthy article entitled, "The Countertraffickers: Rescuing the victims of the global sex trade." on trafficking in Moldova. This article is extremely useful to learn more about the many facets of trafficking and the response to trafficking. The main focus of the story is the work of a reintegration specialist for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Moldova and her tales of success and challenge in her years of work on this issue.

Rotaru, who is twenty-six, works for the International Organization for Migration, a group connected to the United Nations, in Chisinau, Moldova. She is a repatriation specialist. Her main task is bringing lost Moldovans home. Nearly all her clients are victims of human trafficking, most of them women sold into prostitution abroad, and their stories pour across her desk in stark vignettes and muddled sagas of desperation, violence, betrayal, and sorrow.

Her allies and colleagues in this work are widely scattered. An ebullient Dubai prison officer named Omer, who calls Rotaru "sister," has been a help. So have Russian policemen, an Israeli lawyer, a Ukrainian psychologist, an Irish social worker, a Turkish women's shelter, Interpol, and various consulates and embassies, as well as travel agents, priests, and partner organizations, including an anti-trafficking group called La Strada, which has offices downstairs from Rotaru's and a dedicated victims' hot line.

The article does go on to introduce the reader to some of these colleagues. The article also provides a bigger picture of human trafficking and responses to it.

There are roughly two hundred million migrants today - migrants being defined as people living outside their homelands. The reasons for this are globalization, and wars, and new border freedoms, and, above all, disparities in economic opportunity. Along the nether edge of the huge movement of people, human trafficking thrives.

Migrant smuggling is different from trafficking. Migrants pay smugglers to deliver them, illegally, to their destinations. The line into trafficking is crossed when coercion and fraud are used. (This line is not always clear, and many migrants endure varying degrees of mistreatment.) Trafficking can start with a kidnapping. More commonly, it starts with a broken agreement about a job promised, conditions of work, or one's true destination. Most victims suffer some combination of threats, violence, forced labor, and effective imprisonment. The commercial sex industry, according to the International Labor Organization, absorbs slightly less than half of all trafficked labor worldwide. Construction, agriculture, domestic service, hazardous industries, armed conflict, and begging are some of the other frequent sites of extreme, illegal exploitation.

Not all trafficking is international. India, for instance, has an immense domestic network, with large numbers of children being sold and resold, for labor and household servitude and prostitution. No reliable numbers exist, though. For cross-border trafficking worldwide, estimates range from half a million people annually to several times that figure.

The article also takes time to point out the difficulties facing organizations trying to work with victims including domestic violence, psychological problems, risks of re-trafficking, mistrust of authorities, victim-blaming, etc. All of this comes out in detail through interviews with various people, organizations, and victims. As well, the article points out that awareness can only do so much to prevent people from becoming victims. Even is a victim is aware of the problem, they often feel it is somehow distant from them or that it won't happen to them personally. This is also the case with former victims who decide to go abroad again: they think they're smarter now and can avoid any such situation.

One victim's story is also quite important for breaking the notion that it is just uneducated, poor people who are tricked into trafficking:

Were all her beneficiaries from broken, violent, alcoholic, impoverished families?

"Not at all," she said. "We received a call from one of our embassies last year. A girl from a prominent family had been trafficked. They wanted to keep the case quiet, of course. So this tragedy happened to her, but she has good parents. Bright future. Not like most girls."

The only area the article doesn't really cover is labor trafficking, child trafficking or trafficking of men. Obviously, as the title suggests, the article is meant to explain more about women caught up in the global sex trade. However, organizations like the International Organization for Migration also deal with the growing field of labor and child trafficking. In fact, it has been found that sometimes the two areas are overlapping and people are trafficked for both sex and labor. Also, especially women and children, are at risk of sexual abuse if they are trafficked for labor.

One area that does graze the issue of child trafficking are the risks of "social orphans" or children who are missing parents because the parents have gone abroad. This is also a major issue for Ukraine. For the most part, no one knows what happens to these children once they leave the orphanages.

The article follows the trail and structure of organized traffickers, delving into areas of corruption and poor attitudes among law enforcement, courts, and government ministries that only fuel the problem.

