From Idealist

Program Assistant/Case Aide U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), a nongovernmental, not-for-profit national organization dedicated to addressing the needs and rights of refugees and immigrants, seeks a Program Assistant/Case Aide for its Raleigh, North Carolina field office. This field office operates as a refugee resettlement program and employment program for refugees, asylees and victims of trafficking, and community education programs.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: USCRI’s North Carolina field office has an immediate job vacancy for one part time Bilingual Case Aide. Essential job duties include providing translation, interpretation and case management and employment services to clients. Prepare and maintain case files, records and correspondence.

REQUIREMENTS: Excellent interpersonal skills, bilingual English and Spanish, the candidate must have valid Driver’s License, clean driving record and personal transportation. Prior experience with social services provision, employment services or refugee resettlement is preferred and the candidate must have dedication to the human rights of refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers and displaced people. J

OB SITE LOCATION: Work will be performed at the Triangle region of North Carolina and Eastern NC 3801 Lake Boone Trail Suite 200 Raleigh, North Carolina

How to Apply: US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants is an equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

Please submit via email a resume that includes salary history with a cover letter describing your interest and qualifications to:
Human Resources U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
2231 Crystal Drive, Suite 350 Arlington, VA 22202
humanresources@uscridc.org(for email submission, please include the position and your name in the subject line)

Related Movements

Many diverse social justice, human rights, and anti-violence movements intersect with the anti-trafficking movement. Looking at the trafficking nexus in fields ranging from workers rights, to immigration issues, to the environment, to violence against women, provides insights into human trafficking, its causes, and important considerations for anti-trafficking efforts. This month, we explore some of those intersections.

Lauren: Internal Displacement and Political Refugees
Upon returning to NYU for my senior year, I decided to take a course in NYU’s journalism program concerning topics and issues surrounding the Middle East, which opened my eyes to two much larger issues that are still taking place in that region, internal displacement and political refugee. At the end of 2009 there were an estimated 3.8 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Middle East, according to the Internal Displacement Monoritoring Centre. Internal displacement occurs when a person is forced to move due to human rights violations or endangerment to their life, yet unlike political refugees who flee the country, internally displaced persons stay within that country’s borders. IDPs around the globe outnumber the amount of political refugees two to one, and yet this group is not guaranteed the protection or aid under the 951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol that political refugees are. Considering historical evidence of violence and terrorism that can arise from ostracizing groups of people from society, it seems negligent that the international community is not taking higher measures of precaution in providing aid to IDPs and refugees. I also cannot help but wonder, are internal displacement persons and political refugees not victims of Human Trafficking? Are they not subjected to the same human rights violations, violence, and subjection that would allow them the attention that human trafficking victims are allowed?

Jennifer: Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
Domestic violence and sexual assault have many intersections with human trafficking. Victims of sex trafficking are also victims of sexual assault, and intimate partners may be traffickers for both forced labor and commercial sex. Insights into victims' mindsets and the ways that psychological coercion is used by perpetrators to keep victims from leaving pioneered in the domestic violence movement are also valuable for assisting trafficking victims. Understanding the cycle of violence and the ways that power dynamics are used in relationships to control people can help those assisting victims. Victim-centered approaches and empowerment approaches that were developed in the domestic violence and sexual assault contexts also provide a framework for helping trafficking victims. In many places that do not have specific anti-trafficking service providers, domestic violence and sexual assault agencies provide shelter and other services to trafficking victims. Many of these organizations have expanded their programs to include anti-trafficking work, in recognition of the intersections with domestic violence and sexual assault, as well as in recognition of the expertise that many of these organizations bring to assisting victims of abuse and violence.

