Seattle, Washington Human Trafficking Conviction

From the Seattle Times:

A South Korean national has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for his role in a human-trafficking ring.

The ring forced some women into the sex trade to pay off their debts.

According to documents filed in U.S. District court, Junk Won Hwang helped smuggle as many as 20 people a month into the United States from Canada. The documents say many of the 29-year-old Hwang's victims were women, who wound up in massage parlors and brothels. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport and smuggle illegal immigrants, and two counts of bringing an illegal immigrant into the U.S. for financial gain.

Court documents say Hwang had been charged in a 17-count indictment, but has been cooperating with authorities in major human-trafficking investigations involving the U.S., Korea and Canada. He entered the U.S. illegally in the early 1990s and was deported in 1999.

Three Memphis, Tennessee Men Sentenced for Role in Sex Trafficking Ring

From PRnewswire.com:

The Department of Justice announced today that three men from Memphis, Tenn., were sentenced yesterday for their roles in a Memphis sex trafficking ring. Raul Santillan-Leon, Fernando Cortes-Santillan and Cristobal Flores-Angeles all admitted to working at Memphis brothels, and Santillan-Leon and Cortes-Santillan admitted to working at brothels where an underage girl engaged in prostitution.

Santillan-Leon pleaded guilty on Jan. 11, 2007, to one count of child sex trafficking and was sentenced to 60 months imprisonment and 10 years supervised release. Cortes-Santillan pleaded guilty on Jan.10, 2007, to one count of child sex trafficking and received a sentence of 41 months imprisonment and 10 years supervised release. Flores-Angeles pleaded guilty on Jan. 4, 2007, to one count of enticing a person to cross state lines to engage in prostitution and one count of money laundering and was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment and three years supervised release.

Two additional defendants, Juan Mendez and Cristina Andres Perfecto, both of Nashville, Tenn., have pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial sex trafficking related to their roles in the sex trafficking ring. Perfecto admitted that she recruited two Mexican girls on behalf of Juan Mendez to come to the United States under fraudulent pretenses, knowing that the girls would be coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts and knowing that the victims were younger than 18 years of age. Mendez admitted that he dispatched Perfecto to Mexico to recruit girls under the age of 18 for the purpose of prostitution. Mendez and Perfecto face a maximum sentence of life in prison for their crimes.

"The victims in this case were thrust into the brutal and demeaning world of sex trafficking, where they were fed lies, and turned into prostitutes," said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The Justice Department is committed to the vigorous enforcement and prosecution of human trafficking offenses."

UN Vienna Forum Part 8: Closing Remarks

International Cooperation for an International Problem


Three days and thiry-five sessions as well as art displays, film screenings, social gatherings, and exhibitions added up to an intense international effort to reorganize the unconcentrated, but passionate fight against human trafficking. Time and again, it was mentioned by speakers and panelists that this global effort taking place in many countries around the world does not have a focal point to bring together organizations and people to share information, best practices, new developments, etc. It is hoped that this conference will mark the beginning of a renewed effort to make the response to human trafficking more organized than the crime itself.

Achievements of the Forum:
The Vienna Forum brought together around 1,500 experts, activists, intergovernmental specialists, academics, government officials, representatives of the private sector, and non-governmental workers, among others. The sessions provided insight on a wide range of topics including: the three P's; the demand and supply chains; the role of governmental, non-governmental, private, religious, youth, and civil society actors; health isssues; vulnerability factors; and obtaining better research and statistics. The Forum put together the seemingly impossible task of covering the widest scope possible in order to involve the diversity of actors who can contribute to combating human trafficking.

This, of course, is no small task. Anyone involved in the fight against human trafficking knows that, at times, the various actors will lose common ground forfeiting communication, which in the end, only hurts the cause. Also, there are so many different kinds of organizations in diverse areas of the world, that without a global Forum like this, would probably never connect otherwise. As Antonio Maria Costa mentioned in his closing remarks:

"A less tangible, but equally important, enabling factor [suitable condition to move ahead] is partnership to strengthen our ability to work together. Therefore the importance of strengthening alliances."