If you do not have time to read the article right away, there is an audio clip interviewing the author about the article with some of the interesting pieces there.

Moldovan Sex Slaves Released in U.K. Trafficking Raids

From the Tiraspol Times:

April 22nd, 2008, NORWICH - A group of Moldovan women who were forced into prostitution have been freed in raids across London and Surrey, in the United Kingdom.

The raids, which took place over the past three days, uncovered a Moldovan-linked network of brothels and human trafficking which so far has led to the arrest of 15 people. They are suspected of being involved in an international criminal network managing people trafficking and prostitution, the Norwich Evening Post reports.

Moldova, Europe's poorest country, is the continent's leading supplier of underage girls for sexual exploitation. Human trafficking rings operate with impunity in Moldova, where they are for the most part under government protection and where a number of local government officials are involved as participants behind the rings. Due to a climate of impunity, no government officials have ever been charged with human trafficking and prostitution offenses in Moldova.

"This major operation successfully disrupted a long standing organized criminal network. Human trafficking is simply modern day slavery and, as we've discovered, it is happening in this county," said British Detective Chief Inspector Christine Wilson, head of Norfolk's Vulnerable People Directorate. In the investigation into the gangs involved in human trafficking, British police received no cooperation of any kind from Moldova's authorities.

Read the full article



Related: Corruption breaks new records in Moldova
By Karen Ryan

April 25, 2008 CHISINAU- Being in charge of Moldova's government is a lucrative business, as long as you can still get money from the people who are left in the country. A large percentage of Moldova's working-age population has already gone abroad, but those who remain in the country are targeted for bribes like never before.

The country's government has been listed as Europe's most corrupt in a number of international studies, and the latest to weigh in is Transparency International with a fresh survey released this week. According to the poll, which was conducted on a sample of 1105 people in Moldova between 23 February and 10 March 2008, incidents of corruption now breaks new records in Moldova.

The polls excluded nearby Transdniestria (Pridnestrovie), which has 'de facto' not been a functioning part of Moldova since 1990.

Corruption is one of Moldova's main problems, Transparency International Director Lilia Carasciuc said at a 22 April press conference in Chisinau. Over 80% of Moldovans think that corruption is holding back the development of their country. "

- According to the survey, people place corruption as third among the problems they meet, it following only poverty and unemployment. The business people also feel that, and place this phenomenon as second after great taxes," says Lilia Carasciuc.

Over 76% of the Moldovans are prepared to pay a bribe, Basa Press reports. The percentage is higher when reported to the business people: over 81%.

According to the survey, Moldovans pay bribes in 80.7% of the cases when they try to get visas to leave their country. Many need visas to be able to work abroad. Among the lucky ones who manage to get out, most show no inclination of ever wanting to return.

Crossing the border in and out of Moldova, crooked customs officers demand their baksheesh 57.2 % of the time. And if that wasn't enough, once you are inside Moldova you will be forced to cough up even more cash: In dealing with police, bribes are required in 51.2% of all cases.

Read the full article

US Govt Team Visits Moldova to Combat Trafficking

From Florida Weekly:

Florida Gulf Coast University College of Professional Studies professor Johnny McGaha visited Moldova in Eastern Europe in February as part of a team from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to help train Moldovan justice officials how to combat human trafficking. McGaha was the only non-governmental official invited as one of the team of trainers.

The Department of State has provided $5 million to Moldova in an effort to combat human trafficking.

The Center to Combat Trafficking in Persons has been commissioned to consolidate Moldovan departments that are involved in trafficking to collaborate as a task force. The purpose of the CCTIP is to bring all the officers, prosecutors and support agencies under one roof to facilitate efforts.

Moldova is a small, land locked, communist country sandwiched between the Ukraine and Romania. It is the poorest country in Eastern Europe and one with the poorest record in trafficking of women and young girls.

Thousands of Moldovan women are estimated to have fallen victim to human trafficking in that country. Resistance from government agencies and corruption of officials make it difficult to work together as a task force.

