Kids Talk About Slavery

What happens when you ask a bunch of kids to define slavery? Free the Slaves visited the Agape International Spritual Center and asked the children: What is slavery? The answers were very enlightening.

Human Trafficking Awareness Day 2011

This year, HTP has signed on to a letter produced through a collaborative effort in Boston, Massachusetts to produce a statement in light of Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Today is also your opportunity to find out what is going on your local community, and find a way to get involved. Towards the bottom of the letter are some suggestions. And please remember that we here at HTP are always looking for volunteer writers and submissions.

Dear Boston Area Residents,

We are service providers, faith leaders, teachers, students, law enforcement, advocates, parishioners, civil servants, NGO leaders, business owners, and survivors from the Boston area. We work to combat human trafficking--what many call ‘modern-day slavery.’

We are uniting today, on Human Trafficking Awareness Day 2011, to ask you to learn about and discuss human trafficking and modern-day slavery with your families, neighbors, churches, coworkers, friends, and fellow students.

Human trafficking is widespread throughout the United States today, including the greater Boston area. It is a hidden crime and often goes undetected by authorities and advocates. The lack of public awareness about human trafficking, together with a lack of understanding about trafficking survivors and the services they need, present major barriers to combating it.

Within the Boston area there have been numerous incidents of international sex and labor trafficking, as well as the sex trafficking of U.S. citizens. Sex trafficking of children is sometimes referred to as CSEC (the commercial sexual exploitation of children).

Survivor stories from the Boston area are diverse: a woman from Southeast Asia trafficked into years of domestic servitude, a young Eastern European woman looking for a better life but forced into sexual exploitation, a child from Latin America sent to the U.S. by her family who ended up being exploited for labor, and an American teenager who fled abuse at home and then relied on her “boyfriend” who prostituted her. Women, men, girls, and boys from a variety of backgrounds are being trafficked for sex and labor in our communities today. Many of these individuals can’t see a way out of their situations, and are afraid to speak up for themselves due to threats, coercion, or violence.

Please join the anti-trafficking movement. Your involvement, voice, and skills can make a difference. Below are three things you can do. These action items all begin with educating yourself. Details are available at www.traumacenter.org/initiatives/necat.php.

Talk about human trafficking in your communities and ask others to educate themselves

• Invite a speaker from a local organization to talk to your group
• Read a book, hold a documentary screening, write a blog or an editorial
• Use Google alerts to send news about trafficking and slavery to your email

Tell your legislators to take action - Massachusetts is currently one of five states that has failed to pass anti-trafficking legislation

• Write your legislator

Get involved with a local organization

• Support, volunteer for, or spread the word about a local organization
• Donate or fundraise to ensure the work continues

We, the undersigned, pledge to continue to fight human trafficking and modern-day slavery in greater Boston and beyond. Please join us.

For a full list of signatories, please click here.

For more specific suggestions from signatory organizations, please click here.

NYC Let's End Human Trafficking Campaign

Press Release: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, along with Deputy Mayor Carol A. Robles-Roman and Chief Advisor for Policy and Strategic Planning John Feinblatt, has launched a new Let’s Call an End to Human Trafficking public education campaign encouraging New Yorkers to “See It. Know It. Report It.”

Print advertisements have been posted in both English and Spanish at bus stops throughout New York City’s five boroughs, featuring silhouettes and quotes from ordinary people who may be affected by human trafficking, emphasizing the fact that the crime does not discriminate based on age, race, gender or ethnicity. These ads are accompanied by a new Human Trafficking website, launched earlier this month, where concerned citizens can go to learn more about modern-day slavery and how to prevent it. . . All too often human trafficking is seen as a foreign problem, one that exists only in corrupt and impoverished countries whose commitment to human rights is wavering. This campaign exists to let you know that modern-day slavery is occurring right now in our own neighborhoods. Click here to read the full press release.

I am excited to see cities around the US launch campaigns to raise awareness about trafficking in their own communities, to mobilize action to address this exploitation, and to call attention to the fact that the US is far from exempt from trafficking problems. With the pending release of the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, the first report to evaluate the US, it is a useful time to reflect on the reality of trafficking throughout the US and to promote efforts to address it.

National Global Human Trafficking Awareness Day

National Global Human Trafficking Awareness Day 2010

PSA with Emma Thompson for UNGIFT

A PSA with Emma Thompson for UNGIFT running on CNN International:

IOM Launches Anti-Trafficking Campaign in Kenya

Kenya - IOM has launched a six-month nationwide public information campaign to combat human trafficking in Kenya.

