STTP ("Courage Without Borders") Series in KI Media - Sex Slavery: Human Rights Defender Juliana Dogbadzi

STTP ("Courage Without Borders") Series in KI Media - Sex Slavery
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50927100/STTP-Courage-Without-Borders-Series-in-KI-Media-Sex-Slavery

Be part of the Solution (NomiNetwork)

Slavery still exists. Despite modern advances and heightened awareness of human rights, slavery is a thriving industry today. According to the author and activist Kevin Bales, there are more humans in slavery today than at any time in history -- 27 million.

Nomi Network is a leading non-profit organization bridging the private, public, and non-profit sectors through enterprise and education to end human trafficking. This is official Nomi Network video.

Human Trafficking Survivors Train Cambodian Police and Government Officials

Cambodian human trafficking survivors will work with the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) and the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking (COMMIT) Task Force to eradicate human trafficking.

"The power of these public-private partnerships can be seen in the eyes of the young women who escape the human sex slave industry and become advocates for change."

(PRWEB) February 1, 2010 -- Cambodian human trafficking survivors will work with the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) and the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking (COMMIT) Task Force to eradicate human trafficking.

The survivors, part of the Somaly Mam Foundation’s Voices for Change (VFC) program, will train police and government officials on laws and issues related to sex trafficking and forced labor in Cambodia.

The training will focus on four Cambodian provinces -- Pailin, Battambang, Kampong Cham, and Takeo. The survivors will help participants better understand Cambodian anti-trafficking laws and the need for compliance with the Rule of Law. The training will also raise awareness of the underlying issues that lead to human trafficking and the specific needs of trafficking victims. The survivors will both lead the training sessions and help monitor and evaluate progress in the area after the training concludes.

A public service initiative will complement the training courses in each area. Two television and 24 radio talk shows are already committed to scheduling programs in 2010 that raise awareness of sexual exploitation and human rights issues in Cambodia. Voices for Change participants will help the stations create programs on topics such as trafficking for sexual and labor exploitation, child sex tourism, safe migration, new anti-trafficking laws, and victim assistance.

William Livermore, Executive Director of the Somaly Mam Foundation, says that programs like Voices for Change are perfect examples of Public-Private sector partnerships -- governments, corporations and NGO’s working together to address society's needs. “The Somaly Mam Foundation is proud to be able to partner with the United Nations, our corporate sponsor LexisNexis, and the Cambodian Government on such an important program,” Livermore said. “The power of these public-private partnerships can be seen in the eyes of the young women who escape the human sex slave industry and become advocates for change.”

About Human Trafficking:
Human trafficking, a multi-billion dollar industry, is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. With over one million women and children sold into sexual slavery each year, it is a global crisis. South East Asia is particularly hard hit by the effects of this crime. Sexual tourism and a lack of enforcement result in the victimization of thousands of young women and children every year.

About the Somaly Mam Foundation:
The Somaly Mam Foundation (www.somaly.org) is a non-profit public charity committed to ending modern-day slavery around the world.

Founded by sexual slavery survivor, Somaly Mam, the foundation supports rescue, shelter and rehabilitation programs across Southeast Asia. The Somaly Mam Foundation also runs global awareness and advocacy campaigns that shed light on sexual slavery and involve the public and governments in the fight to abolish slavery.

About the Voices for Change Program:
The Somaly Mam Foundation provides interested and qualified survivors from its rehabilitation program the opportunity to help eradicate human trafficking.

Voices for Change (VFC) is designed to give survivors an opportunity to help themselves by helping others, and to provide a platform for their voices to be heard in the courts and by the public. The organization's vision is that a new generation of leaders in the fight against human trafficking will arise from those who have experienced the pain of slavery.

Program participants join legal training seminars and courageously share their stories with magistrates, judges, and other members of the legal community to help them better understand sex slavery. Survivors who have undergone rescue, recovery, education, and reintegration also provide critical services to fellow victims of human trafficking. VFC members speak with new victims brought to the centers, complete intake forms, teach classes, share life skills training, and provide love and support.

