Eliana and Carla, two Venezuelan sisters who came to Chile without legal documents through the border town of Colchane, complained about the lack of clear procedures to regularize their immigration status. The lack of papers causes problems when it comes to accessing healthcare and social security and to bringing children and siblings to Chile for family reunification. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

The Chilean government tightened controls on the northern border to curtail the influx of migrants, especially Venezuelans, along a 1,030-km stretch of border with Bolivia and Peru.

Some 600 military personnel joined the police force to reinforce control, initially for a period of three months.

Left-wing President Gabriel Boric, in office for a year, visited Colchane, a small town in the Andean highlands, on Mar. 15 to talk with the 1,800 local residents, most of whom are Aymara indigenous people."It was very hard. I wouldn't want to go through that ever again. The border is very dangerous, there is tremendous insecurity. You experience hunger, cold, thirst and many other things on the journey.” -- Carla

Undocumented migrants coming to this country enter mainly through that town, triggering social tension and growing expressions of xenophobia, although also drawing shows of solidarity and support from society.

“We have decided to take responsibility for the neglect and lack of equipment and have launched a plan to improve infrastructure and living conditions on the northern border,” said the president.

He said the area was receiving “absolutely uncontrolled migration” that brought the total number of immigrants to 1.4 million, equivalent to seven percent of the current population of this long, narrow Andean country.

The military will have adequate accommodation and will be equipped with thermal cameras and satellite communication systems to double the detection capacity and monitor uncontrolled areas.

The aim, said Boric, is “to contain and reduce irregular migration, but in particular to combat criminal organizations that take advantage of these flows and of people’s needs, to commit crimes such as human, drug and arms trafficking.”

Chile’s border with Peru is 169 kilometers, and with Bolivia 861.

Boric said it was important to “not open the door to hate speech,” just days after a 22-year-old Venezuelan who was proven to be drunk was arrested and charged for allegedly running over and killing a police officer, sparking a wave of xenophobia.

The president also announced that in the next six months he would present a “national migration policy in accordance with the new challenges facing the country,” which in recent decades has become a growing destination for migrants from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, and in the last decade for Haitians and especially Venezuelans.

Hundreds of Venezuelans gather early every day in front of the Venezuelan consulate in the municipality of Providencia, in Santiago, to apply for the documents that would allow them to move forward in the regularization of their migration status and that of their family, and make it possible for them to to legally bring in relatives. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since 2013 more than 7.13 million people have fled Venezuela, the majority to other Latin American countries, in one of the largest international displacement crises in the world.

Minister of the Interior and Public Security Carolina Tohá confirmed that there was a list of more than 20,000 reportedly undocumented migrants to be deported.

“When President Boric took office, there were already 20,000 people facing pending deportation orders,” she said.

Two draft laws are making their way through the legislature aimed at expediting deportations for immigrants convicted of drug crimes.

The National Migration Service informed IPS that “in 2022, 1,070 people were deported, which represented a 19 percent increase from the 913 deportations carried out in 2021.”

It also stated that “of the almost 500,000 pending applications (for regularization of immigration status), in the entire year of 2022 until January 2023, more than 365,000 have received a favorable response.”

“About 265,000 involved Temporary Residence applications, which will gradually become applications for Permanent Residence,” the National Migration Service added.

Erika Vargas and José González are Venezuelan immigrants who came to Chile legally and only have to regularize their children’s citizenship status to complete the process and gain peace of mind. They said they have only suffered sporadic misunderstandings because of the use of different idioms or vocabulary. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Marginal conditions for undocumented migrants

A survey of “campamentos”, the term given to slums in Chile, found 39,567 migrant families living in them, representing 34.7 percent of the total.

The number of migrants coming in through unauthorized border crossings has mushroomed from 2,905 in 2017, to 56,586 in 2021 and to 13,928 in the first quarter alone of 2022 – figures that do not take into account migrants under 18 years of age, according to the Catholic Jesuit Service for Migrants (SJM).

Macarena Rodriguez, chair of the SJM board of directors, told IPS that the influx of migrants through unauthorized border crossings “is not synonymous with people fleeing from justice,” but with people escaping poor life opportunities in other countries.

That is the case of two Venezuelan sisters, Eliana, 36, and Carla, 33, who have traumatic memories of their entry through Colchane, on separate trips, coming by land from Venezuela.

“I came with a ‘travel advisor’ (smuggler or coyote). In Bolivia it was complicated because of many groups that operate there. They kidnapped us in a border area. We were locked up for six or seven days waiting for that person to pay to get us released,” said Eliana.

She came to Chile in September 2021 after living in Peru for almost three years.

“We paid that person to take us to Santiago on a trip without complications. The normal journey is three to four days from Peru, but it took me 15,” she told IPS.

Carla traveled with her eight-year-old son Eduardo and arrived in Chile 15 months ago.

“It was very hard. I wouldn’t want to go through that ever again. The border is very dangerous, there is tremendous insecurity. You experience hunger, cold, thirst and many other things on the journey,” she said.

Immigrants of various nationalities go daily to the offices of the National Migration Service, on San Antonio street in Santiago, where they are attended if they have made an online appointment. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The sisters both work in Santiago and live in a small rented room in the municipality of Quinta Normal, on the west side of the Chilean capital, for which they pay 312 dollars a month.

“It was difficult to find a school. I thought it was like in Venezuela where you just register your child with his birth certificate. But here they ask for an identity document and educational records,” said Carla, who, like her sister, only wanted to be identified by her first name.

They have both adapted, but they complain about the lack of a protocol to regularize their situation.

“I would like to stay. I am in the process of bringing my daughter, who stayed in Venezuela, but it has become very difficult because I don’t have papers,” Carla said.

“I miss my family and the beaches. I am from the East, where it’s all coastline. There are beaches and islands there, it’s spectacular,” she added.

Eliana said “Chile is a country that opens its doors. There is a lot of work. We have never experienced hunger here, or gone without a place to sleep.”

She wants to bring another sister and her three children to Chile.

“I would like to make a life here, but it is difficult without papers,” she said. “With papers it would be easier to get health coverage, for example. I tried to legalize my status, but there are many hurdles. There is no set procedure with clear steps to follow.”

Another Venezuelan Erika Vargas, 42, originally from the western Andean state of Táchira in that country, lives with her husband and four children in Rancagua, 90 kilometers south of Santiago. She came to Chile five years ago.

“My husband came a year earlier and sent me a permit to travel with the children,” she told IPS.

“We’re doing fine…the children have documents and now we are in the process of getting permanent residency,” she explained while lining up at the Venezuelan consulate in the capital.

Her husband José González, 40, came from the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui thanks to a “democracy visa” created by former President Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022).

“I’m a civil engineer and I have a degree in public accounting, and I work in logistics in a mining company,” he said. “My wife came a year ago, she works in education. We all came legally.”

González lamented that he could not practice his profession because “to get my degrees recognized I would have to pay about six million pesos (7,500 dollars).”

What the experts say

The SJM’s Macarena Rodríguez said the presence of the military in the north “is aimed at preventing or reducing the influx of people with criminal records and the entry of weapons.”

“It’s a temporary measure that will be in place as long as the military is there, but it doesn’t address the root of the problem, which is providing care for these people,” she told IPS.

According to Rodríguez, the movement of troops is designed to attack the security crisis rather than forming part of a public policy regarding mobility.

“If you came in by means of an unauthorized crossing, which is the case with the majority, you have no way to regularize your situation… it doesn’t matter if you have a work contract or ties to Chile,” she said.

Located in front of the Venezuelan consulate, in the Santiago municipality of Providencia, Rincón Venezolano offers a popular menu of typical products from that country. Venezuelan food businesses and restaurants are making their way into the landscape of the capital and other Chilean cities. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Germán Campos-Herrera, an academic at the Diego Portales University, said the deployment of military troops forms part of “an institutional framework that guarantees that the use of firearms is restricted to cases where people’s lives are endangered.”
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He believes, however, that elements such as “a much stricter control of those who enter and leave and knowing who are the migrants who commit crimes and are in an irregular situation” are missing.

Rodríguez said “We had not experienced these levels of exodus in the region. None of the countries of the Southern Cone (of South America) have experienced this before.”

That is why Boric wants to talk with Bolivia and Venezuela and raised the issue at the 28th Ibero-American Summit, held in Santo Domingo on Mar. 24.

“There have been positive signals, from both Bolivian and Venezuelan authorities. They are willing to talk and it is an opportunity that we have to take advantage of,” said Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren.

“It was not a central theme of the Summit, but it was an opportunity to have contact with the authorities of both countries, express concern and make progress in a forum, towards contact and dialogue,” he added.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants await a solution to their lack of papers, and they praise positive examples, such as the Temporary Work Residence granted by Colombia.

“We could regularize ours status and contribute to the State,” commented Eliana, one of the Venezuelan sisters.

The National Migration Service told IPS that it is developing a project to connect visa applications with the National Employment Service.

“Every year there are unfilled vacancies available in agriculture, transportation or construction. With this project we not only seek to make the flow of migration more orderly but to regulate it and make our migration policy more economically rational,” the National Migration Service said.

Two of the six Russian women who were detained by the Argentine immigration authorities when they reached the country on Feb. 8 and 9 sleep in the Buenos Aires airport. A federal judge ruled that they were placed in a situation of vulnerability and ordered that they be allowed to enter the country. CREDIT: TV Capture

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES , Feb 16 2023 (IPS)

They began to arrive en masse in Argentina in the second half of 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are pregnant Russian women who land in the capital to give birth, with the hope of gaining an Argentine passport, given the fact that so many countries refuse to let in people with Russian passports today.

Authorities are investigating whether they are the victims of scams by organizations holding out false promises.

“Of the 985 deliveries we attended in 2022, 85 were to Russian women and 37 of them were in December. This trend continued in January and so far in February,” Liliana Voto, Head of the Maternal and Child Youth Department at the Fernández Hospital, one of the most renowned public health centers in the Argentine capital, located in the Palermo neighborhood, told IPS.“One thing are human trafficking networks, which make false promises in exchange for large sums of money, and another thing is the rights of women to enter Argentina and have their children here. They are victims.” -- Christian Rubilar

“Some come with an interpreter and others use a translation app on their phones. We do not ask them how they got to Argentina, but it is clear that there is an organization behind this,” added Voto.

In this South American country, public health centers treat patients free of charge, whether or not they have Argentine documents.

The issue exploded into the headlines on Feb. 8-9, when the immigration authorities detained six pregnant Russian women who had just landed at the Ezeiza international airport, on charges of not actually being tourists as they claimed.

The six women filed for habeas corpus and on Feb. 10 a federal judge ordered that they be allowed to enter the country, after some of them spent more than 48 hours on airport seats.

The ruling handed down by Judge Luis Armella stated that the authorities’ decision not to let them into the country put the women in a vulnerable situation that affected their rights “to proper medical care, food, hygiene and rest,” and said he was allowing them into the country to also protect the rights of their unborn children.

In addition, the judge ordered a criminal investigation into whether there is an organization behind the influx of pregnant Russian women that is scamming them or has committed other crimes. The results of the investigation are sealed.

On Feb. 10, shortly after the court ruling was handed down, 33 Russian women who were between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant arrived in Buenos Aires on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa. (There are no direct flights between Russia and Argentina.)

As reported by the national director of the migration service, Florencia Carignano, in 2022, 10,500 people of Russian nationality entered Argentina and 5,819 of them were pregnant women.

The immigration authorities carried out an investigation in which it interviewed 350 pregnant Russian women in Argentina. They discovered that there is an organization that “offers them, in exchange for a large sum of money, a ‘birth tourism’ package, and gaining an Argentine passport is the main reason for the trip,” Carignano tweeted.

The Fernández Hospital, in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, is one of the most prestigious public health centers in Argentina. In December 2022, 37 Russian women gave birth there. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“Argentina’s history and legislation embrace immigrants who choose to live in this country in search of a better future. This does not mean we endorse mafia organizations that profit by offering scams to obtain our passport, to people who do not want to live here,” she added.

Under Argentine law, foreign nationals who have a child born in Argentina are immediately given permanent residency status, in a process that takes a few months. To obtain citizenship, they have to prove two years of uninterrupted residence here, in a federal court.

“Becoming a citizen is a difficult process that takes many years. If the organizations promise Russian women a passport in a few months, they are lying or there is corruption behind this,” Lourdes Rivadeneyra, head of the Migrant and Refugee Program at the National Institute against Discrimination (INADI), told IPS.

Rights in Argentina

“One thing are human trafficking networks, which make false promises in exchange for large sums of money, and another thing is the rights of women to enter Argentina and have their children here. They are victims,” Christian Rubilar, a lawyer for three of the six women who were held in the Ezeiza airport, told IPS.

Rubilar pointed out that the constitution guarantees essential rights “for all people in the world who want to live in Argentina.” He added that the country’s laws do not mention “false tourists”, and that therefore the immigration office exceeded its authority by denying them access to the country.

Argentina received different waves of European migration from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. This created a culture of respect for the rights of immigrants among citizens and in the country’s legislation, which see Argentina as a land that welcomes foreigners in trouble, such as Venezuelans who have arrived in large numbers in the past few years.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia, in what has been described by some as a third historic exodus, after the ones that followed the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Although there are no official figures, recently the English newspaper The Guardian estimated that between 500,000 and one million people have left Russia since the beginning of the war. Many leave out of fear of being sent to the front lines, or because they are in conflict with the government or due to the consequences of international economic sanctions on the country.

The RuArgentina website offers a package of services including a hospital birth for pregnant woman in Buenos Aires and the promise of obtaining Argentine passports for the parents, which gives them entrance without a visa to most countries around the world. CREDIT: Online ad

As can be quickly verified in an Internet search, there are organizations operating in Argentina that promise Russian women who give birth in this country that they and their husbands can quickly obtain citizenship here.

“Give birth in Argentina. We help you move to Argentina, obtain permanent residence and a passport, which gives you visa-free entry to 170 countries around the world,” announces the RuArgentina website, which offers a package that includes accommodation in Buenos Aires, medical assistance, the help of a translator and aid in applying for documents, among other services for pregnant women.

The founder of RuArgentina is a Russian living in Argentina, Kirill Makoveev, who said in an interview on TV that “there are a variety of reasons why our clients come to Argentina: some want a passport because the Russian passport is toxic now. So we explain that the constitution and immigration laws here allow you to obtain a passport without breaking the law.”

The Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires did not respond to IPS’s request for comments, but the pregnant women have not been defended by the Russian community in Argentina.

“They are not coming to Argentina as immigrants, to work and seek a better future, as many Russians did in different waves of immigration. They are coming in order to use Argentina as a springboard to go to Western European countries or the United States,” Silvana Yarmolyuk, director of the Coordinating Council of Organizations of Russian Compatriots in Argentina, which brings together 23 community associations from all over the country, told IPS. .

Yarmolyuk, who was born in Argentina and is the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, said that the Russians who are coming to Argentina now are people of certain means who are taking advantage of Argentina’s flexible immigration policies.

“Just the ticket from Russia to Argentina costs about 3,000 dollars,” she said. “The danger is that this exacerbates the spread of Russophobia, which hurts all of us.”

Some Afghan women put their lives at risk by migrating to Europe. Along the way, and even at the destinations, they face sexual violence at the hands of traffickers, but they often take the risk so that they can live free from the constraints of the Taliban. This photo shows a woman from the Hazara minority in Bamiyan. She used to be a singer and appeared on local TV but is now forced to stay at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
KABUL & ATHENS, Dec 22 2022 (IPS)

Maliha looks confident in a café in Athens as she tells the story of her journey from Afghanistan to Europe. But as she starts recounting how a smuggler assaulted her in Turkey two years ago, she pauses, looking the other way and fiddling with her loose hair.

