Executive Assistant Position Open at Tahirih Justice Center

From the Tahirih Justice Center:

Job Announcement

Executive Assistant

Location: Falls Church, VA

By providing holistic legal services and engaging in national public policy advocacy, the Tahirih Justice Center (Tahirih) works to promote access to justice in the United States for immigrant women and girls who are fleeing violence. Tahirih is a Bahá’í-inspired nonprofit organization that offers pro bono representation to women and girls seeking protection from such gender-based human rights abuses as domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, honor crimes, and forced marriage. Winner of the 2007 Washington Post Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management, Tahirih has a staff of 28 with offices in Falls Church, VA; Houston, TX; and Baltimore, MD.

Position Summary: Tahirih is currently seeking to fill the position of Executive Assistant, which provides administrative support to the Executive Director. Additional support will be provided to the Development Department and Public Policy Director, and other areas as needed. The candidate must have superior organizational skills, excellent communication skills, a high level of maturity and sound judgment. S/he must be able to work in a fast-paced environment with highly motivated staff in a rapidly growing, mission-focused organization. The position reports to the Executive Director.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Respond to routine correspondence, including individual donor requests, and field variety of inquiries via e-mail and telephone

• Coordinate appointments and make travel arrangements for Executive Director

• Provide general administrative support to Executive Director

• Edit and format documents and presentations for the Executive Director, and for Development department, as needed

• Maintain contact lists for Executive Director and Public Policy Director

• Attend Board of Directors meetings and help manage Board relations

• Conduct background research and assist with preparation for presentations and media interviews

• Assist with strategic analysis of organizational goals, metrics, and growth

• Answer Tahirih’s primary phone line (2 hours per day); conduct phone-screenings of potential clients

• Process donor thank you letters and track and file donations

• Assist with maintenance of donor records and contact tracking using Convio and Salesforce’s Common Ground databases

• Work with Grants manager to draft grant requests and reports

• Assist Development Team in event execution and follow-up

The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications:

• A college degree

• Detail-oriented with superior problem-solving, decision-making, organizational, and time management skills

• Strong ability to maintain confidentiality and use discretion

• Strong interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills

• Ability to prioritize multiple tasks, organize work, and follow through independently

• Experience working in an office environment, preferably in a nonprofit setting

• Flexibility in adapting work capacity to the needs of the office

• Ability to establish administrative systems within the office

• Proficient in Microsoft Office (including Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher), knowledge of Internet research tools

• Candidates applying must have work authorization in the United States

• Candidates will be asked to make a two year commitment to the position

Annual salary and benefits: Salary ranges from $28,000 to $32,000, depending on experience.

Benefits include: 15 days of paid accrued vacation during the first year (20 days of vacation after thefirst year), additional week of vacation between Christmas and New Years, fully-paid health and dentalinsurance coverage, 403(b) plan, flex-spending account, in-house training programs, professionaldevelopment opportunities, and staff enrichment retreats.

Submissions:

Please email a cover letter, resume, and a list of 3 references to:

Human Resources Department

Tahirih Justice Center

6402 Arlington Blvd., Ste. 300

Falls Church, VA 22042

justice@tahirih.org

Fax: 571-282-6162

Please note: Candidates applying must have work authorization in the United States.

The Tahirih Justice Center is an equal opportunity employer which does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, disability or veteran's status, or any other characteristic protected by local, state or federal laws, rules or regulations. Tahirih’s policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment.

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.

Annie Lennox: Women on the Frontline, Traficking in Nepal

Women on the Frontline is a video documentary series presented by Annie Lennox that shines a light on violence against women and girls. The series takes the front to homes, villages and cities around the world where a largely unreported war against females is being waged.

Broadcast on BBC World for seven weeks in 2008, the series covers: Nepal, where thousands of women are trafficked each year; Turkey, where killing in the name of honour continues; Morocco, where women political activists who have survived torture and imprisonment testify before a government truth and reconciliation commission; the DRC, where women bear the brunt of a 10-year war in the eastern provinces; Colombia, where women have been tortured in the shadow of a guerilla war; Mauritania, where women who have been raped may go to prison; and Austria, where, under a new law, perpetrators of domestic violence are forced to leave home.

(Publishers: UNFPA, dev.tv, Austrian Development Cooperation, UNIFEM; Year of Release: 2008)

Read more about Women on the Frontline here

See more chapters from this powerful documentary series:

Afghanistan

Austria

Colombia

Republic of Congo

Mauritania

Morroco

Turkey

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.

Why one girl refuses to remember

Part of an excellent story about how children cope with the horrors of tragedy, abuse, and exploitation:

From CNN:

Nway pretends that it never happened.

The storm didn't come. The wind didn't tear her home to pieces. The cyclone didn't sweep her mother and father away.

In those brief moments, when she tunes out the questions, the 7-year-girl from Myanmar can step back in time -- before May's Cyclone Nargis took everything away.

That's the girl aid workers from World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian group, found when they met Nway in her demolished village a month after the cyclone.

"When she was asked about the cyclone, she turned away and said she didn't remember anything about it, and left," says Ashley Clements, a World Vision worker who met Nway.

International relief groups know how to rebuild devastated countries like Myanmar. But how do they rebuild the lives of children like Nway? That's the challenge faced by groups trying to help child survivors of natural and manmade disasters.