Amanda: Anti-Sweatshop Movement:
While the anti-sweatshop movement has more broad range workers rights goals than the anti-trafficking movement, there are quite a few intersections between the two groups. Primarily, the industries that attract attention from the anti-sweatshop movement should attract the attention of the anti-trafficking movement. These industries are largely free from real outside scrutiny and therefore are "ideal" places to exploit workers or victims of trafficking. An additional intersection is in how we approach fighting the problem. One approach is through consumer power. The anti-sweatshop movement asks concerned citizens not to buy from companies that use sweatshop labor. More recently the anti-trafficking movement has asked supporters not to buy from companies whose product chains may contain slave labor (think electronics or the shrimp industry in certain countries). There are still many things to learn from the anti-sweatshop movement though, including effectively utilizing national media to draw attention to the issue, as they did with several major clothing and athletic wear companies.

Position Open in Baltimore

From Idealist:

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
Field Coordinator—Baltimore

Education: Bachelor (BA, BS, etc.)

Location: Baltimore, Maryland, 21230, United States

Job Category: Health & Medical, Social Science, Psychology and Welfare

Sector: Nonprofit

Last day to apply: September 27, 2009

Type: Full time

Language(s): English, Spanish

Area of Focus: Children and Youth, Health, Mental, Human Rights and Civil Liberties, Human Services, Immigration

Description:

Position Objective: To ensure professional services to undocumented and unaccompanied children through assessments and recommendations related to placements, transfers and releases to sponsors.

Qualifications include...

1. Commitment to LIRS’s core mission and values and an ability to model those values in relationship with colleagues and partners; commitment to refugees and immigrants

2. Master’s degree in social work and a minimum of two years of demonstrated child welfare, case management, social service or mental health professional experience or a bachelor’s in social work and equivalent professional work experience.

3. Knowledge and experience in work with refugee or immigrant children or cross-cultural experience

4. Professional interviewing skills

5. Ability to foster teamwork and collaboration among various service agencies

6. Fluency in Spanish

7. Knowledge of Microsoft Office software and database management

8. Ability to manage complex projects with a high degree of independence

9. Demonstrated creativity and initiative

10. Willingness and ability to travel

Responsibilities include...

1. Implement assessment and placement activities with a holistic professional child welfare approach for children in federal custody.

2. Ensure complete assessment information is made available to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for release or placement recommendations under the direction of the national agency.

3. Review family reunification packets from ORR-contracted facilities to ensure completeness and make release recommendations to ORR.

4. Track and manage various types of complex special needs cases including referrals for suitability assessments, follow-up services, long-term foster care, residential treatment and trafficking cases.

5. Act as liaison among local facilities’ staff, child, federal ORR/Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services (DUCS) staff, national LIRS and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops staff, legal representatives for children in custody, Department of Homeland Security/ Immigration and Customs Enforcement, relevant consulates, and others regarding assessment of children’s placement or release.

6. Make regular visits to ORR-contracted facilities, meet with individual children as needed, and make recommendations for treatment or other services.

7. Maintain knowledge of the continuum of care options available throughout the country.

8. As part of a national team, consult with other field coordinators on special cases, provide operational support, and develop and share effective strategies and best practices.

9. Assist ORR or ORR-contracted facilities with rapid response on special cases as required.

10. Assist with training and technical assistance to local providers to support smooth field placements, transfers and releases.

11. Ensure clear and consistent communication with the LIRS national office and ORR, including regular conference calls and other coordination meetings necessary to ongoing case management and program development.

12. Ensure projects and assignments are completed within established guidelines and agency standards.

13. Provide statistics and assist with writing reports on activities and recommendations for ORR as required.

14. Utilize DUCS Tracking Management System (TMS) for processing releases and transfers as well as other functions that are incorporated into the system.

15. Monitor changes on the ground; identify new trends and effectively communicate those trends to LIRS.

16. Assist in the identification of social and mental health services for children in custody.

17. Where appropriate, monitor trends in immigration proceedings for DUCS children in the region.

18. Organize and participate in local and regional meetings with agencies and providers in the region to address current and future issues affecting the program operations.

19. Provide on-call assistance in emergency situations.

20. Perform other job-related duties as assigned.

How to Apply:
Send cover letter, including salary requirements, with résumé to... hrmail@lirs.org

This position is also open in New York.