"In order to help combat the horrendous trafficking problem in Moldova, the U. S. funded the new Center to teach task force development, my job was to teach the officials how to do it and what it means," said McGaha. "Other members of the team included an agent from the IRS who taught officials how to track down traffickers through financial investigations, a senior inspector with the U.S. Marshalls taught victim/ witness protection, and a trainer from the Leadership and Management Institute at our U.S. Law Enforcement Center in Georgia taught them team building."

Read the full article

"Happy" Trafficking

From RFE/RL:

Lia was lured by a "friend" from her native Moldova with promises of a job and a better life. But once in Turkey, those hopes were quickly replaced with fears for her life after the acquaintance turned her over to sex traffickers. She'd been "betrayed" and unwittingly sold into a nightmare existence. "I was humiliated, and I can't find the right words to describe the horrors I was going through," Lia told RFE/RL's Romania-Moldova Service after she'd managed to escape. "I took a bath every time I came across some water, hoping the soap could wash away all the pain from my body. There was not a single day without sexual abuse and threats."

Reliable data are hard to find, but an estimated 2.5 million people are victims of forced labor at any given moment around the world, many for sexual exploitation. Victims are trafficked across borders, regions, and continents as part of a trade that reaps some $32 billion a year -- half of it from transactions in the industrialized world.

The antitrafficking community -- allying government officials, multinational organizations, and civil-society activists -- fears that the prevalence of a tactic known as "happy trafficking" could extend the reach of traffickers and exacerbate the problem.

The method minimizes risks to organizers and maximizes profits in a sort of human pyramid scheme. It combines physical and psychological pressure with financial and other incentives to turn victims into proxy recruiters and, eventually, traffickers. In part to avoid detection by authorities, traffickers pledge to release some victims -- and even reward them financially -- on condition that they return to their home countries and recruit one or more women to replace them.

"Happy" refers to recruiters' practice of pretending to have had an ideal experience in legitimate jobs in the West or elsewhere, hiding the fact that they'd been forced into prostitution themselves. International media first signaled the emergence of "happy trafficking" in the Balkans and Italy, but campaigners warn that it has become common practice in many parts of the world. In Europe, the converted recruiters are frequently former sex workers from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, or Balkan and Southeastern European states like Bulgaria and Romania.

Central Asia is also emerging as one of the hot spots where "happy traffickers" are active. One activist who works with trafficked women in Thailand told RFE/RL that large numbers of Central Asian women have been turned into sex workers in Bangkok.

The activist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, singled out young Uzbek women as especially prevalent, perhaps due to broad unhappiness over poverty and dire social conditions at home. "I meet literally hundreds of women from Central Asia -- particularly from Uzbekistan -- on any night of the week," the activist said. "I haven't got any statistics, but I would probably estimate that at least a couple of thousand Uzbek women, if not more, are in Thailand as sex workers."

She said thousands of women from Uzbekistan are lured to Thailand by Uzbek recruiters known as "Mama-sans" -- former sex workers who have themselves become madams under the supervision of traffickers.

Reprisals are harsh against those who try to escape, so the prospect of release in exchange for recruiting new victims can be difficult to resist. Traffickers are keen to use the former sex workers as go-betweens because they are familiar with the business and, at the same time, provide criminal organizers a way to remain invisible to authorities.

Read the full article

Selling Immigrants Into Sex Slavery

*This article touches on the involvement of a trafficking victim's relatives or friends during recruitment.

From the LA Times:

She came all the way from Eastern Europe to treat her daughter's asthma. Instead, once in Dubai, the 27-year-old Moldavian woman found out that she was lured into the city to literally be sold as a sex slave. Her Ukrainian friend had actually planned to offer her to a local for nearly $8,000.

A few days ago, this case was brought to a court in Dubai, where the 36-year-old Ukrainian broker was charged with sexual exploitation, according to media reports.

But this is likely only the tip of the iceberg of human trafficking to the Persian Gulf. Many people from poor Asian and East European countries go to the oil-rich region to work as domestic servants, labor workers or secretaries but find themselves actually forced into involuntary servitude and sexual practices, according to human rights organizations.