The campaign, which uses the slogan "People are Not for Sale. Beware of Human Trafficking," is funded by Norway and Canada and will be implemented in partnership with the government, media and local NGO partners.

"The campaign will include a series of three-minute infomercials broadcast in Kiswahili, the national language, before four prime time news bulletins on Kenya Broadcasting Service," says IOM Kenya Counter-Trafficking Programme Officer Alice Kimani.

"National television will also televise a court drama on human trafficking in its popular Vioja Mahakamani programme. And IOM will get other TV and radio spots where listeners can call in and ask questions about human trafficking," she adds.

The campaign will also work with NGO and other partners to develop and distribute Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials, organize stakeholder forums and train government counterparts to raise public awareness and encourage people to report cases of human trafficking.

IOM is also helping the Ministry of Labour to set up a website, where counter-trafficking information will be posted. The website will offer advice to potential labour migrants on how to avoid becoming victims of trafficking and details of whom to contact if they become involved with traffickers.

Kenya is a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking. People are trafficked both internally and internationally. Internal trafficking is mostly from rural to urban areas for domestic work, sexual exploitation and agricultural work.

International trafficking destinations include Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, mostly for domestic work and sexual exploitation.

Girls are also trafficked to Kenya from Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi for sexual exploitation and from Tanzania for agricultural and domestic work. Trafficking victims from South East Asia, Pakistan and Ethiopia transit through Kenya en route to South Africa and Europe.

For further information please contact:

Alice Kimani

E-mail: akimani@iom.int

or

Rose Ogola

IOM Kenya

Tel: +254 20 4444 174/167

E-mail: rogola@iom.int

Slavery Map: Identify Slavery in the U.S.

From Slavery Map:

This campaign began when the death of Seetha Vemireddy, a 17 year-old bonded slave at a restaurant in Berkeley, CA, came to the attention of professor David Batstone. By learning to recognize forced labor and report it, you can help people like Seetha gain their freedom. SlaveryMap was created for this purpose.

Sex Trafficking Victims Rescued in Scotland

From the Daily Record:

Three women held as sex slaves in Scotland were bought for just £7000 - and forced to have sex with up to 20 men a day.

Human traffickers charged up to £60-a-time for sex with the victims, two Slovakians and a Lithuanian. The women have now been freed thanks to a massive police operation. They were among 17 sex slaves rescued during a series of raids across Scotland in the last few months. Last night, one senior officer said the slaves were being treated like "used cars".

"And just as cars depreciate, the value of a person can depreciate. " It's a horrible set of circumstances for people to find themselves in.

"This year is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and we are using that to draw attention to this problem. "Someone is making money from all this misery. Our job is to take appropriate action." Every police force in Scotland has been involved in the latest clampdown on human trafficking.

The recent raids took place as part of Operation Pentameter 2, a UK-wide effort to free women from the clutches of organised crime gangs who make millions from the sick trade every year. For operational reasons, police are unable to reveal details of the raids or of any arrests made. But they did confirm that cases of human trafficking are rising at a faster rate in Scotland than in the rest of the UK.

Mr Malcolm said yesterday: "People who are trafficked are coerced or abducted or maybe conned here on the promise of employment. "Usually, the first thing is their passport is taken off them and they are visited upon with violence. That violence can be sexual if people are going to be forced into prostitution."

The Glasgow sex industry alone is worth an estimated £7million a year, earned by women forced to work in saunas, in private flats and as escorts. Many are regularly sold and re-sold between organized criminals working in all of the UK's major cities.

Last year, the original Operation Pentameter resulted in 515 raids and 84 suspected victims of human trafficking being identified. A 14-year-old girl in Dumfries was the youngest person rescued.

A drop-in centre for sex industry workers in Glasgow recently launched special clinics for women who sell their bodies in saunas. They have women from more than 30 countries on their books.

Inspector Arlene Smith said: "They are now running clinics for these women three days a week and have registered women of 34 different nationalities. From Asia, China, Nigeria, Latvia - there's quite a mix."

Detective Chief Superintendent Corrigan believes the public can help as much as they did in providing tip-offs to police about cannabis farms. He said: "We'd like the public to report in if they see a couple of young women moving into a flat and notice an inordinate amount of people visiting. That gives us reason to visit." ACC Malcolm added: "In England, one man who had used the services of a girl went back to the house and actually rescued the girl and took her to police.

"We're trying to touch the consciences of these people - so they don't treat these girls like commodities.''

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