As a research fellow, the most useful sessions were Quantifying Human Trafficking (for the purposes of finding out more about the state of today's available information) and Communities in Crisis (as this is an area I wish to work more with as a career). It was absolutely established at this Forum that we need more information and better research in order to obtain a clearer understanding of the size and scope of the problem and how best to combat it.

Possibilities for Future Action:

Intergovernmental cooperation is obviously key to combating this issue as the crime often, although not always, ignores borders. One problem Ukraine is facing is the slow process of coordination between its counter-trafficking units and their counterparts in some of the highest destination countries for Ukrainian victims. Although I missed the session on the Bali Process, the Vienna Forum provided communication and practice sharing on regional processes such as this one in order to help build a more organized structure for cooperation.

New developments or realizations, and criminal organizations reacting and adapting to governmental and law enforcement responses cause us to constantly have to rethink whether our current approach is the most effective one. However, good information is the key to making sure this happens. The US, as well as other countries, make funding available for people to contribute to improving knowledge of the issue by conducting research. Some universities and major organizations fund research projects as well.

There were concrete steps that Mr. Costa stated would lead to real results, but that, again, will require multi-level cooperation:

• Tracking and Blocking credit card payments for internet human trafficking transactions.
• Technology to identify, monitor and disrupt human trafficking routes.
• Codes of conduct to curb sex tourism.
• Help lines to report suspected child prostitution or sex slavery.
• Social services to stop street begging by exploited children.
• Better supply chain management and corporate self-certification to keep slave-made products off the shelves.
• Targeting human trafficking clusters - regions where this crime is especially acute.

Oksana Horbunova of the IOM Mission to Ukraine has worked with me for the last five months providing invaluable information for my research, and she also attended the Vienna Forum. During the conference, she wrote an article that was published in the Kyiv Post talking about why the Forum was important and what developments have happened in Ukraine over the last several years. One of her quotes makes a very important observation about why the Vienna Forum marks an important point in the development of the response to human trafficking:

"I can testify to the fact that 10 years ago it was difficult to petition the public, as well as certain individuals, to resolve the problem, but today the Vienna Forum demonstrated that on a global level, virtually everyone from every walk of life is ready to put forth effort in the fight against modern slavery."

With determination and serious organization, in ten more years, we will hopefully see the same rapid development of technology, cooperation, and information like we have since Ms. Horbunova began her work in this field and fewer people will be caught up in this vicious crime.

Questions
What do you think about the current state of anti-trafficking efforts in your country and around the world?

What programs have generated tangible results?

What innovative programs are being pursued?

What areas in the anti-trafficking effort are in need of improvement?

UN Vienna Forum Part 7: Quantifying Human Trafficking Pt. II

Cambodia
The second half of the session included four speakers, the first of whom conducted his research as a Fulbright Scholar in Cambodia. This was one of the most fascinating presentations as Dr. Thomas Steinfatt of Miami University explained his research on sex workers in Cambodia. His task was to actually interview traffickers, albiet without their knowledge that he was conducting research on this topic. The method was informed by the deputy director of UNAIDS.

Here is some of the basic information about the method:

• Target population: Women and children brought to Phnom Penh for the purpose of sex trafficking
• Follow the money! Trafficking has to be treated as an industry, and therefore it must survive by bringing in customers,
• So look for advertisements, especially through taxi drivers
• He also cross-validated his work with studies done by IJM, Cambodia's National Assembly, and by NCHADS

These were sources of data to keep organized:

1) The first was the location of venues. These venues were mapped through a GPS unit via taxi route. Dr. Steinfatt used taxi drivers to locate places to buy sex as they are often the people who brothels advertise through. He would exhaust the resources of three or four different drivers over the course of a few days and use the GPS system to keep track of the location. He would then go to the tourism bureau and ask for the locations of entertainment clubs, and go to each of those to designate overlap and potential brothels. After all of this information was collected, he broke it down to small-scale sampling within a certain block space.