It's rather recurrent to hear stories of men and women from these areas bought by pimps and coerced into prostitution until they pay their "debts." The sad reality of sex trafficking is the other side of the coin for a region portrayed as a hub for trade and economic prosperity. An extensive Feb. 23 report on the topic by Reuters' Lin Noueihed described one victim's misery:

Aysha sold her wedding gold to pay traffickers $200 to find her and a cousin jobs in Dubai. A world away from her village in Uzbekistan, she was forced to work in a disco and expected to offer sex. Beaten by her Uzbek boss when she shooed prospective clients away, she and her cousin fled and hid in airport toilets for two days, surviving on tap water.

Some Gulf countries are becoming aware of this problem and have recently drafted stiff laws to combat trade in humans. Last month, in the UAE, officials promised to build shelters for victims of human trafficking.

More trafficking articles from the Middle East

ILO Video: Human Trafficking in Moldova

Human Trafficking in Moldova: the trade of human misery

In Moldova, desperation, poverty, and high unemployment make young girls and women easy prey for traffickers, who promise them well paid jobs abroad. In a co-production with Rockhopper TV, ILO TV tells the story of Maria, forced to work illegally in Russia.

Fantastic documentary done with the help of the ILO and a trafficking victim willing to speak out and tell her story. While her situation sounds like many of the victims of trafficking, the story reveals a side of trafficking not as often exposed- trafficking in labor, especially for women. The information given by the ILO on the difficulty of reintegrating victims is particularly hard to hear. These organizations do their best to help victims and prevent future cases, but unless the overall economic situation of Moldova is improved, their tasks will be forever daunting. This video shows the many levels of cooperation between IOs, domestic organizations and government agencies.

The good piece of news from this story is that her trafficker was arrested, and the film takes you through the story of Maria confronting her traffickers. It's not easy for victims to come to this point. Fantastic documentary. 

Report from Turkey Releases Data from 2004-2006

Istanbul

From Today's Zaman: Turkish authorities intercepted some 246 victims of human trafficking in 2006, an overwhelming majority of whom came from former Soviet Union countries, official data announced yesterday revealed.

One hundred ninety-one of the victims have been safely sent back to their home countries. The data, announced in a 55-page report prepared jointly by officials from the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the police department and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), show that the number of people falling victim to human trafficking has remained steady in past years: In 2004, authorities identified 239 victims and in 2005, the number stood at 256.

According to the report, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine top the countries of origin for victims of human trafficking in Turkey. Turkey has in the past been more of an origin country itself, but in the recent past has grown as a destination country as its economy gets stronger. Of course the most frequent place these victims were found was in Antalya, a very popular Turkish Mediterranean resort destination for Eastern Europeans. I can't tell you how many advertisements I see around Ukraine for tourism to Turkey, with the most popular site being Antalya. Not that those are necessarily connected, but to some extent, they are.

The last two paragraphs of the article really shocked me:

A significant instrument in the rescue of human trafficking victims is a hotline launched in 2005. According to the report, some 56 people were rescued by security forces after victims themselves or others dialed 157 for help. As in previous years, the clients of women forced to prostitution themselves proved to be the most helpful: Clients of friends/relatives of the women made 81 percent of the calls to 157, while only 19 percent of the calls were made by the victims themselves.

All of the victims repatriated to their countries by IOM were women, the report also revealed, and 40 percent of them had one or more children. The report also showed an increase in the number of people detained for human trafficking in 2006 compared to earlier years. Some 422 people were detained in 2006, 379 in 2005 and 277 in 2004. A total of 156 people were arrested after being brought to court, while 127 were released pending trial in 2006.

A couple things did not necessarily strike me as out of the ordinary:

1) The success of the hotline. It also has been a very useful counter-trafficking instrument here in Ukraine as well, although the national hotline also gets an excessive amount of phone calls with questions regarding migration.

2)Women victims often have children. So do male victims of labor trafficking.

However what did surprise me was the amount of victims who called in themselves for help as well as the fact that clients were willing to step out and report what was happening. Its good to hear more people are being detained under the law. I'm hoping and assuming they're detaining more traffickers and pimps as opposed to victims. I'll have to go through the whole report.