Related information from LIRS's website on services for children:

Unaccompanied Children in Federal Custody

Refugee foster care programs are also open to children and youth who have entered the United States alone and are placed in the custody of the Division of Unaccompanied Children's Services (DUCS) within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) pending a determination of their legal status. As an alternative to detaining such children, ORR refers some chilren for foster care and community-based services through the LIRS network of culturally sensitive service providers, Examples of such children includes minors who are applying for, or have been granted, asylum in the United States; children with special needs; and youths potentially at risk from smugglers and traffickers.

Trafficked Children

Trafficked children who are under the age of 18 are elgibile for a special foster care program, administered by LIRS and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which provides them with a home along with the services and support they need to rebuild their lives. This program has a special emphasis on preserving the cultural, linguistic and religious identities of all foreign-born children in care.

Slavery Listed as Factor for Worst Places for Refugees in USCRI's World Refugee Survey

Last month, the United States Committee for Immigrants and Refugees (USCRI) released its annual World Refugee Survey. This is one of the most comprehensive sources of information on the situation facing refugees worldwide, including statistical and qualitative data on the number of refugees, where they are currently located and where they are from. The report also includes a section on "Best & Worst Places for Refugees", which discusses places that have made significant changes to accomodate refugees and their familes and places where refugees suffer from serious discrimination, lack of protection and/or physical violence.

In this year's report, Malaysia is listed as one of the worst places for refugees specifically because there is evidence that refugees are often turned away and sold into slavery:

"Malaysian immigration officials continued to sell deportees to gangs that operate along the Malaysia-Thailand border. The gang members extort bribes from the deportees in exchange for smuggling them back into Malaysia, and sell those who cannot pay into slavery. Men frequently end up on Thai fishing boats, women in brothels, and children with gangs who exploit child beggars. At least 1,000 refugees and asylum seekers were among the deportees in 2008. Malaysia’s RELA, a volunteer immigration enforcement militia, continued to engage in violent raids against undocumented foreigners in the country, and immigration officials caned at least six refugees—one of them a minor—for immigration violations."

Refugees are sometimes a population that receives less attention, particularly in the media, when it comes to discussing victims of human trafficking. Their vulnerability and struggle to survive make them perfect targets for traffickers, who exploit the isolation and desperation faced by refugees to gain profits. This is not a problem that is only specific to Malaysia; however without proper protection and, worse in this situation, with the sanction of government and law enforcement officials, refugees will continue to fall prey to slavery.

You can find more information about UNHCR and their resources related to refugees and human trafficking here.

MPs blame traffickers for Rohingya

From the Bangkok Post:

The House committee on security said it has evidence showing transnational human traffickers are behind the influx of Rohingya boat people.

The House committee chairman, Jehraming Tohtayong, said his committee has discovered that networks of transnational human traffickers have been involved in scams to bring Rohingya people into Thai soil before taking them to the third country.

Some of those transnational human traffickers also operated from Thailand, said Mr Jehraming.
Mr Jehraming said the House committee visited on Saturday 78 Rohingya people recently rounded up in Phangnga and detained in Ranong. Police found those Rohingya migrants brought with them telephone numbers of presumably their fellow Rohingya people that have already settled in Thailand, particularly Ranong and Nakhon Ratchasima province.

The committee is assessing the situation of Rohingya's migration in Thailand and will soon report the situation to Suthep Thuagsuban, the deputy prime minister for security, said Mr Jehraming...

According to Mr Jehraming, the Thai government would consult Asean member countries in the coming Asean summit late this month on the Rohingya problems.

The committee viewed the problems must be addressed at the rooted causes by affecting countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The Thai government should encourage the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to take action by looking after the Rohingyas' living conditions as well as making sure their human rights are well protected at their homeland in Burma, said Mr Jehraming.

The committee also wanted the government to come up with a national strategy for Rohingya issues with a clear operation plan on the issue for state authorities. More importantly, law enforcement officers should take action against human trafficking networks in Thailand.

For those that did not see the headlines, the NY Times reported on Tuesday that about 200 Rohingya refugees from Burma had been rescued at sea after the Thai government forced them to leave Thailand by rounding them up and sending them out to sea on a boat.

