Modern Slavery News Round-up

Police say 24 children rescued from human trafficking scheme
PALM BAY — Two dozen Orlando children younger than 18 were crammed into the back of an older model Chevrolet work van, driven to Palm Bay on Friday and dropped off to spend more than 10 hours selling cheap items door-to-door, Palm Bay police said. Police arrested two of the men behind the operation, which authorities said provides a window into a growing trend of human trafficking: luring children and young adults with the promise of an honest wage, transporting them in often unsafe conditions and sending them off to conduct unsupervised sales in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

London's 'shadow city' of human trafficking
Andrew Boff, who leads the London Assembly's Conservative group, published his report arguing for more and better tackling of a largely hidden form of criminality and exploitation in all its forms. Boff believes that amnesties should be extended to victims who are irregular migrants in order to encourage more disclosure of what appears to be a largely invisible form of criminal abuse.

Two survivors recall human trafficking nightmare
After Barbara Amaya escaped from her family where she was sexually abused, she was trafficked in D.C., and beaten, raped, robbed, and forced to sell her body in New York. The nightmare started when she was 13, and lasted for 9 years. The other victim, Shandra Woworuntu, was trafficked when she was 25. After losing her job in Indonesia, Woworuntu responded to an employment promising a position in Chicago. After she arrived to the U.S., her passport was seized; then she was forced to perform sexual favors in brothels. Two months later, she escaped her kidnappers by jumping out a bathroom window.

Human Sex Trafficking of U.S. Minors
Reuters reported just last week, “Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labor, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude.” About 14,500 to 17,500 girls from other countries are smuggled into the U.S. and exploited in sexual slavery.

Modern Slavery News Round-Up

Young girls still at risk of being child brides in South Africa

In Limpopo, the system fails a young girl of thirteen who should be at school, but is sold off as a child bride to a 57-year-old sangoma, a traditional healer, by her struggling single mother of five to pay off supposed mounting bills. Child marriage continues to plague South Africa as in this case where the young child's rights are not protected by the courts who let off the sangoma once it was learned that the family had consented to the marriage.

China's child abduction by traffickers hard to curb leading officials and parents to social media
Despite authorities cracking down over the past two decades, child abduction is tough to eliminate. Officials claim the problem has become less prolific, but given the inconsistencies of data reporting, this is hard to substantiate. But Deng Fei, a Beijing-based journalist and prominent campaigner on behalf of victims and their families, believes the number of children being abducted is decreasing. Social media may have helped to reduce the crimes as in recent years, parents and activists have been using websites and microblogs to share information about cases and draw public attention to child abduction. Their efforts put pressure on the police, who have responded such as Chen Shiqu, the police official in charge of anti-trafficking, who has an account on Sina Weibo, one of China’s most popular microblog services. His account has 3.4m followers.

Syrian Refugee Women Exploited for Marriage
Lina Al Tiby, a Syrian activist living in Cairo, runs a support network for Syrian women refugees; helps them adapt to life in Egypt; and tries to persuade them not to allow poverty to push them into sex work or unwanted marriage. Arriving in Egypt with little more than the clothes they are wearing, some Syrian women see marriage as the only means of survival. "Egyptian men tell Syrian women they will marry them to help them and their families, but… can’t these men help Syrian women without marrying them?" said Al Tiby.

Eliminating human trafficking from the global business landscape
Businesses may unknowingly be associated with the crime of human trafficking when their suppliers, subcontractors, or partners supply materials or products that have been produced by trafficked persons. “In today’s globalized world, the risks of human trafficking in supply chains are significant throughout economic sectors and affect all States,” says Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons...Ezeilo recommends that all global businesses commit themselves to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and become signatories to the UN Global Compact. Ezeilo also urges businesses to exercise due diligence and conduct a risk assessment for their entire production chain in order to eliminate risks of human trafficking in their operations.


U.S. Agents Rescue Sex Slaves Through Data Fusion
Data-mining is proving a key tool for U.S. law enforcement to free sex slaves and to convict human traffickers involved in the $32 billion industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have rescued sex slaves by using software that identifies geographic locations by syncing financial transactions, phone records and other discordant data, ICE officials said at a Symposium to address immigration-related crime to technology companies; senior federal officials; and actress Mira Sorvino, the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to combat human trafficking. Angie Salazar, an ICE section chief who investigates human smuggling and trafficking, confirmed that ICE was able to find victims of trafficking by using data to look for trends. Palantir, a data company that assists many U.S. intelligence agencies, helps ICE with investigations by flagging individuals and organizations.

Modern Slavery News Round-Up

Child servants a blot on Haiti's abolitionist past
Imagine being a 12-year-old forced to wash dishes and clothes, clean the floors, cook, and other chores, beaten when you've done things wrong. That was the life of Dayanna Denois, and is also the life of many "restavek" children. The term "restavek" is a Haitian Creole word that comes from the French for "rester avec" or "to stay with;" It refers to the practice of parents giving away children they are too poor to look after and often happens to children from rural areas who are sent to stay with wealthier relatives and acquaintances in the hope that they will be given a better life and sent to school.

Human trafficking victims get more protection and services in federal court than in state court
Alex Campbell recruited foreign-born women who were looking to achieve the American dream in Chicago. He made them his victims, branding them with tattoos on their neck and back, declaring them as personal property, forcing them to work long hours with no pay and little food at the Day and Night Spa in labor and commercial sex. Campbell was sentenced to life imprisonment for sex trafficking, forced labor, harboring illegal aliens, confiscating passports and extortion. Four victims testified at the federal trial.

LA Teen Prostitutes Come From Foster Homes A Majority of the Time
The majority of young people arrested on prostitution charges in LA County come from the county's own foster care system, according to county officials. Pimps use child sex workers to recruit fellow foster care children who are currently living in shelters and foster homes. This is according to Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who introduced a motion to establish a task force to investigate sex trafficking in the foster care system. The LA County Board of Supervisors passed the motion two weeks ago. Antonovich's motion reports that the average age of entry  into prostitution is 12 years old and that the average life expectancy following entry is seven years, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.