It makes her anxious when she remembers it. She was traveling alone and soon realized she was the only woman on board a bus to the border with Greece.

“[The smuggler] told me to get off. He wanted me to himself.” With unusual strength, the young woman managed to escape as the man was trying to rape her. Still shaken, she tried to report the crime to the local police, but she felt they were more concerned about her status as an illegal migrant than the attempted rape. “Luckily, I had a contact on Facebook [who is] a cousin who I knew lived in Turkey but whom I never met.” He happened to live near that police station, and he convinced the officials to let her go.

Afghan refugees picnic in a park in Athens. Their journeys to Europe are often dangerous. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Now Maliha lives in Athens as a “free woman” – a fact that she remarks upon while wearing leggings and no head covering.

The violence experienced by Mahila is not an isolated case. An investigation into the journey of Afghan women from their home country to Europe carried out in Afghanistan, Turkey and Greece has revealed a pattern of systematic violence throughout, their vulnerability heightened by lack of documents and money. Women, some traveling alone or only with their children, pay to get to Europe only to become victims of trafficking and sex slaves.

According to 31-year-old Aila, an Afghan refugee and former Médecins sans Frontières worker in refugee camps in Athens, “some 90% of women suffer a form of violence during the journey.”

“When your life is in the hands of smugglers,” continues Aila, “it’s not up to you to decide whom to stay with, what to do, where to go: it’s the smuggler who decides. Even if you are with your family or the members of your family, he can still threaten you with a weapon, and if he wants to separate you from them, he’ll do it”.

Afghans are now the second largest group of asylum seekers in the EU after Ukrainians, but the flow of asylum seekers started well before the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 77,000 women and girls were registered at arrival by sea and by land in Europe between 2018 and 2020, making up 20 percent of total arrivals. Women make up an increasing percentage of asylum requests globally, all facing gender-based risks.

The reasons behind Afghans’ search for a safe place run deep in a country torn by decades of war. Social and financial restrictions within a deeply patriarchal society and the hope for a better life abroad had already pushed many to leave the country even before the arrival of the Taliban.

However, the challenges of the journey can be harrowing. “I remember traveling with a 10-year-old and her grandmother,” Aila recalls. “During the journey, her grandmother died, and she was handed over to the trafficker,” says Aila, describing one of the most traumatic episodes she witnessed.

“Was she raped? Of course. For them, she was a woman”.

Women escaping from the increasingly restrictive Taliban regime in Afghanistan find their journeys to freedom are fraught with dangers. This week the Taliban banned women from universities. They are increasingly forced to remain at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

The risks are so stacked against women that word of mouth has led to the development of ‘survival’ techniques, such as dressing up as a man. Aila says she put on a similar short jacket, jeans, and sneakers to that of other boys. “I kept my hair hidden under my cap. And when the trafficker gave me his hand to get on the boat, he said, “Hey, boy.” I didn’t answer. “Never talk to traffickers,” is the second ‘tip’ dispensed by Aila.

Acceptance rates of Afghan asylum seekers are now high, especially in countries such as Spain and Italy, with 100% and 95% in 2021, respectively, and 80% in Greece, the first EU frontier for the many who come after spending months or years in Turkey or Iran.

Yet getting adequate assistance after suffering abuse, rape and forced prostitution is a different story. The violence suffered often doesn’t get denounced by the police due to cultural or linguistic barriers and the stigma surrounding rape or forced prostitution. Lack of adequate protection in Europe is also a reason, so NGOs set up by fellow Afghans try to step in.

Months of interviews with Afghan asylum seekers in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Europe expose the extent of the danger for women who embark on a journey organized by smugglers. Direct witnesses’ accounts and NGO transcripts, seen exclusively by this reporter, reveal a pattern of how women – and in particular Afghans belonging to ethnic minorities – fall into a ‘trap’ of violence.

Freshta spent years between Iran and Turkey with a sick brother before eventually succeeding in reaching a refugee camp in Greece and then a place in Athens hosted by a friend. However, her attempts to find a job and become independent soon turned into a prolonged series of tortured experiences. The possibility of asking for help was radically reduced by her illegal status and lack of documents.

“One day, I was in a café with my friend, and she introduced me to this man. We only knew that he was a trafficker of Iraqi nationality.” He, himself a refugee, knew very well how vulnerable women like Freshta are. “He started following me and kept saying that I should go with him.” Her constant rejections didn’t work. On the contrary, he threatened to kill her brother, who was still in the refugee camp – a sign of the long reach of influence traffickers can call upon.

One day, despite attempts to protect herself, hiding for days at a friend’s house, the man managed to kidnap her and take her to her apartment. He then hit her on the head, threatening her with a knife pointed at her stomach and forcing her to get into his car. At that moment, Freshta became a slave, first suffering violent rape, with beatings that made her pass out because she also suffered from asthma.

“When I woke up, he wasn’t there. I was full of pain and didn’t know what to do; I was in shock. I went to the bathroom, got washed, dressed, and cried.”

Upon his return, the trafficker told her that she now belonged to him. If she went out and told anyone what had happened, then he would kill her.

Freshta managed to hide at her friend’s again, but again the man managed to take her by force, beating her and locking her up at home for weeks, repeatedly raping her. Freshta got pregnant. “He told me I couldn’t do anything because he had become a Greek citizen, and I was nothing; I didn’t have any document.”

It took many weeks and the help of an association to allow her to report the incident. She had an abortion. The woman has since been moved by the Greek government to a secure facility in an undisclosed location.

To add to Freshta’s tragic testimony is the fact that, as the operator of an NGO in Athens explains, “There are many cases of sexual slavery like this, which are not reported by the victims because they are afraid of being stigmatized and of their lack of documents.” The perpetrators of the violence can be fellow nationals, generally belonging to a different ethnic group and, to a lesser extent, other nationalities.

The lack of support is accentuated by a form of class distinction within the refugee community and by the way resources are thus distributed, according to some of the Afghan women interviewed in Athens. “The refugees who arrived in Europe through the evacuation program [in Kabul] consider themselves ‘different’ from those who arrived here on foot, with the traffickers. And they are also treated differently by the authorities,” says Aila.

While for men, the lack of documents, money, and a family network leads more easily to labor exploitation, women can often fall victim to sexual exploitation. Some women are “passed from trafficker to trafficker,” says Aila, while the local association also reports cases of forced prostitution just outside the camps. But even in the aftermath of a violent attack, NGOs are worried about the short time women are allowed to spend in safe structures, as well as the limited space available there. Resources do not meet the seriousness and extent of the problem.

“When they asked me if I wanted to report the man [who kept me as a slave], I said yes, but only if I had a safe place to stay first,” says Freshta. “I was so desperate that I left behind everything I had.”

This project on trafficking has been developed with the financial support of Journalismfund.eu

https://www.journalismfund.eu/

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Children working and travelling on India’s vast rail network need to be educated about the perils of trafficking. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Karnataka, India, Dec 2 2022 (IPS)

Deeepti Rani (13) lives with her mother in a dilapidated dwelling near a railway track in India’s southern state of Karnataka. The mother-daughter duo sells paperbacks on trains for a living.

Four months ago, a man in his mid-fifties visited them. Masquerading as a businessman hailing from India’s capital, Delhi, he first expressed dismay over the family’s dismal conditions. Then he offered help.  The man asked Deepti if she wanted to accompany him to Delhi, where he could find her a decent job as a sales clerk or a housemaid. He also told Deepti’s mother that if allowed to go to Delhi, her daughter would be able to earn no less than 15 to 20 000 rupees a month—about 200-300 USD.

The money, Deepti’s mother, reasoned, would be enough to lift the family out of abject poverty and deprivation, enough to plan Deepti’s wedding and bid farewell to the arduous job of selling paperbacks on moving trains.

On the scheduled day, when the man was about to take Deepti, a labourer whose family lives adjacent to her hut informed the police about the possible case of trafficking. The labourer had become suspicious after observing the agent’s frequent visits to the mother-daughter.

When police reached the spot and detained the agent, it was discovered during questioning that he was planning to sell the little girl to a brothel in Delhi.

Ramesh, a 14-year-old boy from the same state, shared a similar predicament. He narrates how a man, probably in his late 40s, offered his parents a handsome sum of money so that he could be adopted and taken good care of.

“My parents, who work as labourers, readily agreed. I was set to go with a man – who we had met a few days before. I was told that I would get a good education, a good life, and loving parents. I wondered how an unknown man could offer us such things at such a fast pace. I told my parents that I smelled something suspicious,” Ramesh recalls.

The next day, as the man arrived to take the boy, the locals, including Ramesh’s parents, questioned him.  “We called the government helpline number, and the team arrived after some 20 minutes. When interrogated, the man spilt the beans. He was about to sell the boy in some Middle East country and get a huge sum for himself. We could have lost our child forever,” says Ramesh’s father.

According to government data, every eight minutes, a child vanishes in India.

As many as 11,000 of the 44,000 youngsters reported missing each year are still missing. In many cases, children and their low-income parents who are promised “greener pastures” in urban houses of the wealthy wind up being grossly underpaid, mistreated, and occasionally sexually molested.

Human trafficking is forbidden in India as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is nonetheless an organised crime. Human trafficking is a covert crime that is typically not reported to the police, and experts believe that it requires significant policy changes to stop it and help victims recover.

Activists and members associated with the Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society (BDSSS) run various child protection programs for children from poor backgrounds.

One such program is ‘Childline 1098 Collab’. A dedicated helpline has been established to help out children in need. The helpline number is widely circulated across the city so that if anyone comes across any violation of child rights, they can dial the number.

A rescue team will be dispatched and provide immediate help to the victim.

Fr Peter Asheervadappa, the director of a social service called Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society, provides emergency relief and rescue services for children at high risk. Children and other citizens can dial toll-free 1098, and the team reaches within 60 minutes to rescue the children.

“The cases handled are of varied nature: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, child labour, marriages, and any other abuse that affects children’s well-being,” Asheervadappa told IPS.

He adds that India’s railway network, one of the largest in the world, is made up of 7,321 stations, 123,542 kilometres of track, and 9,143 daily trains, carrying over 23 million people.

“The vast network, crucial to the country’s survival, is frequently used for trafficking children. For this reason, our organisation, and others like it, have argued that key train stops require specialised programs and attention. Such transit hubs serve as important outreach locations for finding and helping children when they are most in need,” he said.

But not only have the trafficking cases emerged at these locations. There are child marriages, too, that concern the activists.

Rashmi, a 13-year-old, was nearly sold to a middle-aged businessman from a nearby city.  In return, the wealthy man would take good care of the poverty-stricken family and attend to their daily needs. All they had to do was to give them their daughter.  They agreed. “Everyone wants a good life, but that doesn’t mean you barter your child’s life for that greed. It is immoral, unethical, and illegal,” says an activist Abhinav Prasad* associated with the Child Protection Program.

He says many people in India are on the lookout for child brides. They often galvanise their efforts in slums and areas where poor people live. It is there that they find people in need, and they take advantage of their desperation for money.

While Rashmi was about to tie the nuptial knot with a man almost four times her age (50), some neighbours called the child rescue group and informed them. The team rushed to the spot and called in the police to stop the ceremony from happening.

“Child marriages are rampant in India, but we must do our bit. It is by virtue of these small efforts that we can stop the menace from spreading its dreadful wings and consuming our children,” said Prasad.

*Not his real name.
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Venezuelan migrants stranded in Guatemala after their journey to Mexico was cut short by new restrictions issued by the United States. Most of them, unable to afford to return to their home country, await possible humanitarian return flights. CREDIT: IMG

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

Thousands of Venezuelans who have crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, or who have made the perilous journey through Central America and Mexico to reach the United States, have found themselves stranded in countries that do not want them, unable to continue their journey or to afford to return to their country.

Unexpectedly, on Oct. 12, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer accept undocumented Venezuelans who crossed its southern border, would deport them to Mexico and, in exchange, would offer up to 24,000 annual quotas, for two years, for Venezuelan immigrants to enter the country by air and under a new set of requirements.

“We were already in the United States when President Joe Biden gave the order, but they put us in a van and sent us back to Mexico. It’s not fair, on the 12th we had already crossed into the country,” a young man who identified himself as Antonio, among the first to be sent back to the border city of Tijuana, told reporters in tears.

He was one of approximately 150,000 Venezuelans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year to join the 545,000 already in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to U.S. authorities.

Raul was in a group that took a week to cross the jungle and rivers in the Darien Gap, bushwhacking in the rain and through the mud, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the threat of vermin and assailants. When he arrived at the indigenous village of Lajas Blancas in eastern Panama, he heard about the new U.S. regulation that rendered his dangerous journey useless.

There he told Venezuelan opposition politician Tomás Guanipa, who visited the village in October, that “the journey is too hard, I saw people die, someone I could not save because a river swept him away, and it was not worth it. Now what I have to do is return, alive, to my country.”

In Panama, as in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and of course Mexico, there are now thousands of Venezuelans stranded, some still trying to reach and cross the U.S. border, others trying to get the funds they need to return home.

They fill the shelters that are already overburdened and with few resources to care for them. Sometimes they sleep on the streets, or are seen walking and begging for food or a little money, abruptly cut off from the dream of going to live and work legally in the United States.

That aim was fueled by the fact that the United States made the possibility of granting asylum to Venezuelans more flexible, as part of its opposition to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which U.S. authorities consider illegitimate.

In addition, it established a protection status that temporarily allowed Venezuelans who reached the U.S. to stay and work.

Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic and political crisis over the last decade which, together with the impoverishment of the population, has produced the largest exodus in the history of the hemisphere: according to United Nations agencies, 7.1 million people have left the country – a quarter of the population.

Venezuelan migrants walk in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez between the Rio Grande and the wall that separates them from the United States, a border that they will no longer be able to cross on foot but only by air and with express permission from Washington. CREDIT: Rey R. Jáuregui/Pie de Página

Caught up in the elections

The flood of Venezuelan immigrants pouring across the southern border coincided with the tough campaign for the mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress in November, which could result in the control of both chambers by the Republican Party, strongly opposed to Democratic President Biden.

Republican governors and candidates from the south, strongly opposed to the government’s immigration policy and flexibility towards Venezuelans, decided to send busloads and even a plane full of Venezuelan asylum seekers to northern localities governed by Democratic authorities.

Thus, through misleading promises, hundreds of Venezuelans were bussed or flown and abandoned out in the open in New York, Washington, D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard, an island where millionaires spend their summers in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the use of migrants as political spoils or as a weapon in the election campaign.

Against this backdrop, the Biden administration changed its policy towards Venezuelans, closing the country’s doors to them at the southern border, reactivating Title 42, a pandemic public health order that allows for the immediate expulsion of people for health reasons, and reached an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to that country.

The 24,000 annual quotas provided as a consolation, for migrants who have sponsors responsible for their support in the United States, plus requirements such as not attempting illegal border crossings or not having refugee status in another country, is almost equivalent to the monthly volume of Venezuelans who tried to enter the U.S. this year.

A family of migrants reaches the end of their journey through the dangerous Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, on their long journey to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. But a new U.S. immigration measure prohibits access to the U.S. for Venezuelans. CREDIT: Nicola Rosso/UNHCR

What happens now?