2) The second source was the communication with brothels. First, he would survey one venue, and observe customer demographic. Then, based on these observations, either Dr. Steinfatt may go or use the taxi driver to go in and ask questions with the false premise that he is a customer looking to throw a party. The questions would be, for example, how many women are available, whether they are allowed to leave the venue to go somewhere else, type (ethnicity) of women, etc. This would give him an idea of which spots were potential sites with trafficking victims.

About two weeks later, he would conduct a very similar survey at same venue but with additional questions such as the willingness of the girls to be there (in this case presented as a customer's fantasy, but really to get a better idea of which brothels may have trafficked victims).

Dr. Steinfatt relied on some assumptions in order to complete this research:

• Sex trafficking is for profit, and most women and children trafficked for sexual purposes will be found in large urban areas with a replenishing or transient male population.
• There are not many, if any, indirect venues or "hidden brothels" because the drive for profit means a need to advertise (although this will normally be less obvious, i.e. through taxi drivers).
• This method will not find cases of people locked in basements or backrooms, although it is assumed these trafficking operations cannot sustain themselves as they will never earn money off of their "investment" in the victim.

If you want to learn more about Dr. Steinfatt's work, it is possible to contact him through the page linked to his name above or he has a book published on sex workers in Thailand here.

Incomplete Numbers
The next speaker was Gergana Danailova-Trainor of the U.S. Government Accountability Office on conducting impact evaluation of counter-trafficking programs. Her presentation started from the premise that a lack of baseline information means that evaluations are difficult- meaning the lack of statistics on the size of the problem is holding back efforts to build effective programs. This is because of, in her view, the hidden nature of trafficking and the lack of empirical root causes. In essence, the results are flawed from the very beginning.

Some solutions include tracking trafficking victims over time, including their demographic information, trafficking situation, mode of intervention, the results of reintegration assistance, and longitudinal data such as education, employment, health, and income.

Ms. Danailova-Trainor suggested taking lessons from other elusive or hard-to-track populations such as the homeless or irregular migrants. These lessons include using focus groups and key informants to identify hot spots for trials and employing decoys or snowball sampling.

Lastly, she stated that using existing global and national databases could shed light on the profile of victims and root causes. Then use this information to create an index of trafficking severity where risk factors could be modeled and influence estimated numbers. This could also help with evaluating intervention success based on the status of the trafficking severity index.

Click here for the GAO's June 2007 report: Human Trafficking: Monitoring and Evaluation of International Projects Are Limited, but Experts Suggest Improvements.



ILO headquarters in Geneva

Improving Tracking Methods
The next speaker was also quite interesting as I had heard of some of the work she was referring to on a working trip to Moldova in October. Michelle De Cock of the International Labor Organization spoke about new tools for data collection on forced labour and human trafficking.

These tools have taken various forms:

• A national survey to estimate prevalence
• An establishment survey in one sector of activity
• Qualitative research on trafficking/forced labor
• A database

For the database, the indicators must be

• Consistent
• In line with international conventions, national laws, between various organizations, and between countries
• Operational and simple

Ms. De Cock also explained the undertakings of the project by the Criminal Justice subgroup of European Commission to set indicators. It has been implemented by the ILO under a steering committee. There are a certain number of experts involved from the police, judicial branches, government, NGOs, trade unions, employers, inspectors, and academics with the task of reaching a consensus on indicators of labor and sex trafficking among both adults and children. One of the conditions, as used in the Delphi method, is to ensure that these experts do not know each other. Their results are expected this year.

The group follows a 3 step process:

1. Open up the question on the structured lists of indicators,
2. Each member will rate the indicators, and upon full collection of these ratings, the indicators will be recombined,
3. Lastly, rate the new combinations

As far as the ILO's work in gathering statistical data, surveys have been implemented in coordination with national governments. They are national household surveys with specific sampling frames. Currently, there are surveys being done in Zambia, Niger, Georgia, and Moldova. Ms. De Cock singled out Moldova for further explanation as it is the most advanced survey thus far.