From the article:

About 850 Rohingya have been rescued in the last month. Three boats were discovered by Indian authorities and another was found near Thailand. The other three boats are still missing.

The United Nations calculates that about 723,000 Rohingya live in Myanmar. Rohingya are officially considered foreigners in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar and are not entitled to own land or hold passports.

Jonathan Head reporting for the BBC News in Bangkok wrote about the unrelenting discrimination faced by Rohingya minorities all over the region.

So what is it that is driving so many Rohingya, a Muslim minority from the western-most part of Burma, to flee in rickety boats in the hope of finding refuge elsewhere?

The term Rohingya refers to a distinct, Muslim ethnic group living in northern Rakhine state, along the border with Bangladesh.

They are thought to be descended from Arab and other Muslim traders who travelled and settled there more than 1,000 years ago.

They speak a dialect of Bengali similar to that spoken in the Cox's Bazaar region of Bangladesh.
There are perhaps one million living there, but may be as many more living overseas, mainly in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

Harassed and beaten

Northern Rakhine state is one of the poorest and most isolated in Burma.
But the burdens imposed on the Rohingya by Burma's military rulers make their situation a whole lot worse than other people living in the area.

"Economic hardship and chronic poverty prevents many thousands of people in north Rakhine state from gaining food security," says Chris Kaye, the country director for the UN's World Food Programme who visited there two months ago.

"Many do not have land rights or access to farmland to grow food, and the restrictions and limitations on the movement of people, goods and commodities places additional stress on people's livelihood opportunities."

For a start, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under Burma's 1982 citizenship law, which leaves them out of the 135 ethnic groups officially recognised by the state.

The official view of the Burmese military is that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh or their descendants.

Rohingya trying to leave Burma are often harassed and beaten by the Burmese security forces, but then allowed to leave, and told never to return.

They are also unable to travel freely. The military demands that they obtain an official permit even to travel to the next town.

It is almost impossible for them to get permission to travel outside northern Rakhine.

Marriage restrictions

Rohingya are subjected to routine forced labour.

The amount of time they have to give varies, but Chris Lewa at the Arakan Project says that typically a Rohingya man will have to give up one day a week to work on military or government projects, and one night for sentry duty.

This reduces the time they have to earn a living for their families. Burmese Buddhists living in the area are usually not required to do this.

The Rohingya have also lost a lot of arable land, which has been confiscated by the military to give to Buddhist settlers from elsewhere in Burma.

One of the most bizarre forms of discrimination imposed on the Rohingya is that they must get official permission to get married.

Like all the other documents they must obtain, these give opportunities for officials to extort money from them, and the marriage approval can take two years or more.

Couples caught getting married or sleeping together without this approval can be arrested.
The Arakan Project has documented a number of cases where the men have been jailed, in one case for seven years. When they get married they are required to sign a commitment not to have more than two children.

Camp squalor

This litany of abuse and harassment makes the Rohingya a downtrodden underclass even in Burma, one of the world's most repressive and impoverished states.

This is why 200,000 fled to Bangladesh in 1978, and another 250,000 between 1991 and 1992. There has been a steady stream into Bangladesh since then.

But the numbers heading out into the Andaman Sea by boat have increased sharply over the past two to three years.

There has been no discernable deterioration in the way the Rohingya are being treated by the Burmese authorities, as in 1978 and 1991, so other factors are driving them to leave.

Conditions for the Rohingya in Bangladesh are grim. Around 28,000 live in the two officially recognised camps, which get some assistance from the UN. But 200,000 more eke out an existence outside the camps, in a desperately poor part of Bangladesh, with no official documentation, and no prospect of employment.

In the past they have made their way to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, in search of work, as many Bangladeshis do. They could do that because it was relatively easy to obtain Bangladeshi passports. But heightened security concerns in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia over Islamic extremism have made it far more difficult for the stateless Rohingya to travel.

Rare publicity

Instead they have been making their way to Malaysia by boat.