In the immediate future, those who were on their way will be left in limbo and will now have to return to their country, where many sold everything – from their clothes to their homes – to pay for their perilous journey.

Hundreds of Venezuelans have begun to arrive in Caracas on flights that they themselves have paid for from Panama, while in Mexico and other countries they await the possibility of free air travel, of a humanitarian nature, because thousands of migrants have been left destitute.

There are entire families who were already living as immigrants in other countries, such as Chile, Ecuador or Peru – where there are one million Venezuelans in Lima for example – but decided to leave due to a hostile environment or the difficulties in keeping jobs or finding decent housing, in a generalized climate of inflation in the region.

This is the case told to journalists by Héctor, who with his wife, mother-in-law and three children invested almost 10,000 dollars in tickets from Chile to the Colombian island of San Andrés, in the Caribbean, from there by boat to Nicaragua, and by land until they were taken by surprise by the U.S. government’s announcement, when they reached Guatemala.

Now, in contact with relatives in the United States, he is considering the possibility of returning to the country he left three years ago for Chile, or trying to continue on, while waiting for another option to enter the U.S.

The United States has reported that crossings or attempts to cross its border by undocumented migrants have decreased significantly since Oct. 12.

Among the justifications for its action at the time, Washington said it sought to combat human trafficking and other crimes associated with irregular migration, and to discourage dangerous border crossings in the Darien Gap.

According to Panamanian government data, between January and Oct. 15 of this year, 184,433 undocumented migrants reached Panama from the Darien jungle, 133,597 of whom were Venezuelans.

After his return to the country on Oct. 25, Guanipa the politician told IPS that at least 70 percent of the migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in the last 12 months were Venezuelans, along with other Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean or African nations.

And, after collecting personal accounts of the death-defying crossing, he urged his fellow Venezuelans to “for no reason risk their lives” on this inhospitable stretch that is the gateway from South America to Central America.

At every Latin American border, migration rules are becoming more restrictive and Venezuelans wait patiently to be allowed access, often to try to reach the farthest destinations in the hemisphere, such as Chile or the United States. CREDIT: Gema Cortés/IOM

The Venezuelan government blames the massive exodus and the dangers faced in the Darien Gap on its political and media confrontation with the United States, while claiming that the numbers of reported migrants are wildly inflated and that, on the contrary, more than 360,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country since 2018.

Heads of United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations believe that given the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the flow of migrants will continue, and they therefore call on host countries to establish rules and mechanisms to facilitate the integration of the migrants into their communities.

While the United States has slammed the door shut on Venezuelan migrants, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and some Central American nations, new rules are also being prepared to modify the policy of extending a helping hand to Venezuelans.

For example, Ecuador overhauled the Human Mobility Law to increase the grounds for deportation, such as “representing a threat to security”, and Colombia – which has received the largest number of Venezuelans – eliminated the office for the attention and socioeconomic integration of the migrant population.

Panama will require visas for those deported from Central America or Mexico, Peru is working to change regulations for the migrant population, and the government of Chile, which in the past has expelled hundreds of migrants on flights, announced that it will take measures to prevent unwanted immigration.

Of the 7.1 million Venezuelans registered as of September as migrants by U.N. agencies, the vast majority of them having left the country since 2013, almost six million were in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Entire families have not only sought to reach the United States or Europe, but have traveled thousands of kilometers, in journeys they could never have dreamed of, with stretches by bus but often on foot, through clandestine jungle passes or cold mountains, to reach Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina or Chile.

Others tried their luck in hostile neighboring Caribbean islands and dozens lost their lives when the overcrowded boats in which they were trying to reach safe shores were shipwrecked.

Faced with the explosive phenomenon, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established a platform for programs to help migrants in the region and host communities, which is coordinated by a former Guatemalan vice-president, Eduardo Stein.

Of their budget for 2022, based on pledges from donor countries and institutions, for 1.7 billion dollars, they have only received 300 million dollars, in another sign that Venezuelan migrants have ceased to play a leading role on the international stage.

Anti-trafficking street play being stages in a tea house. Trafficking survivors often find it difficult to access compensation in India, and traffickers often escape justice. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
Pune, Oct 19 2022 (IPS)

Fourteen-year-old Priti Pyne was returning from school in Basra village in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, when she and a friend came across a cold-drink seller selling an attractive-looking drink. The moment the girls sipped it, however, they felt dizzy. When they woke up, it was on a Delhi-bound train at Sealdah station in Kolkata. With the help of other passengers, the girls managed to get off the train.

“We had been briefed in school about how people traffic youngsters, and so we got in touch with the stationmaster and rang up the non-governmental organisation (NGO) – Goran Bose Gram Vikas Kendra – working in our village. The NGO office-bearers immediately came over and arranged for our return home.” However, her father, who works as a labourer in a bag factory, and her homemaker mother did not want to lodge an FIR (case), and she has not been able to access the compensation as a survivor of trafficking.

“I was a minor then; my parents took all decisions on my behalf. Now that I am an adult, it is too late to pursue it,” she laments.

Shelly Shome and Molina Guin from Bagda, both from North 24 Parganas, got entrapped by love affairs and ended up trafficked. Shelly’s trafficker took her to Malda and locked her up in an “intermediate” lodging for a week on the way to a brothel, where police rescued her.

Molina escaped on her own from a brothel in Nagpur (Maharashtra), where she had been sold, but she had spent six months there.

“Since I did not know any Hindi, it was difficult. Ultimately, some Bengali boys who lived nearby helped me return home.” Although FIRs were lodged in both cases, neither Shelly nor Molina could access the compensation due to them. Worse, the traffickers are yet to be caught.

Sunil Lahiri’s family were unable to repay a loan. So, his parents, uncle and siblings, who originally lived in Champa, had to seek employment in a brick kiln at Rohtak in Haryana. They were roped in by a labour contractor with big promises of good accommodation, pay and food. But once there, the family realised they had been trafficked, along with 20 other desperate neighbours in a similar situation. An adolescent then, Sunil had to work 12-14 hours a day and survive on meagre rations. No accommodation was provided, and they lived in a thatched hovel for shelter. Any attempt to escape was met with relentless torture and assault. After a couple of months, Sunil and his uncle made good their escape under cover of darkness to the nearest police station, from where they made their way home. However, in the absence of an appropriate FIR, he has not been able to claim the victim’s compensation.

Lalita lives in Erode in Tamil Nadu and found herself trafficked for labour to a garment factory in Coimbatore, in the same state, when she was around 15. But once there, she found herself trapped in a hostile environment with many others and had to labour for 14-16 hours a day without a break. Housed in dirty dormitories, the girls were administered tablets to stop their periods lest they demand time off, resulting in many medical problems. She ultimately excused herself one day and sneaked home by claiming the death of a relative. Since she lodged no FIR, Janaki has been deprived of compensation too.

Human Trafficking

Trafficking in India is generally for sexual exploitation and cheap labour.

The common thread that connects all victims of trafficking is poverty and lack of awareness. Poverty and unemployment drive people to migrate in search of work. Traffickers’ agents cash in on the plight of these individuals and whisk them away to be exploited for sex or cheap labour. This is often done across inter-state borders so escaping back home is difficult.

Victims of both kinds of trafficking are entitled to compensation, but different laws deal with individual crimes. While victims trafficked for sexual exploitation are primarily dealt with under the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act of 1956, different laws deal with those trafficked for labour since they may be subject to bonded labour. In India, bonded labour had long been prohibited by the Constitution, but laws specific to it, such as the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, the Contract Labour ( Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, and the Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 are comparatively recent.

Victim Compensation Laws

In India, compensation was initially meant only for victims of motor accidents. It was only in 2008 that the Supreme Court modified Section 357 A of the Criminal Procedure Code ( CrPC) to compensate victims of criminal offences.

While Sec 357A (1) provides for compensation to be given to either the victim or their legal heirs, Sec 357A (2) and 357 A (3) deal with the granting of compensation and its quantum by the District legal services authority (DLSA), and the District or Trial courts’ and Sec 357A (4) deals with the right to compensation for damages suffered by the victim before identification of the culprit and the starting of court proceedings.

Following these directions of the Supreme Court, all Indian states came up with schemes to compensate victims of crimes such as acid attacks, rape, and the like.

In 2010, as per the recommendations of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the government provided for the setting up of Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) in all states of the country to investigate and address trafficking. In 2013, in a related development, Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code ( IPC) was amended by widening its scope to include all sexual and physical exploitation forms.

Why Victims Are Denied Compensation

Despite all these measures, victims seldom get access to compensation. This is because claiming compensation depends on filing FIRs, as advocate Kaushik Gupta points out. Lack of sensitisation and training often prevents the police from filing FIRs that clearly state whether a victim is trafficked or not. This limits avenues for compensation.

Another reason is that victims are ignorant of the law or fear stigma, preventing them from pursuing compensation. Worse, the paperwork involved may be overwhelming, getting victims and their guardians to step away.

Although a victim or their legal guardian, as per law, can file an FIR anywhere, that is, either where they are rescued or once the victim reaches home, filing the FIR later can pose a problem. Activist Baitali Ganguly, who heads the NGO Jabala Action Research Organisation, points out, “If the FIR is filed on reaching home, it is difficult to prove that a person is a victim/survivor of trafficking. Proof of having been trafficked is an important factor when claiming victim compensation.”

When a trafficked person is not rescued but escapes surreptitiously, filing the FIR may be scary since an organised mafia is involved. Moreover, with the rate of conviction being as low as 16 percent in 2021 (as per statistics furnished by the National Crime Records Bureau), victims remain in mortal fear for their lives and fear registering FIRs.

The Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) have failed to deliver in most cases. A study conducted by the NGO, Sanjog as part of its Tafteesh Project found that Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) were non-operational in many districts in India. In several states, the composition of AHTUs did not follow the mandatory mix of legal professionals, doctors, and police officials. Even when functional, cases of trafficking were not handed over to them for investigation.

The problem, activists opine, “is that victim compensation is lowest in terms of priority for the authorities. Moreover, with no dedicated fund to compensate victims of trafficking, money often falls short.” At times “the money is sanctioned but does not reach the victim’s bank account for months on end,” Suresh Kumar, who heads the NGO Centre Direct, points out.

The Long Road to Rehabilitation

Getting compensated, though, is not enough. Baitali Ganguly tells me, “We helped some survivors claim compensation. But they were in no mental state to embark on entrepreneurial ventures. Psycho-social help is what they largely need to begin life anew. Hence, we have been imparting their skills and helping them get employed as security guards, housekeepers and the like.”

Psychologist and researcher Pompi Banerjee also stresses the need for counselling and medical assistance for survivors for thorough rehabilitation.

Taking all these aspects into account, the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) drew a draft bill for a comprehensive law to check human trafficking. With necessary amendments as of today, the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2021, is the first attempt at victim-oriented legislation, and makes provision for forfeiture, confiscation, and attachment of property of traffickers, witness protection and guaranteed compensation for victims out of the property of traffickers.

It also provides interim relief to survivors, for stringent punishment to traffickers extending up to life imprisonment, and in the case of repeat offences, even death. The Bill also provides a dedicated rehabilitation fund for survivors of trafficking.

However, survivors of trafficking who have grouped themselves under the Indian Leadership Forum Against Trafficking (ILFAT) are unhappy about rehabilitating victims through “protection homes”, which they see as nothing better than prisons.

Instead, they feel “community-based rehabilitation wherein job-oriented skills are imparted” is needed. Survivor Sunil Lahiri, who is now studying, and conducting awareness sessions in schools for Tafteesh/Sanjog, stresses the need to register and regulate placement agencies. “People in our villages have to migrate without employment opportunities. The authorities must ensure that they do not get exploited.”

Survivors also feel the need for fast-track courts to handle cases of trafficking so that justice is swift.

Although passed by the Lower House of India’s Parliament, the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Care & Rehabilitation) Bill 2021 awaits the nod of the Upper House to become an Act. One hopes that further improvements will be incorporated before the Bill is passed into law. A well-drafted law can well prove the first step in wiping out human trafficking altogether in India.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Venezuelan migrant Manuela Molina (not her real name) was promised a decent job in Trinidad, but minutes after her arrival she was forced into a van and taken to a secret location. Credit: IOM Port of Spain

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Aug 3 2022 (IPS)

Human beings have proved to be capable of producing innumerable practical inventions while much too often making the worst use of them. Take the case, per example, of how criminal groups heavily rely on digital platforms to trap and enslave their victims also for extracting and selling their organs.

Yes, technology now dominates most of human activities and, surprisingly enough, it is now presented as the perfect life-saving solution for the smallest and poorest households worldwide. Simply, it has replaced the precious human knowledge, which has been acquired over thousands of years.

And technology is now utilised by the world’s biggest ‘warlords’ to bomb unarmed civilians with drones, also carrying nuclear heads.

Meanwhile, internet and digital platforms are used by criminal gangs to recruit, exploit and control the victims of their human trafficking lucrative business. Among other crimes, victims of trafficking are also targeted for “organ harvesting.”

No wonder then that the 2022 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons (30 July) has focused on the use and abuse of technology as a tool that can both enable and impede human trafficking.

What’s behind human trafficking?

“Conflicts, forced displacement, climate change, inequality and poverty, have left tens of millions of people around the world destitute, isolated and vulnerable,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres ahead of World Day.

The COVID-19 pandemic has separated children and young people in general from their friends and peers, pushing them into spending more time alone and online, said Guterres.

“Human traffickers are taking advantage of these vulnerabilities, using sophisticated technology to identify, track, control and exploit victims.”

Slave markets, also in refugee camps

Obviously, given the clandestinity of these inhuman operations–and the negligent complicity of official authorities–, the number of victims is practically impossible to calculate.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that the number of “detected” trafficked persons amounts to over 150,000. Other estimates talk about as many as one million.

More than 60% of known human trafficking victims over the last 15 years have been women and girls, most of them trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Meanwhile, the criminal gangs’ operations have been extended everywhere, even in refugee camps.

In the article: Slave Markets Open 24/7: Refugee Babies, Boys, Girls, Women, Men…, IPS reported that, in addition to slave selling and buying deals in public squares, as reported time ago in ‘liberated’ Libya, a widespread exploitation of men, women, and children has been carried out for years at refugee camps worldwide.

One of them is a Malawi refugee camp, where such inhumane practice has been reported by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Malawian Police Service.

“I even witnessed a kind of Sunday market, where people come to buy children who were then exploited in situations of forced labour and prostitution,” said UNODC’s Maxwell Matewere.

The camp is also being used as a hub for the processing of victims of human trafficking. Traffickers recruit victims in their home country under false pretences, arrange for them to cross the border into Malawi and enter the camp.

Many other refugee camps, as it is the case of the Za’atari camp in Jordan, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are located once they had to flee the 11-years long devastating war on their country, are also suspected of being stage for human trafficking. And the list goes on.

The Dark Web

Often using the so-called “dark web”, online platforms allow criminals to recruit people with false promises, informs the UN, adding that technology anonymously allows dangerous and degrading content that fuels human trafficking, including the sexual exploitation of children.

On this, the UNODC explains that as the world continues to transform digitally, internet technologies are increasingly being used for the facilitation of trafficking in persons.

With the rise of new technologies, some traffickers have adapted their modus operandi for cyberspace by integrating technology and taking advantage of digital platforms to advertise, recruit and exploit victims.

Recruited through social media

Everyday, digital platforms are used by traffickers to advertise deceptive job offers and to market exploitative services to potential paying customers, explains UNODC.

“Victims are recruited through social media, with traffickers taking advantage of publicly available personal information and the anonymity of online spaces to contact victims.”