Moldova
The objective in Moldova (with the help of Elena Vatcaran, National Bureau of Statistics) is to estimate the number of labor migrants and working condition of these migrants. The process began with a meeting with the National Committee (made up of NGOs and police) to define national indicators followed by technical meetings between ILO experts and the National Bureau of Statistics to design the questionnaire.

It is a full scale LFS that is meant to reach 12,000 households.

The questionnaire bears the following characteristics:

• Normal LFS
• One question is used as a filter on absent or returned migrants
• Three types of responses:
  
• 1) There are neither absent or returned migrants in the household
  
• 2) There is a member of the household that is abroad already
  
• 3) There is a member of the household that has returned from migrating abroad to work

By establishing how many households there are with labor migrants abroad it: provides numbers on number of labor migrants on larger scale; identifies families at risk; gives some sense of the importance of remittances (this is least reliable information as families may lie); and it creates better information and awareness of the situation of migrants.
By finding households with returned migrants it creates better information on: the recruiting process; migrant working conditions; migrant living conditions; the extent of the existence of forced labor; and exposes the means of coercion.

A pilot test was run in Oct. 2007 in 4,000 households in Moldova and they identified a significant number of households with absent or returned migrants. This test pilot also exposed the fact that a lot of work still needs to be done in destination countries.

Cairo, Egypt

The Cairo Expert Group Meeting
The final speaker I witnessed before I had to leave to return to Kyiv was Frank Laczko, the Head of Research and Publications at IOM Geneva. His presentation was on developing new approaches to the study of human trafficking, specifically the Cairo Expert Group Meeting.

He stated the key to this meeting was to avoid the duplication of effort. As a part of the UNGIFT Research Initiative Objective, a meeting was held in Cairo from Jan 11-12, 2008 between 20 experts from across different regions and disciplines. Their objectives included assessing the current state of trafficking research and identifying gaps; proposing policy oriented research; and recommending tools and guidelines.

The key issues identified for context of research include:

• Conceptual clarity
• Capacity building for governments, NGOs, and researchers
• The complications of the politics of research and suspicion of governments
• Research ethics need to be made clear; some countries have guidelines, others don't
• Donors and funding for research interfering with the work
• Coordination of research by agencies

Identified Research Gaps

• Linking development with trafficking

From this a new agenda for research can be made that encompasses the following aspects:

• Donor and Funding awareness-raising
• Broadening the base for funding
• Linking the research to evaluation
• Employing closer coordination of research agendas to avoid evidence misinterpretation and duplication
• Promote studies on neglected themes and regions
• Enhance quality
• Build research capacities

These are the identified areas for action:

• International Programme to Promote Innovative Research on Trafficking
• Creation of an advisory network of experts on human trafficking research to provide guidelines, share best practices, review proposals and papers, provide training workshops, and produce a working paper series to share information about innovative research in an understandable way
• Enhance dissemination and interpretation of data
• Utilize the UN competition to facilitate new research
• Work more with policy makers to present research in a way that can translate into policy
• More major agency coordination is needed
  

Final Thoughts
It was a busy three days in Vienna, and there were many more topics covered than what is included in these seven posts. The Vienna Forum is evidence that trafficking is being taken seriously by the international community and that, although there is much work to be done, new forms of collaboration and innovative programs to combat this terrible crime are underway.

UN Vienna Forum Part 6: Quantifying Human Trafficking

As anybody who is active in the field of counter-trafficking knows, reliable statistical data on human trafficking represents one of the biggest challenges to building an effective response to the problem. The last session that I attended at the Vienna Forum directly dealt with this issue. It consisted of seven panelists in two intervals. The first three panelists spoke about their experiences gathering data that is a bit more accessible, for example, the number of people who have been prosecuted for trafficking or victims that have already received assistance. The second three panelists dealt more with obtaining the numbers for victims that have not been found or have come forward.