About the LexisNexis Rule of Law Initiative:
LexisNexis combats human trafficking by applying our resources, people, solutions, legal expertise and direct financial support to combat human trafficking wherever it exists.

LexisNexis sponsors the Somaly Mam Foundation and Agir Pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire (AFESIP), or Acting for Women in Distressing Situations. LexisNexis also sponsors special events around the world for government and legal professionals in order to raise awareness of the existence of human trafficking.

The Freedom Awards: Celebrating Anti-Slavery Heroes

An angry brothel owner gouged out Pross Long's eye with a stick. Sina's tender support is helping her regain her self esteem.
"I was dead, and now I have a new life," Pross says.
"I can go to school. And my parents love me. I’m very happy,
very excited. I never expected that."
(Click here to read Sina's story)

October 13, 2009
Peggy Callahan
Huffington Post

How can something so disturbing, so dark, look so ordinary to the untrained eye? They could be young girls hanging out on a warm evening anywhere. But they're not -- they are sex slaves in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My guide knew this better than anyone. Until a few years ago, she was one of them.

Twelve years ago, Sina Vann was forced to have sex with 20 to 30 men a night. Tonight, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are presenting her with an award for her heroism in freeing others from sex slavery.

Incredibly, after escaping the hell of daily serial rape, Sina chose to go back and confront human traffickers like the one who enslaved her and fed his greed with her life. She told me, "If I didn't service customers I would be locked in the dungeon. They would tie my hands and tie my feet. And they would splash water over me, and they would shock me. When I was shocked, I felt like my spirit just left me."

Sina continues to go back to this underworld nearly every day, often risking her own life, to help women and girls out of sex slavery and into lives of self-sufficiency and purpose.

Sina was showing me around the brothels as we shot her story. The footage will be seen for the first time tonight at the 2009 Freedom Awards where Free the Slaves honors the Harriet Tubmans and Frederick Douglasses of today.

She is joined by Veero from Pakistan, who escaped slavery and went on to help bring 700 more slaves to freedom.

We're also honoring two young people through the Anne Templeton Zimmerman Fellowship, Alexis Weiss and Betsy Bramon, who are promising new leaders in the anti-slavery movement.

The awards honor freedom, not slavery, and we're ready to celebrate. Jason Mraz, Camilla Belle, Emmitt Smith, Isabel Allende, Ambassador Lou C. deBaca, Pam Omidyar and Maurice Greene will be there. You're invited. Watch it streaming live here at 7 p.m. PST.


Express Yourself LIVE

I dreamed up the Freedom Awards because in Free the Slaves we insist that the people who are closest to slavery should be the leaders and spokesmen and women of the anti-slavery movement. Who better to tell the world that this is real slavery? Who better to explain how people are held against their will, forced to work under threat of violence, and can't walk away? They know in their hearts that the end of slavery is possible for the 27 million people in bondage today. They know it is possible because they have lived liberation.

In our work in many countries we've watched as slaves band together and demand their rights. The slaveholder's thugs may beat them, but they stick it out until they get their freedom, especially when they know that people around the world care and are rooting for them.

But how can we help slavery survivors speak out? I hit the road as a film producer. I've been honored and humbled documenting the stories of slaves and former slaves in seven countries. Most jumped at the chance to talk, and we now have the largest modern slavery film library in the world that we make freely available to journalists wanting to tell the story.

What drives me is the firm belief, the deep knowing, that others should have the chance to witness these souls emerging into freedom, to watch their hearts and lives unfold and bloom. These slaves and former slaves have asked me to share, so share I will. It has become my life's work.

Every time a slave or survivor shares their story with me, they relive great pain. They insist on doing it anyway because they trust that we'll help tell their stories truthfully and without sensation. Somehow they have faith in the people they have never met, but who will hear their story. They pray that once they know, their listeners will act to keep others from slavery.

And now you know. What are you going to do?