Patterns of exploitation have been transformed by digital platforms, as webcams and live streams have created new forms of exploitation and reduced the need for transportation and transfer of victims.

Trafficking in armed conflicts

A group of UN-appointed independent human rights experts, known as Special Rapporteurs, has recently underscored that the international community must “strengthen prevention and accountability for trafficking in persons in conflict situations”.

Women and girls, particularly those who are displaced, are disproportionately affected by trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced and child marriage, forced labour and domestic servitude, they warned.

“These risks of exploitation, occurring in times of crisis, are not new. They are linked to and stem from existing, structural inequalities, often based on intersectional identities, gender-based discrimination and violence, racism, poverty and weaknesses in child protection systems,” the experts said.

Structural inequalities

According to the independent human rights experts, refugees, migrants, internally displaced and Stateless persons are particularly at risk of attacks and abductions that lead to trafficking.

And the dangers are increased by continued restrictions on protection and assistance, limited resettlement and family reunification, inadequate labour safeguards and restrictive migration policies.

“Such structural inequalities are exacerbated in the periods before, during and after conflicts, and disproportionately affect children”, they added.

Targeting schools

Despite links between armed group activities and human trafficking – particularly targeting children – accountability “remains low and prevention is weak,” the UN Special Rapporteurs underlined.

Child trafficking – with schools often targeted – is linked to the grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict, including recruitment and use, abductions and sexual violence, they said.

“Sexual violence against children persists, and often leads to trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and forced marriage, as well as forced labour and domestic servitude”.

Organ harvesting

The independent human rights experts also highlighted that in conflict situations, organ harvesting trafficking is another concern, along with law enforcement’s inability to regulate and control armed groups and other traffickers’ finances – domestically and across borders.

“We have seen what can be achieved through coordinated action and a political will to prevent trafficking in conflict situations,” said the group of Special Rapporteurs, advocating for international protection, family reunification and expanded resettlement and planned relocation opportunities.

Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country’s situation. The positions are honorary, and the experts are not paid for their work.

Protection services ‘severely lacking’

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on 29 July warned that protection services for refugees and migrants making perilous journeys from the Sahel and Horn of Africa towards North Africa and Europe, including survivors of human trafficking, are “severely lacking”.

“Some victims are left to die in the desert, others suffer repeated sexual and gender-based violence, kidnappings for ransom, torture, and many forms of physical and psychological abuse.”

All the above is just another tragic evidence of how big is the ‘dark web’ of the world’s so-called decision-makers.

Sandy Recinos Executive Secretary against Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons (SVET) from Guatemala - Former congresswoman Rosi Orozco from México - Ann Basham Chief Executive Officer at Ascend ConsultingUnited State.
Mobile Units for the Prevention of Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Human Trafficking “UNIVET”, which allows sharing information, preventing these crimes and also promoting the culture of reporting among its inhabitants. Credit: Rosi Orozco

By Rosi Orozco
MEXICO CITY, Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

This is an alert message: if nothing stops the wave of violence in Mexico, by the end of 2024 the country could exceed the figure of 150,000 missing persons.

Just on May 17, Mexico crossed a the ultimate horror border: officially there are more than 100,000 people who cannot be located. The equivalent of the evaporation of two and a half times the population of Monaco. Most of those people are victims of organized crime.

It is an old problem in Mexico, but it has taken a new turn in recent months: in its most recent report, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances recognized that since 2006 the phenomenon has been concentrated in men between 15 and 40 years, but the pandemic changed that profile. Now, the great national drama focuses on girls and boys from 12 to 35 years old.

The coronavirus opened gaps in inequality and poverty like no other natural phenomenon. Sexual violence, human trafficking, and femicides increased in Mexico, and forced disappearances became an effective means to hide those crimes. Criminals act with a perverse idea: without a body, there is no crime and therefore no punishment.

The problem is so severe that the Mexican government has recognized that the number of girls and women has skyrocketed in recent months to more than 24,600 women waiting to be located. Many of them are not even 10 years old.

One of the latest national sorrows is a young woman called Debanhi Susana Escobar Bazaldúa, 18 years old, who disappeared on April 8 in Nuevo León, México, on a highway that reaches Texas, United States.

Her search kept the country in suspense after a photograph was released where she appeared alone and at dawn waiting for a taxi to return home after attending a party. The image became a symbol of fear and hope.

Magistrate Delia Davila and Former Congresswoman Rosi Orozco after a meeting with specialized judges to deal with human trafficking. Credit: Rosi Orozco

But after 13 days of searching, his body was found at the bottom of a hotel cistern frequented by human traffickers. While she was wanted alive, five more missing women were found. The causes of Debanhi Susana Escobar’s death are still unclear, but the family points to a crime of a sexual nature.

The death of the young woman who dreamed of being a lawyer strucked a chord in a country numbed to the horrors of human trafficking. And amid a pain that seems to make no sense, her father demanded that the life of Debanhi Susana Escobar be a symbol against the wave of missing women.

The mourning of Debanhi Susana Escobar’s family comes at a crucial moment for Mexico if we want to avoid reaching 150,000 disappeared people in the next two years.

On one hand, the Mexican Senate president, Olga Sánchez Cordero, close to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is promoting a series of reforms to the national general law against human trafficking that prevents the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution.

Senator Sánchez Cordero’s intention also seeks to punish whoever maintains a house of prostitution, which includes its administration, lease, or financing. That measure would meant a heavy blow to the human trafficking networks that make girls and women disappear.

This initiative comes as Mexico celebrates 10 years of the general law against human trafficking, promulgated in 2012. This law has been praised by international experts —such as the Spanish prosecutor Beatriz Sanchez, who is already studying Mexican legislation as an inspiration to create a comprehensive law and abolitionist in her country.

There’s another international experience on the southern border in Mexico from which we can all learn: in Guatemala a successful experiment is being carried out to stop sexual and labor exploitation with a novel approach.

For example, leaders like Justice Delia Dávila have taken on the responsibility of training judges to specialize in investigating human trafficking. The judges issue sentences in favor of the victims and work together with civil society, such as the World Vision organization.

In addition, Guatemala has a vehicle project known as UNIVET, which reaches the most remote communities to carry out prevention and education work for vulnerable girls, adolescents, and women.

In this way, Guatemala is at the forefront in Latin America by creating a national strategy against human exploitation, giving it the priority that this crime deserves, which is the second most lucrative globally.

The efforts in Mexico, Spain, France, Guatemala and dozens of countries with an abolitionist approach make us believe that it is possible to achieve what cynical voices tell us will be impossible: stop the trend of violence that will lead us to 150,000 disappeared people.

We have to do it for Debanhi Susana Escobar. For his family and the legacy they want to leave this country. For each missing person, for each survivor, for each future girl. For Mexico.

This is an alert message: we still have time. Let’s be brave and push for the changes that the most vulnerable need.

IPS UN Bureau

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Mexican workers harvest produce on a farm in the western U.S. state of California. The number of temporary agricultural workers from Mexico has increased in recent years in the United States and with it, human rights violations. CREDIT: Courtesy of Linnaea Mallette

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

Eduardo Reyes, originally from Puebla in central Mexico, was offered a 40-hour workweek contract by his recruiter and his employer in the United States, but ended up performing hundreds of hours of unpaid work that was not authorized because his visa had expired, unbeknownst to him.

Hired by recruiter Vazquez Citrus & Hauling (VCH), Reyes and five other temporary workers reached the United States between May and September 2017, months before starting work for Four Star Greenhouse in the Midwest state of Michigan.

In 2018, they worked more than 60 hours per week, received bad checks, and never obtained a copy of their contract, even though U.S. laws require that they be given one.

When they complained to Four Star and to their recruiter about the exploitative conditions, the latter turned them over to immigration authorities for deportation in July of that year because their visas had expired, which they had not been informed of by their agent.

In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) authorized the arrival of 145 workers to the Four Star facilities in Carleton, Michigan. They were to earn 12.75 dollars per hour for 36 hours a week between January and July 2018.

Reyes’ case is set forth in complaint 2:20-CV-11692, seen by IPS, filed in the Southern Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by six Mexican workers against the company and its manager, whom they accuse of wage gouging, forced labor and workplace reprisals.

This story of exploitation has an aggravating factor that shows the shortcomings of the U.S. government’s H-2A temporary agricultural workers program, or H-2A visa program.

The United States created H-2 visas for unskilled temporary foreign workers in 1943 and in the 1980s established H-2A categories for rural workers and 2B for other labor, such as landscaping, construction, and hotel staff.

These visas allow Mexicans, mainly from rural areas, to migrate seasonally to the U.S. to work legally on farms included on a list, with the intermediation of recruiting companies.

In 2016, the US Department of Transportation fined VCH, based in the state of Florida, for 22,000 dollars for a bus accident in which six H-2A workers were killed while returning from Monroe, Michigan to Mexico.

Two years later, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division banned VCH and its owner for three years due to program violations in the state of North Carolina, such as failure to reimburse travel expenses and payroll and workday records. However, both continued to operate in the sector.

The workers’ odyssey begins in Mexico, where they are recruited by individual contractors -workers or former workers of a U.S. employer, colleagues, relatives or friends in their home communities – or by private U.S. agencies.

Structural problem

Reyes’ case illustrates the problems of labor exploitation, forced labor and the risk of human trafficking to which participants in the H-2A program are exposed, without intervention by Mexican or U.S. authorities to prevent human rights violations.

Advocates for the rights of the seasonal workers and experts pointed to worsening working conditions, warned of the threat of human trafficking and forced labor, and complained about the prevailing impunity.

According to Lilián López, representative in Mexico of the U.S.-based Polaris Project, the design and operation of the program result in a high risk of human trafficking and forced labor, due to factors such as the lack of supervision and interference by recruiters.

“Economic vulnerability puts migrants at risk, because many workers go into debt to get to the United States, and that gives the agencies a lot of power. They can set any kind of requirement for people to get the jobs. Sometimes recruiters make offers that look more attractive than they really are. That is fraud,” she told IPS in Mexico City.

The number of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline operated by Polaris in the US reflects the apparent increase in abuses. Between 2015 and 2017, 800 people on temporary visas, 500 of which were H-2A, called the hotline, compared to 2,890 people between 2018 and 2020 – a 360 percent increase.

Evy Peña, spokesperson for Mexico’s Migrant Rights Center, said temporary labor systems are designed to benefit employers, who have all the control, along with the recruiters.

“From the moment the workers are recruited, there is no transparency. There is a lack of oversight by the DOL, there are parts of recruitment that should be overseen by the Mexican government. There are things that the Mexican government should work out at home,” she told IPS from the northern city of Monterrey.

She said the situation has worsened because of the pandemic.

The United States and Mexico have idealized the H-2A program because it solves the lack of employment in rural areas, foments remittances that provide financial oxygen to those areas, and meets a vital demand in food-producing centers that supply U.S. households.

But the humanitarian costs are high, as the cases reviewed attest. Mexico’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare has 369 labor placement agencies registered in 29 of Mexico’s 33 states. For overseas labor recruitment, seven operate – including four in Mexico City -, a small number compared to the thousands of visas issued in 2021.

For its part, the DOL reports 241 licensed recruiters in the US working for a handful of companies in that country.

The ones authorized in Mexico do not appear on the US list and vice versa, in another example of the scarce exchange of information between the two partners.

The number of H-2A visas for Mexican workers is on the rise, with the U.S. government authorizing 201,123 in 2020, a high number driven by the pandemic. That number grew 22 percent in 2021, to a total of 246,738.

In the first four months of the year, U.S. consulates in Mexico issued 121,516 such visas, 18 percent more than in the same period of 2021, when they granted 102,952.

In 2021, the states with the highest demand for Mexican labor were Florida, Georgia, California, Washington and North Carolina, in activities such as agriculture, the operation of farm equipment and construction.

The United States and Mexico agreed to issue another 150,000 visas for temporary workers in an attempt to mitigate forced migration from the south, which will also include Central American seasonal workers.

Details of the expansion of the program will be announced by Presidents Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a meeting to be held on Jul. 12 at the White House, with migration as one of the main topics on the agenda.

Mexican farm workers wait to be tested for COVID-19 in 2020 in Immolakee, a town in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida. The pandemic hit H-2A visa holders, who are mainly engaged in temporary agricultural work, hard. CREDIT: Doctors Without Borders

Indifference

Lidia Muñoz, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon in the United States who has studied labor recruitment, stresses that there are no policies on the subject in Mexico, even though the government is aware of the problem.

“There are regulations for recruitment agencies that are not followed to the letter,” she told IPS from Portland, the largest city in the northwestern state of Oregon. “Most recruiters are not registered. The intermediaries are the ones who earn the most. There is no proper oversight.”

Article 28 of Mexico’s Federal Labor Law of 1970 regulates the provision of services by workers hired within Mexico for work abroad, but in practice it is not enforced.

This regulation requires the registration of contracts with the labor authorities and the posting of a bond to guarantee compliance, and makes the foreign contractor responsible for transportation to and from the country, food and immigration expenses, as well as full payment of wages, compensation for occupational hazards and access to adequate housing.

In addition, Mexican workers must be entitled to social security for foreigners in the country where they offer their services.

While the Mexican government could resort to this article to protect the rights of migrants, it has refused to apply it.

Between 2009 and 2019, the Ministry of Labor conducted 91 inspections of labor placement agencies in nine states and imposed 12 fines for about 153,000 dollars, but did not fine any recruiters of seasonal workers. Furthermore, the records of the Federal Court of Conciliation and Arbitration do not contain labor lawsuits for breach of that regulation.

Mexico is a party to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Fee-Charging Employment Agencies Convention, which it apparently violates in the case of temporary workers.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) does not know how many H-2A workers it has assisted through consular services. Likewise, it does not know how many complainants it has advised.

The Mexican consulate in Denver, Colorado received three labor complaints, dated Jul. 25, Aug. 12 and Oct. 28, 2021, which it referred to “specialized allies in the matter, who provided the relevant advice to the interested parties,” according to an SRE response to a request for information from IPS.

The consulate in Washington received “anonymous verbal reports” on labor issues, which it passed on to civil society organizations so that “the relevant support could be provided.”

Consular teams were active in some parts of the US in 2021. For example, Mexican officials visited eight corporations between May and September 2021 in Denver, Colorado.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania they visited 12 companies between April and August, 2021. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin they visited 26 companies between June 2021 and April of this year, and in Washington, DC six workplaces were visited between August and October 2021. However, the results of these visits are unknown.

Mexico, meanwhile, is in non-compliance with the ILO’s “General principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment” of 2016.

These guidelines stipulate that hiring must be done in accordance with human rights, through voluntary agreements, free from deception or coercion, and with specific, verifiable and understandable conditions of employment, with no attached charges or job immobility.

Ariel Ruiz, an analyst with the U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute, is concerned about the expansion of the H-2A visa program without improvements in rights.

“There are labour rights violations before the workers arrive in the US, in recruitment there are often illegal payments, and we keep hearing reports of employers intimidating workers,” he told IPS from Washington.

“There are also problems in access to health services and legal representation” in case of abuse, added the analyst from the non-governmental institute.

Judicialization

In the last decade, at least 12 lawsuits have been filed in US courts by program workers against employers.

Muñoz, the expert from Oregon, said the trials can help reform the system.

“There have been cases that have resulted in visas for trafficking victims. But it is difficult to see changes in the United States. They may be possible in oversight. Legal changes have arisen because of wage theft from workers,” she said.