Lima, Peru

Peru
The first speaker was Andrea Querol of CHS Alternativo in Peru. Ms. Querol spoke about the creation and implementation of a system for Registration and Statistics of trafficking in persons and related crimes (RETA) that links NGOs, international organizations, law enforcement, and government ministries and collects all of the available statistics as well as register new cases for the police to follow up on.

The RETA Process includes:

• Awareness raising,
• Training (Peru has over 1300 police stations plus 24 special units),
• Sustainability,
• A claims hotline that was started by the IOM, and transferred to the Human Rights Department of Ministry of Interior.

This hotline allows for the various actors taking part in the system to open new claims for investigation. Once the data is entered as a claim, an alert goes out on the new case, and the information on the original claim is locked in and cannot be changed. This is to prevent any sort of corruption from interfering with the case. The claims process is the first process of the RETA system, which is then followed by the investigation process.

Tirane Square, Albania

South Eastern Europe
The second speaker was Enrico Ragaglia of ICMPD, who presented on Data Collection and Information Management under the Programme for the Enhancement of Anti-trafficking Responses in South Eastern Europe, which runs from September 2006 to October 2008. It builds off of other projects as Romania and Albania already have databases. The final purpose was to make sure all governments have the necessary tools to understand the scope of problem.

The objectives were to strengthen the capacities of South Eastern European countries to systematically collect and manage data, out of which developed 2 distinct databases: victim-centered and perpetrator-centered. The expected results were a regional criteria for collection; two nationally owned databases which requires active participation on the part of the government; a manual on database usage; trainings on database usage; and, lastly, technical and maintenance support.

The participating countries include Albania, BiH, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Kosovo.

For the victim-centered database, the government actors mostly come from specialized ministry departments. For the perpetrator centered database, on the other hand, it is mostly the office of the prosecutor, as well as law enforcement and Ministry of Interior offices that are involved.

The information and advantages of the program are meant to work for government institutions, data contributors, policy makers, researchers. After looking at the advantages and disadvantages of collecting aggregate versus disaggregate data with the system, they decided to go with disaggregate data. The data entry, however, requires the written consent of victims. Data of the traffickers goes all the way from investigation to post-trial.

Challenges
Of course, they have faced some challenges in the implementation of this project, including a lack of cooperation and info sharing within the governments (among ministries), the impact of corruption, and working within the different legal frameworks arising from different interpretations or adoptions of the Palermo Protocol, which effects the set of indicators depending on legal definitions. The project has also been affected by political issues and commitment, as well as clashes between the figures from the governments (making the numbers too low) and NGOs (making the numbers too high). Some other issues include avoiding the duplication of cases, handling the sensitivity of the data, and the fact that further training is needed.

Omdurman, Sudan

Africa
Lastly, for the morning session was Babacar Ndiaye, UNODC West Africa who spoke about the ECOWAS Plan of Action and the attempt to set up an efficient data collection system at the national, subregional, and international levels.

Based on existing data on investigated cases, this is the number of people trafficked in West Africa over the last four years:
2003- 2900 ppl
2004- 2900 ppl
2005- 4800 ppl
2006- 4900 ppl

Overall:
Children- 85% female, 15% male
Adults- 99% women

Someone later questioned why the numbers were so highly skewed towards women when there were many cases of, for example, child soldiers, which mostly affects boys. The answer that Mr. Babacar gave was that the discrimination in gender statistics doesn't come from the statistics themselves, but from legal definition of a victim of trafficking, which in some countries does not include male victims.

The legal framework in which the countries operate in include the ratification and implementation of the following documents:
• ECOWAS Convention A/P1/7/92 and A/P1/8/94
• Palermo
• The adoption of national laws (11 out of 16 countries have passed laws)

From this framework, task forces were established in 2007 and annual reports are now being turned in. The first comprehensive report will come this year.