Here's a place to start:

1. Forward this blog to your friends and family. Watch the show. Tonight is your chance to educate others about slavery, while also partying with some of the most interesting people on the planet. Don't forget your dancing shoes.
2. Learn the warning signs of slavery and human trafficking. Slavery happens right here in the US too. Know what to do if you suspect a case.
3. Tell your elected officials that ending slavery is a priority for you. Ask them to join the Human Trafficking Caucus. Stay tuned at http://www.theactiongroup.org/ for the latest ways for you to demand that the US government combat slavery.
4. Sign up to receive updates about the progress of the Freedom Awards winners and other work that is bringing people to freedom every day: www.freetheslaves.net.
5. Learn more and spread the word. Our web site has free, downloadable materials to share information with your school, faith community and community group. You can buy Free the Slaves' books at our online store. Also check out Siddharth Kara's Sex Trafficking and Ben Skinner's A Crime So Monstrous.
6. Donate $5 to Free The Slaves by texting "FREEDOM" to 85944. Don't forget to confirm your donation by replying "YES."
7. The Twitter community can show their support by using the #freetheslaves hashtag, and sending out the following tweet: "There are 27m slaves around the world today. Learn about Free The Slaves & what u can do 2 help #freetheslaves."

In the 1800's, some extremely fortunate people had the opportunity to work day to day with Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison, towards a change that would reverberate throughout all humanity. I get to work every day with people like Sina and Veero. Join me. It's a wild ride.

An unlikely hero

June 5, 2009
INSEAD

Somaly Mam is a driven, dynamic, inspiring and indefatigable leader. Those are some of the qualities that make her one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and a CNN Hero.

Somaly Mam is also an unlikely hero. She is a victim of human trafficking and was sold into a brothel in Cambodia at the age of 12.

Nearly a decade later, she escaped with the help of a French aid worker and in 1993 went to Paris. She returned to Cambodia two years later and founded “Agir Pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire” (AFESIP) or “Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances.”

Now at 39, she and her organisation have freed thousands of children and women, educated them and provided vocational training in Cambodia and other countries in Asia. Her foundation campaigns around the world against human trafficking. She spoke recently to INSEAD Knowledge, shortly before giving a talk at INSEAD’s Asia campus in Singapore.

“We explain (to the victims of human trafficking) how to stand up and fight. Stand up and show (them) that we have hope around the world,” says Mam.

Despite all she has been through, Mam radiates hope. Her biggest frustration is dealing with corruption. Human traffickers and organised crime groups have influence over the courts and the police, setting her work back. “They have money, so they can buy anything,” she says.

Mam’s own organisation works at the grass-roots level, helping the women and children who are the victims of human trafficking.

She believes global problems require the involvement of both local non-governmental and major international organisations, but often, she says, when they try to coordinate there seems to be more talk than action. Also, Mam’s timetable is different to that of many big NGOs. For her, each day is precious, but for large organisations a day or a year isn’t a very long time. “When you are in the brothel, one day is (too) long,” she says.

AFESIP needs money, but also volunteers and help in educating the rest of the world. “No woman, no child wants to be abused,” she says. “If you pass them in the red light district, don’t look down on them,” she says.

Beyond that, combating human trafficking will require educating men. “If we really want to end the problem we have to end the demand.”

The women and children helped by AFESIP get shelter, education and vocational training so they can escape the brothels for good. “I want them to be lawyers because, with what they’ve been through, they can’t be corrupted,” says Mam.

She praises the work Lexis-Nexis has done with her foundation because the company has given not only money, but also expertise in grant writing, technical support and the time of company professionals. One senior manager spends half his time helping her.

Mam and her foundation have very visible support from global celebrities, including Angelina Jolie and Susan Sarandon, and says their power and connections help raise awareness.

“It’s not just money that I need. I need them to come and see my world. This world is so big. I can save 5,000 girls but there are so many more.” And Mam says, the children targeted by the traffickers are getting younger.

Mam claims that dealing with donors and government officials is more nerve-wracking than death threats. “You have to know how to talk to them, but I’ve never been educated,” she says. “(It’s) hard work making the people understand me. That is my challenge.”