López, of Polaris, said the lawsuits were a good thing, but clarified that they did not solve the systemic problems. “What is needed is a root-and-branch reform of the system,” she said.

The United States has made trade union freedom in Mexico a priority. Peña asked that it also address the H-2A visa situation.

“If they’re serious about improving labor rights, they can’t ignore the responsibility they have for migrant workers. It’s like creating a double standard,” she said.

With regard to the expansion of the temporary visa program to Central Americans, the experts consulted expressed concern that it would lead to an increase in abuses.

This article was produced with support from the organizations Dignificando el Trabajo and the Avina Foundation’s Arropa Initiative in Mexico.

Two young victims of human trafficking, who were rescued from the Dzaleka Refugee Camp, are receiving support at a shelter in Malawi. Credit: UNODC

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 17 2022 (IPS)

In addition to slave selling and buying deals in public squares, as reported time ago in ‘liberated’ Libya, a widespread exploitation of men, women, and children has been carried out for years at refugee camps worldwide.

One of them is a Malawi refugee camp, where such inhumane practice has been reported by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Malawian Police Service.

“I even witnessed a kind of Sunday market, where people come to buy children who were then exploited in situations of forced labour and prostitution,” on 11 June said UNODC’s Maxwell Matewere.

“I even witnessed a kind of Sunday market, where people come to buy children who were then exploited in situations of forced labour and prostitution,”
Maxwell Matewere, UNODC


The Dzaleka Refugee Camp, the largest in Malawi, was established in 1994 and is home to more than 50,000 refugees and asylum seekers from five different countries. It was originally designed to accommodate 10,000 people.

Most of the 90 victims so far rescued are men from Ethiopia, aged between 18 and 30, while there are also girls and women too, aged between 12 and 24 from Ethiopia, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A trafficking processing hub

The UNODC report also explains that women and girls are exploited sexually inside the Dzaleka refugee camp, or transported for the purpose of sexual exploitation to other countries in Southern Africa, while male refugees are being subjected to forced labour inside the camp or on farms in Malawi and other countries in the region.

The camp is also being used as a hub for the processing of victims of human trafficking. Traffickers recruit victims in their home country under false pretences, arrange for them to cross the border into Malawi and enter the camp.

Everywhere

Other refugee camps, like the Rohingya ones in Myanmar, which host up to one million humans, are also being under scrutiny.

Add to this millions more of humans falling easy prey to traffickers and smugglers, victims of wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, not to mention around six million Palestinian refugees.

A whole continent on the move

Ever greater numbers of vulnerable people are risking their lives on dangerous migration routes in Latin America, forced to move by the global food security crisis spiralling inflation, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said ahead of 2022 World Refugee Day.

“We are having countries like Haiti with 26% food inflation and we have other countries that really are off the charts even with food inflation,” said Lola Castro, WFP Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

The dramatic deterioration in people’s daily lives has given them little option but to leave their communities and head north, even if it means risking their lives, she explained.

“All of you are watching caravans, caravans of migrants moving, and before we used to talk about migration happening from the north of Central America, but now, unfortunately, we talk about migration being hemispheric. We have the whole continent on the move.”

The Darien Gap

One of the clearest signs of people’s desperation is the fact that they are willing to risk their lives crossing the Darien Gap, a particularly arduous and dangerous forest route in Central America that allows access from the south of the continent to the north.

“In 2020, 5,000 people passed by the Darien Gap, migrating from South America into Central America, and you know what, in 2021, 151,000 people passed, and this is 10 days walking through a forest, 10 days through rivers, crossing mountains and people die because this one of most dangerous jungles in the world.”

For these migrants the reason why they are on the move is simple, the WFP official explained: “They are leaving communities where they have lost everything to climate crisis, they have no food security, they have no ability to feed their people and their families.”

UN data indicates that of the 69 economies now experiencing food, energy and financial shocks, 19 are in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.

Highest ever number of displaced children

Conflict, violence and other crises left a record 36.5 million children displaced from their homes at the end of 2021, UNICEF estimates – the highest number recorded since the Second World War.

This figure, which was reported by UNICEF on 17 June, includes 13.7 million refugee and asylum-seeking children and nearly 22.8 million children who are internally displaced due to conflict and violence.

These figures do not include children displaced by climate and environmental shocks or disasters, nor those newly displaced in 2022, including by the war in Ukraine.

20 people on the run… every minute

Every minute 20 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror, according to UNHCR.

But while the world’s specialised bodies have been making legal distinctions between migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless people, retruerness, etcetera, the fact is that all of them are victims of stargeering inhuman suffering.

100 million… for now

At the end of 2021, the total number of people worldwide who were forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations was 89.3 million, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported ahead of this year’s World Refugee Day annual marked 20 June.

Armed conflicts in 23 countries

If ongoing conflicts remain unresolved and the risks of new ones erupting are not reined in, one aspect that will define the twenty-first century will be the “continuously growing numbers of people forced to flee and the increasingly dire options available to them.”

Regarding the conflict-driven wave of forced displacement, UNHCR citing World Bank data, reports that in all, 23 countries with a combined population of 850 million faced “medium or high-intensity conflicts.”

Poor countries host 4 in 5 refugees

Data from the UNHCR report underscored the crucial role played by the world’s developing nations in sheltering displaced people, with low and middle-income nations hosting more than four in five of the world’s refugees.

With 3.8 million refugees within its borders, Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees, followed by Colombia, with 1.8 million (including Venezuelan nationals), Uganda and Pakistan (1.5 million each) and Germany (1.3 million).

Relative to their national populations, the Caribbean island of Aruba hosted the largest number of Venezuelans displaced abroad (one in six), while Lebanon hosted the largest number of refugees (one in eight), followed by Curaçao (one in 10), Jordan (one in 14) and Turkey (one in 23).

All the above adds to the specific case of the increasing number of victims of climate change, on whom IPS has already reported in its: What Would Europe, the US, Do with One Billion Climate Refugees?

Not new, Europeans have largely traded in humans

Such horrifying practice was intensively widespread more than four centuries ago, mostly by European powers, who captured, chained and shipped millions of Africans to their descents’ country: the United States of America, as well to their colonies in Latin America and the Carribeans.

Just see what the UN secretary general, António Guterres, stated In his message on last year’s International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Today “we honour the memory of the millions of people of African descent who suffered under the brutal system of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade”.

This trade created and sustained a global system of exploitation that existed for more than 400 years, devastating families, communities and economies, the UN chief stated.

We remember with humility the resilience of those who endured the atrocities committed by slave traders and owners, condoned by slavery’s beneficiaries, added Guterres.

“The transatlantic slave trade ended more than two centuries ago, but the ideas of white supremacy that underpinned it remain alive.”

The Helping Young People Elevate (HYPE) Center is a center that is designed for youth who experienced homelessness, human trafficking, and systematic oppression.

By SeiMi Chu
Stanford, Jun 15 2022 (IPS)

Arien Pauls-Garcia’s journey to working with at-risk youth in California was long and dangerous and started at 19 when she found herself sold and exploited by traffickers.

Now, she is the Program Manager and Victims Advocate for at-risk minors at the Central Valley Justice Coalition in Fresno, California. She works with youth identified as at-risk of being sexually exploited.

It took time, grit, and strength for Pauls-Garcia to come this far.

Pauls-Garcia grew up in poverty in Humboldt County, California. As she went through tough family situations, such as having several stepdads and her mother experiencing numerous mental health problems, she used MySpace, a social networking platform, to talk to someone who would understand her.

She met a man who turned out to be a ‘Romeo pimp,’ a commonly used term to define traffickers seducing young girls or boys into believing they were loved. Romeo then sold her to another man with whom she spent four years.

Pauls-Garcia went through traumatic experiences—she was beaten, raped, branded, and forced to have an abortion by her traffickers.

“I experienced very horrific things that a person should never experience. I didn’t run or leave because of the shame, guilt, and embarrassment. I believed it was my choice to be in that situation and that I would not be accepted back into society,” Pauls-Garcia reflected.

When Pauls-Garcia escaped her trafficker, she tried to figure out how to become a person and not an object for sale.

“I really wanted to contribute to society and figure out my goals. I attempted to find a job for a year and a half,” Pauls-Garcia elaborated. She could not find employment because she had a record of misdemeanor charges of solicitation and trespassing.

However, through determination, she slowly built her life. This year marks her 10th freedom anniversary. She became one of the faces of the AB-262 bill. This new legislation allows human trafficking survivors to apply for vacatur relief by establishing clear and convincing evidence that arrests and convictions directly resulted from human trafficking.

Pauls-Garcia is also working on getting her record cleared up. She will graduate with her Bachelor of Science in Justice Studies at Grand Canyon University and plans to apply for law school.

As she continues to build her life, Pauls-Garcia wants human trafficking victims to know that the journey will be hard.

“It won’t always be sunshine and daisies. But the work that you put into yourself will be worth it in the end. If you mess up, that’s okay. You don’t have to ever go back to that life; there will always be a solution to our problem. Just keep fighting for it, and it will happen,” Pauls-Garcia said with powerful conviction.

California received the highest number of substantive signals related to human trafficking out of all 50 states in 2020.

Signals made to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in California increased in 2020. Compared to the hotline’s data report in 2019, more than 113 phone calls, 187 texts, and 20 webchats in 2020 were made.

National Human Trafficking Hotline connects victims and survivors to services and support groups.

In National Human Trafficking Hotline’s 2019 California data report, 3,184 phone calls, 935 texts, 208 emails, and 88 webchats were made to the line. However, the signals increased in 2020—more than 113 phone calls, 187 texts, and 20 webchats were made in 2020 than in 2019. The number of human trafficking cases continues to rise in California.

Marty Parker, Special Agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), noticed increased human trafficking cases since the pandemic.

“I can imagine that there were potentially people who had lost their jobs because of COVID-19. And were, therefore, desperate, which either got them into prostitution on their own or were more vulnerable to be trafficked into prostitution,” Parker said as reflected on the impact of the pandemic on human trafficking.

Parker handles child exploitation and human trafficking cases. Her squad is located in Oakland, California, and they work joint proactive operations with local police departments. Her job includes many tasks, such as recovering victims of trafficking, arresting suspected pimps and traffickers, and making contacts with law enforcement agencies.

“What we see on a day-to-day basis is people who are being trafficked are US citizens, normal people, your friends, kids, neighbors. This is everybody’s problem. This is a domestic problem. It impacts every city and every town,” Parker said.

In 2013, Parker’s squad successfully prosecuted a popular escort website called MyRedBook. The website included advertisements for girls and pornography.

“If we’ve got a girl who needs justice, we’re going to go after the bad guy. If there’s a missing kid, we’re going to find them,” Parker stated.

Parker works on human trafficking cases to give a voice and justice to survivors. Many of them were taken away from their families, and their childhood was stripped away. Parker said housing was a huge issue when survivors tried to regain their lives. Since there are a limited number of temporary and domestic violence shelters, sometimes there are no empty beds.

SF SOL (Safety, Opportunity, Lifelong relationships) Collaborative aims to create a continuum of care for youth experiencing or are at risk of experiencing commercial sexual exploitation. They have served over 300 youth so far. The California Department of Social Services funds them. Their collaborating partners include the City and County of San Francisco, Department on the Status of Women, Freedom Forward, WestCoast Children’s Clinic, Family Builders by Adoption, and Huckleberry Youth Programs.

Nazneen Rydhan-Foster, Program Manager of SF SOL, oversees the budget, project management, and anti-trafficking initiatives. One of their successful projects includes collaborating with the Helping Young People Elevate (HYPE) Center.

The HYPE Center is designed for youth who experience homelessness, human trafficking, and systematic oppression.

“What’s great about this center is that it’s made by youth and for youth. We really hope to see this center live on, be there, and serve the youths in San Francisco.”

The center went through some rough moments because they had to shut down their center when COVID-19 hit. However, they slowly opened up.

Breaking the Chains, a non-profit organization in Central San Joaquin Valley, California, started with a safe house for adult female survivors. They house six survivors who spend nine months to two years in the facility. On a day-to-day basis, they now serve an average of 90 to 100 clients. Since 2015, Breaking the Chains has offered services to over 800 clients. Its mission is to provide hope, healing, and restoration to all lives impacted by trafficking.

Tiffany Apodaca, Co-Founder of Breaking the Chains, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and abandonment, also noticed increased human trafficking cases since the pandemic.

“It increased significantly. The simple fact is what we did—we put everybody at home on electronic devices, and there were not a lot of eyes on people. If there was trafficking happening within the household, then there weren’t teachers or anybody who could put eyes on kids to see if there was any abuse,” Apodaca explained how and why human trafficking got worse during COVID-19.

Breaking the Chains is launching its expanded Juvenile Justice Program on July 1, 2022. They will start with an addition of 150 minors who are either commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) or at-risk youth.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms’.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavors of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labor, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Our voices must be heard and listened to – now and in the future, say child labour survivors and activists at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban Badaku Marandi (India, survivor), Rajesh Jatav (India, survivor), Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu (Ghana, survivor), Divin Ishimwe (Burundi activist), Esther Gomani (Malawi, activist), Rebekka Nghilalulwa (Namibia, activist, representative of the 100 million March). Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Lyse Comins
DURBAN, May 20 2022 (IPS)

Governments of the world must focus on providing quality free education and prosecuting corrupt officials and people who siphon state and donor funds as crucial steps towards taking decisive action to fight child labour across the globe.

These were among the diverse opinions of child labour survivors and young activists in reaction to the Durban Call to Action to eradicate the practice at the 5^th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban. Hundreds of delegates, including world leaders in business, trade unions and civil society organisations, attended the conference, which ran in the city from May 15 to 20, 2022. Sessions and panel discussions highlighted topics from agriculture, climate change and global supply chains and how these sectors and issues contribute to child labour.

Speaking during the closing ceremony on Friday, International Organisation of Employers vice president for Africa, Jacqueline Mugo,  highlighted the salient points of the 11-page Durban Call to Action.

“The Durban Call to Action is a comprehensive action plan. Employers fully support this plan,” Mugo said.

The Durban Call to Action aims to:

• Ensure decent work for adults and youth above the minimum age for work
• End child labour in agriculture
• Prevent and eliminate child and forced labour through data-driven policy and programmatic responses
• Realise children’s right to education
• Achieve universal access to social protection
• Increase financing and international cooperation.

“It is in our hearts to make this crucial turning point happen. We must not fail the children of the world. This implementation of the Durban call will largely be the work of an African who will take up leadership ILO later this year, so we have no reason to fail. We are deeply committed to work for its full implementation,” Mugo said.

Togolese diplomat Gilbert Houngbo ILO Director-General (elected) takes up his new position on October 1, 2022, strategically positioning him to lead the fight against child labour globally.

“This conference is breaking new ground. Let us recall that 160 million children are in child labour, half of which are involved in hazardous work that puts their physical and mental health at risk. We must not forget that behind every number there is a girl, there is a boy like any other who wants to learn, who wants to play, who wants to be cared for and to grow up and be able to get a good job as adults. They are denied the most basic rights to protection. It is intolerable and, quite frankly, morally unacceptable,” Houngbo said.

According to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) and UNICEF’s latest statistics released in 2020, highlighted at the conference, at least 160 million children are now involved in child labour, a surge of 8.4 million in just four years.

Sierra Leone Labour Congress secretary-general Max Conteh blamed the Covid-19 pandemic for eroding the progress made in the fight against child labour.

“Statistics point to past achievements being fast eroded and child labour being exacerbated, no thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. This has resulted in large numbers of children dropping out of school and falling into the labour market,” Conteh said.