Some more figures:
Arrests by citizenship (In order from most arrests to least):
1. Benin (the reason for this could be the active police force and prosecution in-country)
2. Chad
3. Sudan
4. Togo
5. Nigeria
6. Burkina Faso
7. Niger
8. Mali
9. Cameroon
10. Liberia
11. Ghana
12. Senegal

Total number of arrests:
2005- 540 arrests
2006- 810 arrests



The challenges faced in this project include a lack of political will, lack of ownership, poor coordination, donor driven priorities, poor public administration services, and, especially, a lack of culture of info sharing so that governments and government agencies do not coordinate enough. There will be a second post to cover the rest of the material from the other four participants in this panel discussion.

UN Vienna Forum Part 5: Role of the Arts

In a special session on Thursday evening, a panel discussion with people involved in media and the arts gathered to discuss the role of the arts and journalism in combating human trafficking. The guests and panelists included Guy Jacobson, screen writer for "Holly"; Sangita Myska of the BBC; actress and producer Adi Erzoni; Indian actress Mati Vasisht; and Indian film director and producer Foroz Nadiadwala.

Although I came a bit late from the session on the role of the religious community, I came in time to see the trailer for 'concertagainstslavery' featuring an array of actors, actresses, and musicians banding together to raise awareness. Afterwards, the panelists were given time to speak about their experiences.

Foroz Nadiadwala, Indian Film Director and Producer spoke about how modern media allows for mass reach, and thus messages spread faster. He also stressed that it is important to provide PG films and materials so kids can be educated and sensitized. They presented his work "One life, no price," a spot on human trafficking with Bollywood actor John Abraham, which will be a preview on DVDs and in movie theaters. This spot, which takes the audience through various cases of young people tricked or sold into slavery in India, will be able to reach 1.5 billion people through this method. Mr. Nadiadwala mentioned that they had some initial problems convincing distributors and theaters to cooperate, but the effort is well worth the results.

Sangita Myska of the BBC talked about her experiences making, "Undercover," a special on BBC that uncovered a child trafficking ring in Bulgaria in the summer 2007. The video is available through the link with the title. The reporters actually staged an illegal adoption with a man who was convicted as a trafficker and had already served his jail term, but was back in the business.


This trafficker brought forth four children that he was willing to sell.She mentioned that while filming, they had to take measures in order to ensure the safety of the victims and the protection of the victims' identity. They also worked with local police and NGOs to set up an emergency team in case something happened. The information and evidence were turned into the authorities, but to date, nothing has happened to the trafficker, and no one is sure what happened with the children. The reporters, including Sangita, however, have been threatened.

Indian actress Mita Vasisht talked about her role in the soon-to-be-released "Summer Moon," a film that presents the huge potential of child trafficking victims to recover and go on to lead full lives. The title comes from a 14th century Zen poem. The interesting thing is that real victims have a role in the movie so it is only to be used to sensitize and educate (as opposed to the big screen or public television). Mita said the motivation behind the movie is that there is a stigma attached to children forced into prostitution that they will never be able to reintegrate into society, and this stigma must be dealt with.

Ms. Vasisht stated that using the performing arts to help rehabilitate child victims is a powerful tool. Her activism in the fight against trafficking stretches even to the most basic levels. Mita personally answers calls from young people who have been told they're going to be in a major film. Using her connections as an actress, she crosschecks with these directors, casting officials and responds to the calls letting them know whether or not this offer has any real base. From this experience, she believes there should be an official hotline where young men and women can crosscheck offers to be in films in order to prevent the kind of deception that leads to exploitation.

Finally, the last notes that I have are for the presentation by Adi Erzoni, who was involved in the film "Amazing Grace," which tells the story of a man in the English Parliament who fought for the end of the slave trade in 1807. Ms. Erzoni says the movie invokes the power of story to incite change, which is an effective way of reaching out to people. There were 58 films about trafficking brought together for Vienna Forum, which were compiled into a booklet that was handed out. The booklet is seen here in the hands of Antonio Maria Costa of the UNODC. UN GIFT Asia has a short list of some of these films.