There are already around 20,000 Rohingya in Malaysia, and the UN has had some success in protecting them from deportation. The job prospects there are better than Bangladesh, and this slim hope of a better life is what is now driving thousands to take the risky journey across the Andaman Sea.

Inevitably some have landed in Thailand instead. Others have been intercepted by the Thai navy once they entered its territorial waters, which lie en route to Malaysia.

Networks of brokers have grown to cash in on this hope; they charge up to $800 (£547) to make the trip in rickety and overcrowded boats.

Shortages of food and higher prices over the past year in northern Rakhine state are also driving more people to flee.

Of the Rohingya survivors being washed up in Indonesia and the Andaman Islands after being set adrift by the Thai security forces, some left Bangladesh, some left Burma, and a few had been rounded up in Thailand after living there for some time.

The scandal over Thailand's treatment of the Rohingya has at least brought their plight some rare publicity.

It has also brought home to Thailand and Burma's other neighbours that the unending repression inside Burma affects them far more than anyone else, and that the Rohingya are a regional problem which requires a concerted regional response.

Whatever horrors they may have endured recently in the Andaman Sea, the flow of Rohingya boat people is unlikely to stop.

Whether traffickers are to blame for Rohingya moving in droves across borders, the response currently put forward by the affected governments is hardly productive and puts the refugees at further risk of being retrafficked or killed.

Confusing trafficking and smuggling

Multiple articles were published yesterday and today in major news agencies around the world regarding the Europol operation that arrested 75 people yesterday in nine different countries in Europe under charges of smuggling. 

From the Europol press release:

Today, a total of 75 persons suspected of being part of a people-smuggling network were arrested throughout Europe...

All suspects are said to be involved in the clandestine smuggling of a large number of illegal immigrants into and within the European Union. This was one of the largest co-ordinated actions against people smugglers ever, involving more than 1,300 police officers...

Operation Baghdad targeted a network primarily consisting of Iraqi nationals and former nationals facilitating the illegal immigration of citizens from Afghanistan, China, Turkey, Bangladesh, and Iraq into and within Europe.

No where in the release is it mentioned that there were suspicions or charges of human trafficking although it did mention that the migrants often suffered through cramped conditions while being smuggled into the EU.

However, the BBC and the Times Online reported that this effort was a part of a bust on human traffickers.

BBC: A pan-European police operation has led to the arrest of 75 people suspected of trafficking Iraqi Kurds in the EU

Times Online: Dozens of suspects were arrested in Britain and across Europe yesterday in one of the largest co-ordinated crackdowns on people-trafficking.

It is important to recognize the distinction between trafficking and smuggling for multiple reasons:

• They are different problems, even though their paths sometimes cross. Essentially, smuggling is the facilitation of illegal border crossing or irregular stay, while the final purpose of trafficking is exploitation. Also, borders need not be crossed in trafficking (i.e. internal trafficking.
  
• By not distinguishing the issues, it creates confusion among the public and hinders general awareness of both problems.
  
• It impedes a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to tackling the problems effectively.

While, other news sources such as AP, Al Jazeera,  and CNN (although CNN used the term "funneling" immigrants, which is not an official term) did not place trafficking anywhere in their reports, the fact that some news agencies did confuse the two terms shows that there is still a lack of awareness among journalists covering these stories, even in major news networks.

The AP story did include an interview with a representative from UNHCR who commented on how this operation, for example, affects refugees desperate to reach Europe.

William Spindler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva, urged authorities to consider the interests of refugees who at times count on human smugglers to help them flee misery at home.

"We welcome actions to crack down on human smugglers, some of whom are utterly ruthlerr characters who abuse, exploit, rob and sometimes even kill their clients. But it is important to ensure that their victims are properly protected," he said.

"An unintended effect of cracking down on human smugglers - as important as that is - may be to close the only avenue left for refugees to escape persecution or conflict," he said.

He noted cases in which some Iraqis had been granted refugee status in European countries but were unable to get there without turning to people smugglers.