South Africa’s Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi, called on countries to implement action plans to fulfil the Durban Call to Action.

“The message was very clear, governments must pass the necessary legislation, governments and business (must) accept that we need a structural change of the economy, it must not just be about profits, it must also be about people. That message was very clear. It would be a serious oversight not to earlier in the conference, children delivered the Children’s Call to Action, which highlighted the need for free access to education, social protection, the provision of safe spaces during crises such as pandemics and climate change disasters and the importance of evoking the spirit of “nothing about us without us” to democratically include children in policies and decisions that affect their lives.

Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu (survivor, Ghana), Divin Ishimwe (activist, Burundi), Rebekka Nghilalulwa (activist, Namibia), Rajesh Jatav (survivor, India), Esther Gomani (activist, Malawi) and Badaku Marandi (survivor, India) are optimistic and determined that this time the call to action to #EndChildLabour must succeed. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

Several child labour survivors and activists who commented on the conference and the Durban Call to Action said the focus on fighting child labour should be on education, eliminating corruption and listening to children’s voices.

Esther Gomani, a student from Malawi, was satisfied that the voice of some 60 children, who represented ten countries, were heard during special children’s sessions, for the first time, at the global conference.

“Before now, they did things without including people (children). People come to conferences, and there is no commitment. They come to enjoy the benefits. Now children’s voices have been amplified (so they will be heard) — nothing about us, without us. We need to be involved in the solutions,” Gomani said.

Rajesh Jatav, a child labour survivor from India, who was rescued by the Kailash Satyarthi Foundation, said governments should focus on providing quality education.

“Education is the key. This is the only message. Look after quality basic education. Governments have lots of money for quality education. But there is corruption. They should use this money on stopping illicit flows,” Jatav said.

Badaku Marandi, a survivor from India agreed vehemently.

“We are child survivors and are educated, we challenge the government and private sector to provide quality education,” Marandi said.

Rebekka Nghilalulwa, a child activist, and representative of 100 million March (Namibia) said the plan needed to be put into action to achieve results.

“I want to see each and everyone’s responsibilities and roles described. The Durban declaration should properly outline implementation. That way next time we will be celebrating and not deliberating on issues. It would be disappointing to include voices just for show. As much as we are young, we have the experience (of child labour),” Nghilalulwa said.

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This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

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Delegates at the Youth Forum at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa, demanded that all forums in the future include their participation. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Lyse Comins
Durban, May 20 2022 (IPS)

Ashley has vast work experience. She has laboured by the sweat of her brow in the blistering sun on the streets of Guatemala, in the open fields on farmlands and indoors, toiling for long hours to the hum of a sewing machine.

Her work resume might be impressive to some – street trader, farmworker and tailor – but she, like 160 million children around the world, is trapped in child labour, working desperately to support her impoverished family and provide for her education.

“For most working children, it is very hard for us to express ourselves. All working children have different necessities, and most of their parents cannot supply these: clothing, health, and education. The root cause of child labour is poverty because it makes us as working children get out of our houses to risk our lives to be able to help our family,” she said.

“Working children are not done with formal education. They have not finished primary education because their families do not have financial resources. We need to go out and financially sustain ourselves economically. In other cases, third parties abuse them,” Ashely told delegates at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

“In my country and also the whole of Latin America, you will see every day how children are posted in parks, by the traffic lights, doing any kind of work in bad conditions.”

Ashley took time out from her work to share her story and join a small band of teenage peers and child labour survivors to make history, representing the children of 10 countries from across the globe at the conference, which runs in Durban, South Africa until Friday 20 May.

Like Ashley, across the globe in India, Amar Lala was born into a poor family and worked as a child labourer before being rescued by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, a social reformer who has tirelessly campaigned against child labour and advocated for the universal right to education.

“I used to work in the stone quarry breaking stones every day and putting those stones into pots. We used to get hurt every day but had no chance to get to hospital to get treatment. I had no idea, and even my family had no idea what education was. I was the luckiest boy to get helped when the Nobel Laureate saw me and rescued me. I got the opportunity to study and decided to become a lawyer to stand for other children who are like me. Today, I can proudly say I am a lawyer standing in court, every single day fighting for children who have been exploited and are in child labour and bondage,” Lala said.

Nothing about us, without us, was a clear message at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa. These delegates were among those who drew up their own call to action at the conference. Credit: Lyse Comins/IPS

Children affected by child labour, like Ashley, Kabwe from Kenya, Mary Ann from South Africa and survivors like Lala, now 25, shared their stories before a group of children stood in unison to deliver the Children’s Call to Action, at the first global conference, ever, to include a platform for the voices of children impacted by child labour. The conference hosted more than 60 children and young people from different parts of the world, representing Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Organisers withheld the children’s full names to protect their identities and personal safety.

Representatives from the International Labour Organization, including Thomas Wissing of the Technical Advisory Cluster, chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Mikiko Otami, SA Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi and other high profile international government, business and civil society leaders were present during the session, either physically or virtually.

In their call-to-action statement, which captures the expectations of children who attended the conference, they noted that the conference was being held at a “critical moment” when the world is seeing an increase in child labour, especially on the African continent, where 92,2 million children are entrapped, some 80% working in the agricultural sector.

In summary, the children said they were asking for:

• Social protection and the provision of safe spaces for children during emergencies. Governments should make budgetary allocations to support and enrich children’s development, especially in poor, marginalised communities. Initiatives should be formulated, inclusive of children’s voices, to ensure that children’s rights and well-being are not violated or relegated to the background in emergencies. All states should adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 and nationally adopted policies and laws on protecting the child.
• Apportionment/ allocation of budget. Richer countries should provide development assistance to poorer countries, especially in emergencies. For example, the provision of safe spaces for shelters that can be used to empower children and their parents/caregivers on matters of child labour. Governments should commit to initiatives that enhance the appropriation of finances to maximise their use towards support for access to social protection, free quality public education, health care for all children and free sanitary towels to ensure full school attendance. Stakeholders must be empowered to demand accountability and transparency from governments at all times. Corruption and the misappropriation of funds will disallow the opportunities for free access to quality public education for all and diminish children’s abilities to pursue their dreams of becoming meaningful members of society.
• Ensure the democratic representation of children and young people in the making and implementation of key decisions that affect them the most at all times. Organisations such as student unions, child-based groups and civil society organisations must engage with children to find solutions.

“We children and young people of the world…are saying ‘no to child labour’. We are asking governments and all other actors to respect and consider our voices to eradicate child labour by 2025. We hope that this conference does not become one of just words, but of actions,” the children said.

Commenting on the children’s involvement in the conference, Otami said they had helped provide a clear understanding of what the world was fighting for and the need for the holistic implementation of children’s rights.

“Hearing the voice of the children is very important. We talk about evidence-based research – what the children are experiencing and thinking is part of the evidence,” she said.

Wissing said children’s participation had been discussed at previous conferences, but the South African government had decided that it was ready to give children a platform to speak to the world’s policymakers.

“Children’s rights are not something you can negotiate according to local conditions or problems. These are aspirations that need to be put into action. You look at these conventions (on the rights of the child and the eradication of child labour), but if you don’t implement them, we will be discussing the same thing in 50 years. We want to eliminate child labour,” Wissing said.

He said the ILO was working with trade unions to lobby businesses for decent wages and working conditions for parents so that their children could go to school

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A picture exhibited at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour is taken from the book ‘Through their eyes – Visions of forced labour’. This picture was created by Gargalo Vasco Portugal who won an award for his depiction of child labour. Credit: ILO and RHSF, 2021.

By Lyse Comins
DURBAN, May 18 2022 (IPS)

Technology used to trace the origin and price of consumer goods to ensure farmers earn fair profits could easily be adapted as a tool to fight child labour Fair Trade living wage and income lead Isa Miralles told delegates at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

Miralles told a panel discussion that brought together civil society organisations to highlight their crucial role in reaching SDG 8.7 to eliminate child labour and that the organisation’s technological tool could help to raise transparency and accountability regarding child labour practices. The six-day conference takes place in Durban, South Africa, until Friday, 20 May.

The conference aimed at putting the world back on track to meet the 2025 deadline for ending child labour was opened on Sunday by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Two Nobel laureates appealed for resources to end the scourge.

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said he “refused to believe that the world is so poor that we cannot protect the children”. During the week high-level delegations have been looking at research, finance and innovation to ensure that children are protected from the practice.

Willy Buloso, Regional Coordinator for Africa of ECPAT International, who leads the organisation’s advocacy work against the sexual exploitation of children in the tourism and travel sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, also highlighted how his organisation’s successes could be adopted to assist in the fight against child labour.

Miralles explained how Fairtrade’s tech-centric approach to using a software tool to trace products throughout the food supply chain, such as farm sources of cocoa and fresh produce in Africa as well as spices in Indonesia, to retail level in the Northern Hemisphere, could also be used to bring transparency to the source of labour used to produced goods. The organisation co-created the tool to guide businesses to support a living wage for food producers and change the way farm trading occurs.

Child labour in Africa is a major challenge as most of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour live on the continent. About 80% of the 92,2 million children trapped in child labour in Africa work in the agricultural sector, usually with their families. The practice is rife in the cocoa sector in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Fairtrade’s traceability tool could help to create transparency and accountability around this pressing problem, Miralles said.

“We are using the technology to unlock the value of the supply chain for the people at the start of it. We provide the software to trace every action in the supply chain, log in every buyer, trace products from producer to consumer, monitor quality, and whether goods are made by women and whether they are carbon neutral. We are creating a digital passport of our products,”  Miralles said.

“I can request proof a farmer was paid a certain price, and then the buyer can load up the information of the farmer and the price paid. This mechanism is relevant because it can also work to show whether a product is child labour free. We can pass this on through the whole supply chain and create intelligence,” she said.

She said consumers could log into a website, scan a product’s bar code, and find out more about its sourcing, and the tool’s intelligence could also be shared with courts in Europe, where necessary.

“We are bringing this to the consumer, and obviously, it is quite novel,” Miralles said.

She said consumers did not necessarily have to pay a higher price for Fairtrade products. There was leverage in the supply chain to ensure farmers obtained fair prices and that most profits were not made by wealthy Northern Hemisphere retailers.

Buloso, who is working to stamp out the child sex trade that accompanies tourism and travel on the continent, said it was “a great idea” for civil society organisations, not focused on fighting child labour to share insights.

He said the problem of child sexual exploitation did not involve mainly wealthy tourists from the North travelling to Cape Town and Zanzibar, as many assumed, but rather local people engaging in exploitation.

“The state of exploitation of children in prostitution is mostly by perpetrators who are based here in Africa in our countries. Perpetrators are among us,” he said.

Buloso added that 30% of child sex exploitation victims were boys.

“Something we can transfer from our work in (advocating against) sex exploitation of children, to the fight against child labour, is the code of conduct we developed to provide tourism businesses with tools to work together to fight sex exploitation,” Buloso said.

Buloso said the code of conduct, which included six criteria, could be used by organisations fighting against child labour.

The code of conduct criteria included:

• Establish an internal tourism and travel business policy against the sexual exploitation of children.
• Businesses must educate and train their employees on preventing and reporting cases of sexual exploitation of children.
• Businesses must include a zero-tolerance clause in contracts with stakeholders and clients.
• Businesses must provide tourists with information about the sexual exploitation of children.
• All tourism and travel industry stakeholders must be supported and provided with key information about the problem.
• Businesses must report annually on how they uphold the code of conduct.

Augustina Perez, Child Rights Senior Associate at the Bank Information Centre, which partners with civil society to spotlight risks and improve the transparency, accountability, and sustainability of development finance, said the World Bank had been proactive in addressing child labour.

“We have a project in the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). We know most child labour is in agriculture, and we know that together with Ghana, the country produces 60% of the cocoa in the world,” she said.

“The government (Ivory Coast) is a little resistant to putting child labour on the agenda, but the World Bank has been very proactive and has invited BIC to join a working group. We are trying to raise all the red flags and everything crucial to the Ivory Coast like taking (checking) IDs and addressing the root causes of child labour,” she said.

She said her organisation had presented the problem to the US government.

Ghana deputy minister of employment and labour relations, Bright Wireko-Brobby, speaking during an interview with IPS on the sidelines of the conference, said his government was committed to eradicating child labour. Ghana was the first country to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and then adopted it into its national laws.

“In Ghana, mostly the child labour issue can be found in the cocoa-growing areas and also pockets in the fishing and mining industry and the area of trade and commerce,” Wireko-Brobby said.

However, he said his government disputed a report by NORC at the University of Chicago which claimed that there were almost 1,6 million children involved in child labour in the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

NORC conducted surveys with children aged between 15 and 17 between 2008 and 2019 and revealed that cocoa production had increased by 62% in both countries. The report acknowledged that the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana had implemented education reforms such as free education and compulsory attendance to fight child labour and that school attendance of children from agricultural households rose from 58 to 80 percent in Côte d’Ivoire and 89 to 96 percent in Ghana.

Wireko-Brobby said his country had made gains in the fight against child labour.

“In recent times, we have ensured that every child should be in school. We have provided meals, lunch and breakfast for every child in Ghana. We challenged that commissioned study because we did not believe that despite our interventions, child labour would go higher. We are now domesticating some of the indicators,” he said.

He said his government would welcome an intervention like Fairtrade’s tool to ensure cocoa production is child labour free.

“There is a focus on private sector interventions in the cocoa industry where they are trying to make sure that there is not a point in the supply chain where they can trace child labour. The collaboration between the private sector and the government is strong, and we try to bring it into the mainstream. Every child must be able to enjoy their childhood,” Wireko-Brobby said.

This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

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Caught in a web of deceit, a human trafficking survivor from Ghana tells her story. Credit: Getty Images

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri
Accra, May 10 2022 (IPS)

“It feels like yesterday when I was deceived by one man who claimed to be a travelling agent. He promised me a work opportunity and a good salary,” says 25-year-old Cissy, as she prefers to be called. “As a young lady coming from an average family who really needed help, I fell for his lies.”

Cissy says although she was a bit sceptical about the offer and afraid of her destination country, the so-called travel agent convinced her that she had nothing to worry about.

“He said I had a host mom who would receive me at the airport. In fact, she was the one sponsoring my trip, and I am supposed to work for her, and he claimed the work was legitimate,” Cissy adds.

However, the story changed when she arrived at the airport of her destination country.

“A man came to pick me up and collected my passport. I was taken to a house where I saw other young African women kept in the room, some having price tags. It was at that time I realised what I had gotten myself into,” she narrates.

She and the other women were later smuggled illegally into Iraq to work as domestic workers.

“I saw how my own African sisters were physically and mentally abused. Some were sexually harassed and subjected to forced labour on an empty stomach,” Cissy says.

She wanted to return to Ghana but was unable to until several months later.

After countless failed escape attempts, which left her fighting for her life, she finally had a breakthrough and was able to return home with the help of a good Samaritan and the authorities.

Since she returned last November, Cissy has devoted her time to irregular migration advocacy activities.

“I am happy to be alive today to tell you my story but not all the young ladies who travel out get the chance I got to return home to their families,” she says.

Assistant Superintendent of Police William Ayaregah says human trafficking is multifaceted and covers several situations from debt bondage, exploitation, and organised crimes.

Issues of human trafficking continue to be a human rights violation and cancer in Ghanaian society because it is a country of origin, transit, and destination for victims of human trafficking, Ayaregah, who is the Deputy Director of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit in the Criminal Investigation Department, says.