Additional comments during the open part of session that I thought were interesting include:
• How much film impacts people's and societal values,
• That support is broadly needed to keep the arts going, especially from public and press,
• The film industry should do more to prevent the glamorization of sexual violence.

UN Vienna Forum Part 4: Communities in Crisis

For the second session of the second day of the conference, I attended a forum on Communities in Crisis and how natural and man-made disasters create situations where victims become especially vulnerable to problems like trafficking. Among the panelists were Maria Ulfa Anshor of the organization Fatayat in Indonesia; Monica Peruffa of the Counter-trafficking Unit of the International Organization for Migration in Columbia (currently working out of the IOM in Tanzania); Kasirye Rogers of the Uganda Youth Development Organization; and Karolina Lindholm Senior Liaison Officer (Human Rights) of UNHCR.

Ms. Anshor was the first to speak. Her presentation was on the work of her organization with the people displaced by the 2004 tsunami. Her organization, Fatayat, is a faith-based Islamic organization in Indonesia, which works towards combating human trafficking. Ms. Anshor stated that the basis for her organization's work is that the text of Quran prohibits human trafficking because it goes against human rights and anti-slavery texts. Fatayat has advocated and was able to get a fatwa issued against trafficking by NU clerics stating that the position of Islamic law on trafficking is that such action is haram (forbidden) and that the prevention of human trafficking and protection of victims by religious figures and community is an obligation.

As far as the post-tsunami situation, she explained that abuse of women and children after 2005 tsunami was rampant, and the number of orphans rapidly increased. The risk of trafficking was high among internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled the devastation. Fatayat ran anti-trafficking programs among IDP camps in Aceh, an area notorious for conflict because of separatist groups, which was devastated by the tsunami. There were many reports of children taken during the chaos to be used for illegal adoption and trafficking under the guise of humanitarian work.

In collaboration with organizations like the IOM, Fatayat opened support centers for IDPs with trained counselors as well as a trafficking alert program that allowed community members, teachers, clerics, youths, local officials, and police officers to coordinate and report cases of trafficking or immediate potential trafficking.

Fatayat's overall recommendations to fight trafficking in Indonesia include the creation of alternative job opportunities to deal with high unemployment and underemployment rates, increase knowledge and awareness, and the creation of a regional and international anti-trafficking advocacy network.The next to speak was Monica Peruffo of the IOM on her research on the identification of vulnerable communities, especially those receiving high numbers of IDPs. The study that was conducted was in Medellin, which is the home of a high number of people displaced by conflict in Colombia with the purpose of finding out whether these populations were vulnerable to trafficking. The answer was yes, especially for purposes of sexual exploitation.

Work with the National University produced the following factors on why this was the case:
• IDPs had a high level of willingness to accept a certain level of risk in search for better life
• Their own life plans were focused only in the short term
• There existed a great deal of pressure from family to solve their economic problems
Results from study of IDP community in Medellin include:
• For children between the ages of 12 and 17, the major factor of vulnerability is perceived worthlessness. They believe that by joining the armed forces or rebels, they feel useful.
• For women 18 to 25 years in age, in addition to risks in such a dangerous environment, the patriarchal system leaves them vulnerable and the community tends to ignore their rights and needs.

From this, the IOM is working with NGOs and the government to provide program of legal framework for IDPs and trafficking victims. Their recommendations include:
• Victims should participate in legislative/response building process
• Information for basic rights and services should be out/available
• Awareness should be increased, especially in communities involved in long-term conflict as members tend to become unaware of any other way of life.Mr. Rogers' presentation focused on the vulnerability of families and children victimized by the conflict in Uganda. His details and experiences painted a very grim picture for the audience.