"For many refugees it is well nigh impossible to get passports, visas or plane tickets," Spindler said. "They have to travel in an irregular way in order to save their lives and reach a secure place."

An article such as this one approaches these issues from multiple points of view without confusing them. Law enforcement must also be careful in these situations with migrants who may, in fact, end up becoming victims of trafficking. The importance is to approach the migrants with a consideration for human rights and the possibilities facing these migrants as to why they went through a smuggler in the first place. However, it is the media's job to be responsible and not confuse the issues, thus hindering better public awareness and a better response to each of these problems.

World Refugee Day

"A total of 11.4 million refugees were under the care of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2007, including some 400,000 feeling conflict in their home countries, the agency said. The report for 2006 numbered 9.9 million." -NY Times

An excerpt from a message by UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres to mark World Refugee Day, 2008:

"Today, the world is different and refugee protection is vastly more challenging. Old barriers to human mobility have fallen and new patterns of movement have emerged, including forms of forced displacement that were not envisaged by the '51 UN Refugee Convention.

Conflict today may be motivated by politics, but looking deeper it can also be about poverty, bad governance, climate change leading to competition for scarce resources. Recent food and fuel shortages have had an immediate and dramatic effect on the poor and the dispossessed, including refugees and the internally displaced. Extreme price increases have generated instability and conflict in many places, with the very real potential of triggering more displacement..."

The links between refugees and human trafficking:

From"International protection for trafficked persons and those who fear being trafficked"

Can a trafficked person be a refugee?

Trafficked persons and those who fear being trafficked can be defined as refugees under the 1951 Convention if they meet all the elements defined in Article 1(A). If they have a well-founded fear of persecution based on one of the Convention grounds and their country of origin is unable or unwilling to provide protection against further re-trafficking or reprisals bytraffickers, they are entitled to international refugee protection. There is no reason why a victim of trafficking who fears returning home due to the real possibility of being re-trafficked, targeted for reprisals, or threatened with death, should not be granted refugee status where the state of origin is unable or unwilling to protect that person against such harm...

Can refugees be trafficked?

It is also important to note that refugees and internally displaced persons fleeing from persecution could be easy targets for traffickers. This is because the displacement and related vulnerability put refugees and internally displaced persons at a greater risk of exploitation and abuse. To access countries of asylum in an environment of tightening visa regimes and border controls, some refugees may resort to desperate and even illegal measures in their search for a safecountry and of livelihoods and can fall prey to trafficking. Asylum applicants may fear re-trafficking and reprisals from traffickers upon returning to their country.

Does being re-trafficked or a target of reprisals amount to persecution?

According to the UNHCR Trafficking Guidelines, re-trafficking usually amounts to persecution, in view of the serious violations often involved. Reprisals would also amount to persecution as they usually involve acts of serious human rights violations. Among the cases reviewed, both the risks of re-trafficking and reprisals were considered by the courts of Australia, Canada, and the U.S., as found in the cases illustrated below. In the U.K., it is more difficult to convince the court that the applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution from being re-trafficked or a target of reprisals, which will be discussed later in the section...

A stateless person is vulnerable to trafficking for the lack of state protection. The UNHCR Trafficking Guidelines specify that while being stateless alone does not make an individual a refugee, the stateless person would be considered a refugee if unable to return to his or her habitual residence for fear of persecution on a Convention ground. The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness set out the legal framework for the rights of a stateless person and obligations of states to avoid actions that would result in statelessness...

As effects of globalization continue to expand, the nature of trafficking becomes more complex. To protect those targeted by trafficking, asylum is an essential measure and may be the only option available in countries where there is no other means ofprotection. The importance of making the asylum procedures available to these persons cannot be over-emphasized. The adoption of the UNHCR Trafficking Guidelines would therefore be essential in the provision of international protection for trafficked persons and those who fear being trafficked. As states have the primary responsibility to prevent trafficking in person and protect those affected by this serious human rights violation, the challenge is on the decision-makers of each state to ensure trafficked persons' full access to fair and efficient asylum procedures.

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