World Vision on Child Trafficking in India

This is a video released by World Vision International, a relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. 

The video is entitled Your right to love, freedom and protection: Child slavery and trafficking in India.

Total Ban for Sex Soliciting and Curb-Crawling

From the Guardian:

By Nicholas Watt
September 22,2008

Kerb-crawling and soliciting for prostitutes on the streets are to be outlawed as part of a wide-ranging tightening of the law, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, annnounced yesterday.

Warning of the "blight" of prostitution, Smith outlined a three-point plan at the Labour conference that will:

· Remove the requirement that only persistent kerb crawlers and men who solicit on the street can be prosecuted. An alternative requirement for kerb-crawlers - that they act "in a manner that is likely to cause annoyance to people in the neighbourhood" - is also to be removed. The changes will mean that kerb-crawlers and men soliciting sex on the street can be prosecuted after a first offence.

· Give new powers to councils and the police to close down brothels for at least three months if prostitutes are being run by a pimp or have been trafficked. At the moment, police can only close brothels if there is anti-social behaviour and if Class-A drugs are involved.

· Change the law so that men can be prosecuted if they pay for sex with women who are exploited - "controlled for another person's gain", as Smith said. Currently, police can only pursue a prosecution if they can prove that the women did not consent to sex, which means they have to compile evidence of rape.

The home secretary also announced that communities will be given more say in lap-dancing clubs opening in their areas. Smith criticised the Tories for sending delegates to their conference in Birmingham next week a £10 voucher to visit such a club. "I want to know what the Tories have to say for themselves," she said.

Smith announced the new measures on prostitution after a six-month government review into prostitution that focused on how Sweden and the Netherlands deal with the problem.

Read the full article

Three Charged in Sweden Human Trafficking Case

*This article never specifically mentions why this is a case of human trafficking and NOT smuggling. The journalist never specifies what actions qualified the crime as human trafficking and in doing so blurs the line between human trafficking and smuggling which are two fundamentally different actions.

From The Local:

September 25th, 2008

Three men have been charged for arranging to have 49 foreign citizens smuggled into Sweden.

The human trafficking victims were allegedly taken across the European continent through Denmark and then over the Öresund bridge to Skåne in southern Sweden.

The suspects are said to have cooperated with accomplices in France, according to charges filed on Thursday in Malmö District Court.

The victims who asked for help to enter Sweden each paid 10,000 kronor ($1,515) to the smugglers.

The men are charged with organizing and carrying out human trafficking.

Two other men were also charged with the latter crime.

According to the charges, the men are suspected of conducting their human trafficking operations in cooperation with several different groups, including with a man who has already been convicted in Denmark, as well as another man not included in the charges.

The charges cover seven separate instances of human trafficking which took place between February 13th and June 16th of this year.

One of the men is also charged with serious forgery crimes. At his home police found a USB-memory stick with digital images of Arabic-language identity papers bearing official stamps.

Read the full article

Human Trafficking in Colorado

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A Chance for a New Life

From the OSCE:

Joint UN-OSCE meeting aims to intensify fight against money laundering and human trafficking in the Mediterranean region

LARNACA, 18 September 2008 - Helping Mediterranean countries strengthen their fight against money laundering and human trafficking and improve their co-operation in prevention efforts was the goal of a meeting that started in Larnaca today.

The two-day event is jointly organized by the OSCE, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the government of the Republic of Cyprus.

The meeting aims to inform government officials from the Mediterranean region on international standards in building an effective system to fight money laundering and human trafficking and how to better co-ordinate the fight against both crimes.

The meeting, the first of its kind, aims to help countries implement best international practices to protect their populations, meet their international obligations and improve regional and international co-operation.

"Individual countries cannot fight the double threats of money laundering and human trafficking alone," said Bernard Snoy, Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities. "Criminal groups thrive on evading detection by moving from country to country, playing the various agencies against each other. This requires co-ordinated actions by financial intelligence units and law enforcement agencies of the countries concerned."

Ruth Pojman, Deputy Co-ordinator of the Office of the Special Representative on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, added: "Anti-trafficking policies need to address factors such as the demand for cheap, socially unprotected labour and sexual exploitation. They also must focus on the economic costs of trafficking and disrupt the traffickers to create an environment where trafficking is less likely to happen in the first place."

They both said the OSCE was ready to offer assistance to the governments of the region, if requested, to help develop legislation, mechanisms, institutions and procedures to be able to effectively fight both money laundering and human trafficking.

More than 100 officials from more than 20 countries in the Mediterranean region took part in the meeting. Experts from international organisations such as the Council of Europe, the European Commission, Europol, the International Organisation on Migration and the International Chamber of Commerce, as well as state agencies, institutes and universities from Cyprus, France, Switzerland and the United States took part in the meeting.