Likewise, the Gulf of Guinea is characterised by cross-border and irregular migration, human trafficking, and child exploitation.

Ayaregah says recently, the unit, with a non-governmental organisation, End Modern Slavery (EMS), and the Social Welfare Department, rescued four children, two boys and two girls, from a trafficker and reunited them with their families.

He reveals that the two boys, aged 10 and 13, were trafficked by a family friend identified as Rose, a trader from Berekum-Senase in the Bono East Region of Ghana. She said the children would attend school while staying with her in Accra.

Instead of sending the children to school, as she promised, she sent the boys onto the streets to hawk.

Ayaregah says the suspect, upon her arrest and investigation, claimed that she has been sending Ghc30 (about 4 US dollars) to the boys’ parents in Berekum every month.

In the other case, two girls, aged 13 and 17, were brought from Akim-Aboabo in the Birim Central Municipality and Adeiso to engage in ‘gari’, a dried cassava business at Amanase in the Ayensuano District in the Eastern part of the country.

The Director of Operations of End Modern Slavery, Afasi Komla, explains that “many victims of human trafficking have had traumatic post-rescue experiences during interviews and legal proceedings.

“In their attempts to get help, they have experienced ignorance, misunderstanding, victimisation, and punishment from offences their traffickers had them commit,” he says.

He adds that through the foundation, they have been able to help in identifying and saving hundreds of victims and supporting their rehabilitation.

Deputy Minister For Gender, Children and Social Protection, Hajia Lariba Abudu, says the country has responded to the issues of human trafficking in diverse ways. It passed the Human Trafficking Act, 2005 Act 694 to prevent, reduce and punish human trafficking offences and for the rehabilitation and reintegration of trafficked persons and related matters.

“The Ministry, together with our partners, we embark on community advocacy and engagements to educate the public on the dangers of human trafficking,” she says.

Abudu further indicates that together with the law enforcement officers, Social Workers and NGOs, the country in 2021 rescued 842 victims of human trafficking, gave comprehensive trauma-informed care, and reintegrated 812 of them.

“On the 1st of February 2019, the adults’ shelter was opened, and 178 adult female victims of trafficking have been cared for, and we are still receiving and caring for victims at the shelter now,” she says. “The Children’s Shelter was also fully operationalised in August 2020 and has cared for 98 child victims.”

She adds that the department received and investigated 108 cases, 42 being sex trafficking, 60 labour trafficking and six related cases that started as human trafficking offences.

“Thirty–four cases were sent to court for prosecution. Out of those, 22 cases were prosecuted involving 37 defendants, and we have gained 17 convictions for the country,” she adds.

Abudu says that even though a lot has been achieved, it is still not enough and calls for stronger partnerships to reduce human trafficking incidences, strengthen government institutions, and increase public knowledge.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Rural women are often targeted by human traffickers and taken across borders in Africa and forced to become sex workers. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Apr 29 2022 (IPS)

Desperate to escape the rural area where she was engaged in the informal economy in Kayonza, a district in Eastern Rwanda, Sharon* made a long and arduous journey to Kenya in the hope of a well-paid job.

An unidentified individual contacted her, paid for her ticket, and gave her a modest amount of pocket money to travel to Kenya by road. The person told the 19-year-old she was traveling to take up an “employment opportunity”.

However, Sharon found herself in sexual servitude at a karaoke bar on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Sharon’s job was to bow elegantly to all customers at the door and usher them inside the bar.

“I was also hired as a nightclub dancer and sometimes forced by my employer to engage in sexual intercourse with clients to earn a living,” the high school graduate told IPS in an interview.

Like Sharon, activists say the number of young women from rural areas trafficked into the sex trade across many East African countries is growing. The young women are lured with the promise of good jobs or marriage. Instead, they are sold into prostitution in cities such as Nairobi (Kenya) and Kampala (Uganda).

Both activists and lawmakers warn that people with hidden agendas could target young women from Rwanda.

The process of trafficking most of these young women into neighboring countries is complex. It involves false promises to their families and victims in which they are promised a “better life”, activists say.

In many cases, traffickers lure young women from rural villages to neighboring countries with the promise of well-paid work. Then, victims are transferred to people who become their enslavers – especially in dubious hotels and karaoke bars.

While Rwanda has tried to combat human trafficking, law enforcement agencies stress that the main challenge revolves around the financial and other assistance for repatriated victims. Limited budgets of the institutions in charge of investigation and rehabilitation of the victims have meant that these programmes are not working optimally.

The chairperson of the East African Legislative Assembly’s Committee on Regional Affairs and Conflict Resolution, Fatuma Ndangiza, warned that if no urgent measures are undertaken, the problem is likely to worsen.

“Most of these young women without employment were victims of a well-established human trafficking ring operating under the guise of employment agencies in the region,” Ndangiza told IPS.

The latest figures by Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) indicate that 119 cases of human trafficking, illegal migration, and smuggling of migrants in the region were investigated in the last three years.

These involved 215 victims, among whom 165 were females and 59 males.

Driven by the demand for cheap labor and commercial sex, trafficking rings across the East African region capitalize primarily on economic and social vulnerabilities to exploit their victims, experts said.

But estimates by the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM)  show that the lack of relevant legislation and needed administrative institutions across the East African region have continued to give traffickers and smugglers an undue advantage to carry on their activities.

To prevent human trafficking, Rwanda has adopted several measures, including passing a new law in 2018.

Under the current legislation, offenders face up to 15 years of imprisonment, but activists say this measure is not enough deterrent.

Although law enforcement officers were trained in combatting human trafficking, Evariste Murwanashyaka, a  fervent defender of human rights who is based in Kigali, told  IPS that enforcing laws is a challenge, mainly because it is hard to detect women who are engaged in sex work or other forms of sexual exploitation in neighboring countries.

Murwanashyaka is the Program Manager of Rwandan based Umbrella of Human Rights Organization known as ‘Collectif des Ligues et Associations de Défense des Droits de l’Homme’ (CLADHO)

“Young women are still more likely to become targets of trafficking due to the growing demand for sexual slavery across the region, ” he said.

Now with the COVID-19 pandemic, activists say there is not only a lack of awareness but people, especially youth, who are unaware they are victims of a human trafficking offense.

“Most informal job offers from abroad for these young people [from Rwanda] are  associated with illicit businesses, such as human trafficking, mainly of women, and their sexual and labor exploitation,” Murwanashyaka told IPS

According to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, the increasing unemployment rates, malnourishment, and school closures have increased human trafficking.

Meanwhile, RIB spokesperson, Dr Thierry Murangira is convinced that human trafficking is a transnational organized crime.

“Transnational organized crimes require the involvement of more than one jurisdiction and regional cooperation to investigate and prosecute the crime,” he said.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavors of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labor, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Mit Al Korama’s youth (left) spent five months at the warehouse waiting for the trip to Italy (Ahmed Emad is in the middle and Ibrahim Abdullah is on the left). The group (right) during their kidnapping ordeal by Libyan militias. The group were waiting for the ransom to be paid. Credit: Supplied

By Hisham Allam
Cairo, Egypt, Apr 21 2022 (IPS)

Last June, Mit Al Korama’s youth gathered in front of one of their homes on a summer evening to tell stories of citizens from the village and neighboring villages who had successfully crossed the Mediterranean to Europe.

Some, they heard, returned with a large sum of money and built European-style homes for their families. Others chose to stay in the European Union and encouraged their brothers to do so.

A young man in his thirties from Talkha named “Mohamed Fakih” was among the group, and he said he assisted many people illegally migrating to the Italian coasts.

Despite the Egyptian government’s warnings against illegal immigration and not visiting Libya, some young people continue to attempt to migrate illegally to Italy via Libya. Egyptian and Libyan smugglers put them at risk of drowning or kidnapping by gangs and armed militias demanding ransoms.

Fakih informed the Mit Al Korama youth that spots on a boat leaving for Italy in ten days were available. That spot could be theirs if they paid him 5000 US dollars.

Ahmed Emad, a 27-year-old with a diploma in tourism and hotels but no job, was one of five young people from the village keen on seeking a better life in Europe. To fund this trip to Italy, his family sold everything they owned and borrowed the rest.

Ahmed Emad’s story of a dream for riches in Europe is one experienced by many desperate youths seeking a better life. Credit: Supplied

“The mediator directed us to the Egyptian-Libyan border city of Salloum, where we met a group of smugglers who assisted us in crossing the border through mountain roads and out of sight of border guards. We arrived in Al-Masad, Libya,” Emad told IPS. “The smugglers began to treat us differently there.”

“As soon as we arrived, they pushed us into a huge building full of smuggled goods, fuel, sheep and cows, and people like us waiting for their turn to emigrate,” Emad added.

The smugglers never stopped abusing and insulting the immigrants in the warehouse. When they complained to Fakih, the mediator who had taken their money, he advised them to wait patiently until the boat arrived to take the group to their final destination.

“We were held captive in the warehouse for five and a half months, sleeping in the cow barn, drinking from empty gasoline containers, and eating only one meal per day,” Emad added.

Emad Eldanaf, his father, said they had no contact with the smugglers in Libya and were initially unable to reach the young men, making them highly anxious. Finally, contact was made.

“There were 28 men from our village on the boat. The most recent group returned in the last two weeks, and we’re still negotiating with the militia about the remaining three,” Eldanaf told IPS.

Emad’s experiences were mirrored by Ibrahim Abdullah and his younger brother Kamal.

“We moved between several warehouses between Sabratha and Zuwara – 120 km west of Tripoli. On the eve of November 9, they told us we would sail from the Ajilat coast to Italy in hours,” Abdullah told IPS.

“Eventually, we all moved to the boat, about 50 of us.”

The boat set sail at 11 pm.

“By dawn, water was seeping into the boat. We tried to drain the water until we became frustrated,” Abdullah explained. “Death was only a few feet away.”

According to Abdullah, the immigrants requested assistance from the Italian authorities, who said they would wait until the boat was closer to the Italian coast before intervening.

Tunisian authorities also ignored them. It was evident that they would sink with the boat and perish.

“We knew calling the Libyans would get us arrested, but we went ahead and did it anyway,” Abdullah said, explaining their desperation.

“At noon, Libyan militia troops captured us and transported us to Tripoli port, splitting us into two groups, one sent to Prison 55 and the other in Bir Al Ghanam prison.

Bir al-Ghanam is a town in western Libya, located south of Zawiya. It was the site of several battles during the Libyan Civil War. Anti-Gaddafi forces took control of it on August 7, 2011, just weeks before taking Tripoli.

“We were referred to as ‘the goods’ by Libyan militias. They made us wish for death to be free of this agony. My father agreed to pay the ransom for our release after I pleaded with him,” Abdullah recalls. “When the militias suspected that some families would not pay the ransom, they killed the detainees and threw their bodies in the desert. Two members of my group died and were thrown into the desert without being buried.”

Emad, Kamal, and Abdullah remained with their militia for another four months. Lice and scabies were their lieutenants the entire time. Finally, their family reached an agreement with the kidnappers, agreeing to pay US dollars 6000 for Kamal and Abdullah, while Emad’s family had to pay US dollars 5000 to free him.

Haj Riad, a Libyan smuggler, acted as the middleman in the ransom payment. The money was transferred to several Libyan bank accounts, where he distributed it to militias and transported the three young men back to the Egyptian border.

Umm Ayman, a 60-year-old mother, sold a few of her land carats to raise 150,000 Egyptian Pounds (10,000 US dollars) to assist her two sons with their travels. Two of her three sons were then kidnapped with Emad and Abdullah.

A few months later, she had to sell her house, sheep, a cow, and the rest of her belongings, to pay US dollars 13,000 to have them back.

“We sold everything we owned to allow our children to travel, and we borrowed to bring them back. Even my mother’s gold earrings had to be sold to pay the ransom,” Ayman told IPS.

“When my children returned by the end of January, they sought out Fakih, the mediator, and found he had fled with his family.”

The family believes he continues to entrap victims into the vicious circle as young people try to seek a better life in Europe.

A Son’s Desperate Plea to his Father

“I beg you, father, get us out of here; my friend Muhammad Misbah is in good health, and I was on the verge of death yesterday. Do whatever it takes to get us out of here; pay the ransom, whatever it takes. You and Ibrahim’s mother try to do anything. We are so insulted here; our bodies are weak and sick. – An audio message from Ahmed Emad to his father.

 
This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Traffickers target unemployed youth in Kenya. While the government is working to combat this crime, COVID-19 impacted their efforts. Here a police officer is in discussion with a community policing committee that works together to combat criminal activities, like trafficking. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Apr 13 2022 (IPS)

Ahmed Bakari’s ill-fated journey to ‘greener pastures’ started with a social media private message from a stranger back in 2017. The message said an international NGO was recruiting teachers and translators to work in Somalia.

“I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Communication in 2013. Other than for the odd job here and there, I was mostly unemployed,” Bakari tells IPS.

“My mother raised five of us single-handedly, and I was her hope. Taking loans to put me through university, but it was all amounting to nothing.”

With a starting salary of $500 and additional food and housing allowances, Bakari had no dilemma – he was going to Somalia.

Growing up in Lamu, a small group of islands situated on Kenya’s northern coastline, he knew that Somalia was not far from the border, and the journey there was uneventful.

Upon arrival in Somalia, he says, the unexpected happened. Bakari was taken to a house where he cooked and cleaned for between 10 to 20 men – without pay.

“I do not know what was going on in that house because they would come in and go at all hours. I lived under lock and key for one year. One day there was a disagreement among them, and a fight broke out. During the chaos, I found my chance to leave the house,” he recounts.

“I remained in Somalia for another six weeks until somebody helped me get to the Dadaab border. I crossed over into Kenya like a refugee because I was afraid of telling my story.”

Young people in Nairobi and Kenya’s coastal regions are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking into Somalia. Despite ongoing instability in the horn of Africa nation, many young people are lured with promises of opportunities to work in humanitarian NGOs and as teachers and translators.

Bakari, who now runs an eatery in Mombasa, says criminal groups are particularly interested in young people who can speak Arabic, Swahili, English and Somali.

“Criminals take advantage of historical marginalisation of communities in the coastal region, very high youth unemployment rates and poverty. They also use radical Islamic teachings to lure young and desperate minds,” Abubakar Mahmud, an activist against human trafficking, tells IPS.

“There was a time when the Pwani si Kenya (Swahili for ‘coastal region is not Kenya’) was gaining traction as a backlash campaign against the national government. These are the emotions that terror groups are happy to stir and exploit,”  Mahmud says, adding they also take advantage of the high levels of youth unemployment.

According to the most recent census released in 2020, youth unemployment is a serious issue in Kenya. More than a third of Kenyan youth aged 18 to 34 years are unemployed, and the situation has worsened since COVID-19.

Kenya National Crime Research Centre says this East African nation is a source, transit route and destination for human trafficking victims. People from Uganda, Burundi and Ethiopia are trafficked into Kenya for hard labour. Ethiopians are trafficked into South Africa for hard labour.

The US Department of State 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report finds that the government of Kenya does not fully meet “the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.”

These efforts include the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2010, which criminalised sex trafficking and labour trafficking and prescribed penalties of 30 years to life imprisonment, a fine of not less than $274,980 or both.

The government also allocated $183,320 to the National Assistance Trust Fund for Assisting Victims of Trafficking in 2020-2021.

The report finds that “criminals involved in terrorist networks lure and recruit Kenyan adults and children to join non-state armed groups, primarily al-Shabab in Somalia, sometimes with fraudulent promises of lucrative employment.”