On the ground in Cambodia, Mam works to save girls one at a time. “My goal? Save the children and make them happy.”

Globalization's ugly side: sex slavery

06/04/2009
By John Boudreau
Mercury News (USA)

RACH GIA CITY, Vietnam — The offer came to families on the edge of desperation, living and working around the clock on garbage dumps whose sickening stench seeps into their clothes.

A motherly woman accompanied by a kindly gentleman arrived one day in early December, shortly before the New Year's Tet celebration when the poorest of the poor hope for a little extra cash for modest festivities. The two said they were looking for attractive young women to work in a Ho Chi Minh City cafe, and they were ready to give each family a $60 advance — a small fortune for people barely scraping by on a couple of dollars a day — or less.

Though at least two fathers objected, they were overruled by their wives and daughters, who were willing to take any risk to help their struggling clans. After examining each girl like livestock, the man chose five of the prettiest teenagers, and picked two more from a neighboring area. The teens quickly packed a few belongings and left.

Seventeen-year-old Truong Thi Nhi Linh was one of those chosen. It was, she says, the best chance to help her family — a chance to make considerably more money than she earns working 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. in the dump, sloshing around on rainy nights in knee-high sludge among swarms of other workers looking for bits of junk.

She reassured her parents, who opposed her leaving. "I said, 'It's OK. I'm just going to work." She added, "I want to help my family."

Hours later, one of the few parents with a cell phone received a panicked call from their daughter — they were not headed north to Ho Chi Minh City but to Cambodia, where the girls would be forced into the sex trade.

It is a misfortune that falls on many young women in Southeast Asia with the twin vulnerabilities of being pretty and poor. Like their parents, they often are illiterate and profoundly uninformed about the dangers of international sex trafficking and how strangers drug or lure unsuspecting teens into a life of satisfying the cravings of foreign men. Their innocence is prized: Some Asian men are willing to pay as much as $600 to have sex with a virgin because they believe it will restore their youth, give them good fortune or even cure them of AIDS.

Vietnam, with an abundance of beautiful young women living in desperate straits, is a magnet for human brokers — some of whom pay families to marry off their daughters to men in Korea, Taiwan and China; others are linked directly to human trafficking. Parents often ignore the dangers to their daughters in pursuit of a better life.

"The families are so poor," said Quach Thi Phan, chairwoman of the Women's Union of Rach Gia City in Kien Giang Province, which organizes anti-trafficking educational campaigns. "They just think about how to get money, how to find a job."

In the case of the Rach Gia girls, the police conducted a last-minute raid near the Cambodian border to rescue them after receiving calls from a community member and, eventually, at least one worried parent. The almost routine incident received no local news coverage, underscoring the virtual daily threat to the world's underclass.

"It's globalization in its ugliest form," said Diep Vuong, president of Pacific Links Foundation, a Milpitas-based non-profit started by Vietnamese-Americans. The organization works to prevent human trafficking by providing educational opportunities to at-risk Vietnamese girls and those who escape the sex trade.

"If you don't know how to read the public announcements or have enough money for newspapers and you barely have enough to eat, how can you understand there are risks?" she said. "It's so easy to look the other way. I meet many young women who say, 'I know it's risky, but I must try because we are so poor.' I tell them, 'Do you think you'll be able to sleep with 15 guys a day?' They are mostly terrified and surprised; 'What are you talking about?' they ask."

A half-million young women are trafficked each year around the world, according to the U.S. State Department. In Vietnam, the government recently reported that last year there were 6,684 victims of trafficking, with 2,579 returned to their homes. It also said there were 21,038 people reported missing who could have been sold into prostitution.

Vietnamese authorities in recent years have moved aggressively to stop sex trafficking. Police in the home province of the seven teens, for instance, have officers dedicated to cracking down on traffickers. Overall, though, neither the national nor local governments has enough resources to adequately fight the problem, experts say.