Crisis in war zone means:
• The scattering of families and a weakened support system for children,
• The destruction of family substance economy
• In Uganda, 2 million people have been displaced by conflict
• HIV/AIDS also has this scattering effect that makes people, especially children, vulnerable to trafficking,
• During the conflict, there has been mass abduction of children, mostly for the purpose of recruiting child soldiers. These abductions have been shown to be very well-organized.
• Until 2005, there were 112 longstanding IDP camps in Acholi. Afterwards, the government initiated a decongestion policy which resulted in the formation of 360 new sites
• 90% of the people in the Gulu, Kitgum, and Pader districts have been displaced
• 12,000 people have been killed in the violence

Mr. Rogers also spoke of the phenomenon of Night Commuter Children. Forty thousand Night Commuters travel at night from the camps to towns looking for work because there is a perception that there is a higher level of safety in town than there is in the camps. Once these Night Commuters are in town, the women and children are exploited and exposed to serious problems like trafficking and HIV/AIDS.





The U.S. State Department defines child soldiering as, "A unique and severe manifestation of trafficking in persons that involves the recruitment of children through force, fraud, or coercion to be exploited for their labor or to be abused as sex slaves in conflict areas." The figures Mr. Rogers presented on child soldiers are also devastating. In Uganda, 25,000 children have been abducted to become child soldiers. Aside from the abuse and trauma they face, the workload they are forced to do is extremely difficult and dangerous: heavy lifting, transporting weapons. Somewhere between 20-30% of these child soldiers are girls.Usuall, they are forced into marriage or given as rewards to soldiers. These child soldiers suffer from their abduction, mutilation, rape, death, torture, and sexual slavery. Aside from the beatings they face themselves, some child soldiers are forced to beat each other or civilians.

Mr. Rogers has been involved with the rehabilitation of child soldiers, and he identified some of the challenges of rehabilitating child soldiers:
• They suffer from severe psychological and emotional problems
• Some have an unwillingness to stick with rehabilitation, and some want to return to fighting. (For those of you who haven't read Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, this book can shed a lot of light on this issue.)

His only recommendations seemed were very basic, as if other steps hinged on them. He called for more good governance and capacity building in order to combat this problem. Finally, Karolina Lindholm of the UNHCR presented on the organization's involvement in protecting populations made vulnerable by conflict. The UNHCR's established mandate calls for the protection of refugees, IDPs, and stateless persons from falling victim to trafficking.

Factors that increase vulnerability of these populations to trafficking:
• Forced displacement
• Destroyed family and support structures
• Insecure environment in countries of asylum
• Lengthy asylum procedures, uncertain status, and lack of durable residence rights
• Lack of socio-economic support systems and lack of rights essential for attainment of self-reliance
• Insufficient humanitarian aid to compensate for lack of livelihoods
• Lack of educational opportunities
• Discrimination
• Gender inequality
• Temptation to pursue irregular onward movement

She also explained that unaccompanied and separated children, survivors of trafficking, survivors of sexual and gender-based violence or abuse, and single heads of households are especially vulnerable to trafficking or being re-trafficked.

Something I was not aware of and that makes these criminals all the more dispicable is that traffickers also use asylum procedures as a way of temporarily legalising the stay of victims while they prepare for their onward journey.

For returnees, the following factors make them vulnerable to trafficking:
• Return to a chaotic post-conflict environment,
• Lack of adequate/safe housing and property
• Lack of livelihood opportunities
• Lack of equal participation in peace and reconciliation processes (women are especially left out)

For Stateless persons, the vulnerability factors include:
• A lack of citizenship, which means a lack of a secure residency status and a lack of identification papers including birth registration and documents
• Lack of access to rights and services

The UNHCR works to reduce as many vulnerability factors among its target populations as possible by helping to obtain proper documentation; tracing and reuniting families; appointing guardians and advisers to unsupervised children; providing or finding alternative accommodation for unaccompanied children; conducting Best Interest Assessments and Best Interest Determination for children; and finally creating Standard Operating Procedures for the prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).