Aid workers who deal with these children say the experience can drain their souls. They try to comfort children in Darfur, Sudan, who have seen their mothers raped; children in China who have seen their parents buried under rubble; children in Louisiana who watched their homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

No matter where they encounter these children, these aid workers face the same question: How can a child remain a child after experiencing a tragedy?

Rose Kimeu, a disaster response specialist for World Vision in African and Latin America, says many children don't know how.

"They don't laugh. They don't smile," Kimeu says. "They have this look in their eyes that's very sad... It's something that breaks my heart over and over."

What Nway wants for her future

But some of the memories aid workers carry around with them are more painful to recall.

Dean Hirsch, president of World Vision International, just returned from visiting some of the child-friendly spaces. He was struck by the children's body language.

"A lot of the children were holding onto to each other," he says. "If their mother was there, they would hold onto her, or if she wasn't, they'd hold onto the workers."

The children spent a lot of time drawing pictures of their homes, toys and pets.

"They were trying to restore through their memories what they had," Hirsch says.
A child who loses a parent faces plenty of dangers, Hirsch says. They could suffer brain damage or stunted growth if they don't eat enough.

"If they lost their father, the income source is gone," he says. 'If it's the mother, it's that person who did the food and supplied the love."

The children face other risks as well. They become easy targets for human traffickers. Some girls are exploited sexually by men.

When World Vision established child-friendly spaces in Darfur, Kimeu, the group's disaster response specialist, says her staffers noticed something odd. No girls would visit.

They later found out why. Many of them had been raped or seen their mothers raped. World Vision had male workers in the child-friendly spaces.

"They will not go near a man," says. "They will simply not show up."

The healing process varies with each child, Kimeu says. She says there was one girl who was raped in Darfur who took a year to play with other children.

Some never heal. In Uganda, some former child soldiers introduced to the child-friendly spaces never learned to be children again.

"Former child soldiers are very difficult," Kimeu says. "Some of them have killed not one but several people."

Today, Nway is being helped toward her own recovery. She lives in a village with her aunt. She plays with her friends during the day in child-friendly spaces and looks after her little cousin.

At times, Nway returns to her old village with the adults. She walks over the ruins of her old school. She proudly wears a yellow silk blouse that was donated to her. But she and the other villagers have a difficult time ahead. The cyclone blew away rice, utensils, farming tools -- even the village's cows and buffalos were swept away.

Nway may no longer talk about her past but she will talk about her future. Clements, the World Vision staffer who visited her, once asked Nway what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She talked that time. Her answer revealed that though she might not be ready to talk about her own wounds, she's already becoming more sensitive to the pain of others.

"I want," she answered after hesitating, "to be a doctor."

A Task for Senator Obama

From Letters to the Editor of the New York Times:

To the Editor:

In "The Sex Speech" (column, June 12), Nicholas D. Kristof urges Barack Obama to address women's rights issues like maternal mortality.

As it happens, Senator Obama has an opportunity right now to demonstrate his commitment to women and girls.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act is up for reauthorization. In December 2007, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill strengthening the law to enable more effective prosecution of sex traffickers. Sadly, these criminal provisions were dropped by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Sam Brownback in the trafficking reauthorization bill they recently introduced.

Senator Obama could help ensure that the Senate legislation incorporates the criminal justice provisions included in the House bill and does justice to victims of sex trafficking. Such action could go a long way in establishing his credibility with women voters.

Jessice Neuwirth

President, Equality Now

New York, June 12, 2008

Equality Now's Page on the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act

More Korean International Marriage Woes

From the Korea Times:

South Korea has increasingly come under attack for the abuse and exploitation of foreign wives, especially those from Southeast Asian countries. The plight of Vietnamese wives married to Koreans has already invited international criticism over rights abuses and human trafficking. It is heart-wrenching to read frequent stories that Vietnamese spouses were beaten to death or committed suicide ― far from realizing their ``Korean dream.''

What's more worrisome is that such a story does not stop with the ill-fated Vietnamese. The problem is now spreading to Cambodia. The Cambodian government has recently suspended processing all documents for marriages of its citizens with foreigners as a measure to minimize the possibility of human trafficking. You Ay, Cambodia's deputy minister of women's affairs, said April 3 that the suspension was prompted by concerns about exploitation and trafficking amid a surge in the number of Cambodian women marrying South Koreans.

She said the suspension affects all foreigners, not just South Koreans. But it is apparent that the measure was closely related to soaring cases of abuse of foreign wives in South Korea. She was quoted as saying that seven Cambodian women recently returned to their country because they could not endure pain from their married life with their Korean husbands. However, the official said the country has yet to uncover systematic exploitation.

The Cambodian move came after the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) disclosed a report that thousands of South Korean men went to the Southeast Asian country to marry Cambodian women through brokers. The report featured the plight of a rising number of Cambodian brides migrating to South Korea in marriages hastily arranged by brokers who make huge profits.

A revised interracial marriage brokerage law is to go into effect in June in a bid to crack down on brokers for human trafficking-style methods. And a multicultural family support law is scheduled to take effect in September. It is urgent for the country to establish a firmer system to embrace foreign wives as well as migrant workers as indispensable members of our society. Interracial marriages now account for 10 percent of total marriages. Therefore, we have to roll up our sleeves to ensure human rights and equal opportunity for brides and workers from other countries.

Read the full article