In 2004, NBC's "Dateline" news show broadcast a report about Cambodia's sex trade. To the horror of the Vietnamese-American community, the young prostitutes spoke Vietnamese. As a result of the broadcast, a number of Vietnamese in the Bay Area and elsewhere began creating programs to prevent such sexual exploitation, said Benjamin Lee, chairman of San Jose-based Aid to Children Without Parents.

They set up organizations to provide opportunities and hope for those at the bottom of the economic ladder and assistance to those who escape forced prostitution.

But they face a culture that makes their task difficult; in some cases, parents willingly sell their daughters to traffickers for thousands of dollars. "In the Eastern way of thinking, the children have to obey their parents: 'I have my body. I will do this for my family,'" said Nguyen Kim Thien, director of Ho Chi Minh City's Little Rose Warm Shelter for sexually abused girls.

This modern-day slavery takes root in regions isolated by abject poverty and proximity to Cambodia's thriving sex trade, such as parts of the Mekong Delta. One such place is on the outskirts of the bustling port city of Rach Gia in a majority ethnic Khmer community.

Though Vietnam boasts a literacy rate of more than 90 percent, many of the residents in this community have little or no education. They spend their days and nights picking through heaps of garbage for recyclable materials, such as plastic and metal. Children, barefoot and barely clothed, play amid the foul-smelling waste.

"This is a community in which we had to teach them how to use soap, how to use a bathroom — the basics of the basics," said Caroline Nguyen Ticarro-Parker, co-founder and executive director of the U.S.-based Catalyst Foundation, which has set up a school in the area and is working with Habitat for Humanity to construct homes for people in the community.

"Their day-to-day life is, 'How do I get food on the table today? Who is going to take care of my child today?'" she said. "Life has been so hard for them. They can't think of the future."

They live in huts with thatch roofs on or near a garbage dump swarming with flies and mosquitos. On a recent morning, 23-year-old Kim Thi Mau sorted dirty plastic bags. Last year, her 4-year-old son Lam drowned when he fell in a ditch filled with water while she and her husband worked nearby. She has two other sons, 20 months and 4 months.

"I hope there is a school that can take care of my children — some place not like this, dirty," said Kim who, like her 28-year-old husband, is illiterate.

So it can be difficult to resist strangers who arrive in a village promising good-paying jobs. Many of these families survive on $1 or $2 a day. In the case of the seven teens, the traffickers said they could pay each one about $120 a month working in a city cafe.

On that December morning, a respected family in Rach Gia's Vinh Quang ward sent out word about the employment offer. More than a dozen girls and their families gathered at a house.

"The man looked at our faces and said, 'This girl is OK. This one is OK,'" said Danh Thi Anh, a shy and soft-spoken 20-year-old, who was one of those picked and 19 at the time.

The selection process began at 11 a.m. By 1 p.m. the teens were on the road. Soon after they left, a Catalyst employee who tried to dissuade the teens from going told one member of the community to call the police.

Most of the young women had never been far from home by themselves. Within a few hours, one figured out they were not heading to Ho Chi Minh City, Truong and two other teens recalled.

The girls, using a cell phone of them had, began calling home, and eventually one of their mothers called the police.

Some of the teens began to cry. They had arrived in An Bien City, south of Rach Gia, and were to travel to the coast and board a fishing boat to Cambodia.

"We were very afraid," Truong said. "We did not know where we were."

But police, who had tracked other human traffickers taking the same route, found them at 10 p.m. They arrested the woman who was escorting them. The man got away.

Around 4 a.m. the next day, the teens were back in Rach Gia.

It is unclear what the community learned from the narrow escape. Catalyst Foundation representatives held community meetings afterwards. "We said, 'This is what will happen: Your child will be raped, and not by one person, but by many people,'" said the organization's co-founder Nguyen. But she can't be sure it won't happen again.

For those living in brutal conditions, Nguyen said, "It is a lot of money."

Seventeen-year-old Truong, who lives in a cramped thatched home elevated over water with nine family members, said she has not thought much about what would have happened to her had she ended up in Cambodia.

"I don't think about that," she said passively. "If it had happened, it would have been because it was my destiny. That's the life."