For years, Al-Shabab has operated clandestine bases in Somalia just across Kenya’s eastern border, enabling the terror group to expand its operations into Kenya and other East African countries.

“From my experience, they will befriend you and some of your friends and relatives on social media. You will feel safe because you have friends in common. They will even tell you that you grew up in the same neighbourhood years ago. You end up trusting them very quickly and getting involved with them without asking the right questions,” Bakari cautions.

Mukaru Muthomi, a police officer with the National Police Service, says that in 2019, Kenya banned trade between Kenya and Somalia through the Lamu border due to insecurity and combat criminal activities such as existing networks and syndicates dealing in human trafficking.

The Lamu border crossing is one of four that join Kenya and Somalia, and other border points are in Kenya’s Mandera, Wajir and Garissa Counties.

He says the government is vigilant along the Dadaab and Mandera border point routes used by Somali refugees crossing into Kenya. Kenya hosts more than 500,000 refugees from Somalia.

Mahmud says human trafficking is a pressing issue in Kenya partly because criminals are increasingly taking advantage of the large numbers of refugees from Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia to complicate the country’s fight against human trafficking.

In 2019, the government identified 853 victims of human trafficking and another 383 victims in 2020. Mahmud is quick to warn that many cases have gone unreported, and COVID-19 hampered efforts to counter human trafficking. He also says there are not enough officers to combat human trafficking.

Nevertheless, Kenya’s Trafficking in Persons Report shows the country’s investigative capacity of the Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit is gradually increasing. Personnel increased from 33 to 37 officers deployed in human trafficking hotspots. There are 27 officers in Nairobi and 10 in Mombasa, with plans to open a third office in Kisumu.

“Increasing personnel is good, but the government must address the root of these problems because human trafficking into and out of Kenya is interlinked with poverty. Find job opportunities for young people,” Mahmud observes.

The census, he says, showed that “3.7 million young people between 18 and 34 years without a job were not even actively looking for work because they have no hope of finding employment in Kenya. This is a ticking time bomb.”

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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A girl looks for toys among the gifts left for refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine. With women and children forming the overwhelming majority of people fleeing the country, rights groups are concerned about trafficking and sexual violence. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 30 2022 (IPS)

States must do more to protect women and children fleeing war in Ukraine, rights groups have urged, amid growing concerns they are falling prey to trafficking and sexual violence.

Since the Russian invasion on February 24, an estimated 3.5 million people have fled the country, while another 6.5 million have been internally displaced.

Local and international humanitarian organisations have warned these people – overwhelmingly women and children –  are vulnerable to trafficking and gender-based violence within and outside the country as they make often long, dangerous journeys in a desperate bid to reach safety.

“Wherever people have to flee their homes, there will be vulnerabilities [for those fleeing]. The risks are rampant in any situation like that. We are deeply concerned about reports of trafficking and sexual violence,” Shabia Mantoo, spokesperson at UNHCR, told IPS.

Ukraine’s refugee crisis –  described by the UN as the world’s fastest-growing since WWII – has seen millions of people flee to neighbouring states Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova.

While there has been a massive humanitarian response in those countries and across Europe and in other states, much of the help refugees have been given has been organised ad-hoc by aid groups and individual volunteers.

Organisations and volunteers working with refugees at border crossings and transit points have warned a lack of official organisation has left those arriving at serious risk of exploitation.

Nico Delvino, a researcher at Amnesty International who has been monitoring the situation at Polish border crossings with Ukraine, told IPS: “The system [for receiving refugees] exposes them to risks, not just trafficking and sexual violence, but other predatory behaviour.

“The outpouring of solidarity from volunteers has been heart-warming, but it has not been matched by the state’s organisation. There is little or no coordination, there is a lack of management at the borders. Anyone can show up and put a vest on and say they are a volunteer. There are no checks on volunteers. It is a chaotic and dangerous situation.”

There have already been anecdotal reports of trafficking and sexual violence against refugees.

Volunteers and aid groups who spoke to IPS said they had heard of women who had been raped, attacked, solicited by men, or approached in what appeared to be attempts by criminals to traffic them.

Interpol has now deployed officers to help investigate alleged trafficking in Moldova, where 376,000 refugees have fled since the start of the war, while local police forces are reportedly investigating alleged incidents in other countries.

Meanwhile, the specific profile of the refugee crisis may have exacerbated the vulnerability of those fleeing, say aid organisations.

The overwhelming majority of those trying to leave Ukraine are women and children – the UNHCR told IPS they make up as many as 90% of those fleeing the war – as a Ukrainian government order has banned men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country.

“What is different about this crisis of displaced people is that when you have women with children and old people, they have multiple responsibilities, and responsibilities have always been used by traffickers as a means of control – threats to family are made. But now, these can be made directly. That these women have multiple responsibilities makes them more vulnerable,” Eliza Galos, Migrant Protection and Assistance Programme Co-ordinator at International Organisation for Migration in Ukraine, told IPS.

Children are at particular risk, with a number of the latter often making journeys unaccompanied.

UNICEF has said in a statement  that the war in Ukraine has displaced More than half of Ukraine’s children displaced after one month of war (unicef.org) 4.3 million children, with 1.8 million of those having crossed into neighbouring countries as refugees.

Missing Children Europe, an umbrella group for 24 child-protection organisations across Europe, has warned that many unaccompanied minors are disappearing at the borders.

“There are so many children […] that we lost track of,” Aagje Ieven, secretary-general of Missing Children Europe, told international media: “This is a huge problem, not just because it means they easily go missing, and are difficult to find, but also because it makes trafficking so easy.”

However, it is not just the people leaving Ukraine who are in danger of being exploited.

There are an estimated 6.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) within Ukraine, and humanitarian groups say many among them are also at risk of falling into the hands of trafficking gangs or being subjected to sexual violence.

“Like refugees, IDPs are also facing threats. The threats to women are sexual violence and exploitation. For IDP children, for various reasons – for example, men having to stay in Ukraine and mothers being abroad working – we see many of them ending up travelling alone. We are worried about the risk of trafficking of these unaccompanied children,” Galos said.

Past experience suggests trafficking gangs are taking advantage of the dire situation in Ukraine, with many women and children forced to suddenly leave their homes with their family networks broken and their financial security often under threat.

A 2018 report by the Council of Europe highlighted the increased vulnerability to human trafficking of millions of IDPs who were forced to flee their homes following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the armed conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Meanwhile, IOM estimates  that 46,000 Ukrainians suffered from human trafficking during 2019-2021 alone.

“Human trafficking cases [in Ukraine] are difficult to identify, not least because there is a state of war at the moment, but it is reasonable to assume that it is going on – it happened before after the Crimea annexation and conflict in Luhansk and Donetsk – and it can eventually be detected,” said Galos.

Aid groups say authorities in countries receiving Ukrainian refugees must put in place proper systems to register and follow up on those arriving and ensure they do not become victims of criminal gangs or others looking to exploit their vulnerable situation.

International humanitarian groups, such as UNHCR, UNICEF, and others, are working with local authorities in countries receiving refugees to set up systems to, among others, vet volunteers at border crossings and transit centres.

Meanwhile, in some places, NGOs are handing out information leaflets to refugees, warning them to be careful of accepting offers of accommodation or transport from strangers, while hotlines have been set up for people to report any suspicions they have of potential criminal activity or danger.

Romy Hawatt, founding member of the Global Sustainability Network (GSN) noted in a recent interview with IPS that “traffickers target the most vulnerable and it is the women and children that fit this category, and especially those that are from poorer communities, perhaps are refugees and those who lack education fall into the highest risk category of those who are trafficked.”

In a statement, Helga Gayer, President of GRETA, the Council of Europe’s expert group on trafficking, said: “People fleeing war are physically and psychologically weakened, unfamiliar with their new surroundings and highly vulnerable to falling prey to criminals. Structures receiving refugees must ensure that they are informed of their rights, in a language they can understand, and provided with psychological and material support. The authorities must take steps to prevent fraudulent offers of transportation, accommodation, and work, and strengthen safety protocols for unaccompanied children, linking them to national child protection systems.”

However, at some border crossings and transit centres, there seems to still be no way for refugees to check on the veracity of any offers they may receive.

“One refugee we spoke to told us she was looking for transport and was aware that she needed to be careful and check that anyone she took a ride from was trustworthy, but she didn’t know how she could check that. We don’t know what she did in the end because there is no way of following up on people. There is no registration of who is coming or leaving the centres, nor who they are leaving with,” said Delvino.

Notwithstanding any efforts by authorities to strengthen protection against exploitation, the situation for the women and children involved in the crisis, and the risks they face, is not expected to improve anytime soon.

“Women and girls face greater risk in conflict displacement situations. Refugee numbers are going up, and until there is an end to what is going on in Ukraine, we will continue to see people on the move, and we can expect to see displacement continue,” said Mantoo.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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For a country like Mexico, which in recent years has made the fight against corruption one of its highest priorities, a story published earlier this year fell like a bucket of cold water.

One of the most important international rankings on public administration, the Corruption Perception Index created by Transparency International, stated that Mexico was paralyzed during the pandemic: the country, for the second consecutive year, had a rating of 31 points out of 100.

Rosi Orozco

The 31 points put Mexico on a par with nations ravaged by corruption and experiencing recent democratic crises, such as Gabon, Niger and Papua New Guinea.

Denmark, Finland and New Zealand are in the first places and Mexico seems closer than previously thought to the worst ranked countries, such as Syria, Somalia and South Sudan.

To make the news worse, the 31 points obtained by Mexico puts it in a dishonorable place: the worst evaluated country in terms of corruption of the 38 countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The information revealed earlier this year is especially harsh for the current administration, which came to power in December 2018 with the promise of rooting out corruption and establishing a new public morality.

The efforts of the current government have been extensive and well known. Among them, the simplification and digitization of procedures, the use of technological platforms to make public purchases transparent, more audits in real time and detailed publication of the federal budget. All of that fuels the battle against the rottenness in government.

However, there is still a long way to go, especially in the areas of law enforcement and victim assistance, where pending issues remain.

A few months ago, one of the most important events for public administration — the III Convention of Anticorruption Prosecutors brought together top experts to discuss how to move Mexico towards the best international practices.

The venue was the state of Coahuila, which in ten years achieved an amazing transformation: from being a drug cartel land to one of the safest regions in the country.

The key was to make changes that were apparently insignificant, but that dealt strong blows to the social base of organized crime: since 2011, the illegal businesses that corruption in government kept open —such as casinos, cockfights, clandestine bars, table dance and newspaper ads promoting prostitution were banned.

These measures had an immediate effect on peace in the region, since they cut off an important flow of money to the drug cartels, which were unable to pay bribes to public officials and buy the wills of the people who lived in their strongholds.

In 2016, following the path of Coahuila, Tamaulipas closed those illegal businesses and went from the third most insecure state to the 26th, according to official figures. Edomex has also advanced with a firm hand to prevent human traffickers from disguising themselves as businessmen.

Specialists such as the prosecutor in the Fight Against Corruption at the Attorney General’s Office, María de la Luz Mijangos Borja, the Coahuila anti-corruption prosecutor Jesús Homero Flores, prosecutor Gerardo Márquez Guevara, among others, discussed these measures and new public policies that can lead Mexico to the next frontier of human rights.

They focused on the road ahead: the urgency of installing state anti-corruption systems, creating citizen councils on public security, implementing external audits and articulating crime prevention networks

During my speech I focused on the debts of the past: the need to recognize the burdens that stagnated us with the dishonorable 31 points out of 100 that Transparency International evaluated.

In Mexico, it is a reality that there are still public servants who sit down with owners of illegal businesses to accept the bodies of girls and women in exchange for impunity.

There are still judges who close cases by putting piles of dirty money on top of victims’ files. And there is still the habit of purposely losing lawsuits that affect the entire country so that a few get richer.

I remember the case of the former president of the Federal Court of Fiscal and Administrative Justice in the state of Tlaxcala, Juan Manuel Jiménez, supposedly a great judge, who today is out of that important position because he had 52 folders with irrefutable evidence of human trafficking, kidnappings and rapes and yet he freed the criminals involved.

For the fight against corruption to advance, it’s urgent to stop the flow of dirty money, but that is not enough.

The conclusions of the III Convention of Anti-Corruption Prosecutors are clear: small actions can lead to big changes, but only if it is accompanied by a moral renewal and the certainty that we all have the right to a life free of the evils of corruption.

That compass must be the dignity of people and their value as human beings. If we’re heading there as a country, there’s no way we can go wrong. We will move in the right direction.

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The Covid-19 pandemic affected countries and people globally, at the same time exacerbated vulnerabilities such as modern-day slavery. There are over 40.3 million people estimated to be in modern-day slavery, and certain population groups, sectors and geographies such as children, migrant workers, women and girls that were already vulnerable, became more vulnerable to recruitment and exploitation during the pandemic. The United Nations has called the pandemic more than a health crisis, “it is an economic crisis, a humanitarian crisis, and a human rights crisis.”

Romy Hawatt

“The world has slipped backwards”, said Romy Hawatt, founding member of the Global Sustainability Network (GSN) in an exclusive interview given to IPS News. “The modern-day abuses of human rights and dignity are completely abhorrent and unacceptable in all its forms and at all levels. Governments everywhere are falling short on their responsibilities to protect their citizens (especially children) and are not putting in the proportionate focus, attention and resources into fighting these crimes against humanity,” Hawatt said.

As a ‘social entrepreneur’ he has used his business success and platforms to directly develop, fund and implement solutions for social, cultural and environmental issues. What started many years ago as informal charity work, eventually turned him into becoming a philanthropist, supporter and benefactor of various charities and organizations, GSN being one of them.

Earlier in 2020, more than 50 independent UN human rights experts warned that the COVID-19 pandemic played into the hands of slavers and traffickers, and it required stronger government measures to prevent exploitation of vulnerable people. The statement urged governments and businesses to recognize how the loss of jobs, income or land could put vulnerable groups at great risk and that exploitation could mean forced labor, including the worst forms of child labor, or being sold, trafficked and sexually exploited.

This report states more than 70% of the 4.8 million sex exploitation victims are in the Asia and Pacific region. 1.5 million victims are living in developed countries, with an estimated 13,000 enslaved in the UK.

Romy Hawatt became a founding member of GSN a network organization which was founded in 2014 by Raza Jafar, The RT Rev Lord Bishop Alastair Redfern and S. E. Mons. Marcelo Sanchez got together with a vision for a world free of slavery, child labor and human trafficking. This was initiated after the signing of a Joint Declaration Against Modern Slavery by Pope Francis, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew from Greece and senior representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhists faiths.

With a rapidly growing number of change makers, and influencers joining GSN, Hawatt says, “each one of them play a prominent role in creating awareness, educating, articulating and lobbying the powers to be at the faith, government, academia, business, media and sports levels to harness the power of connections and collaborations to help achieve the United Nations Sustainability Development (SDG) Goal 8 and 8.7 objectives which focuses on ending modern-day slavery, human and human organ trafficking. The plan going forward is to get further on to the front foot and make as much of a sustainable impact as possible, by utilizing all mediums and platforms available to articulate, inspire, invigorate and support a plethora of influencers and collaborators like those associated with the GSN to undercover and expose all forms of human exploitation”.

As governments around the world from the time when the pandemic began in 2020, mandated lockdowns and worked with limited pandemic response opportunities, traffickers adapted their methods to the pandemic, including social media and other online platforms to recruit new victims.

“Women and girls have been recruited, often locally or online, for sexual exploitation, especially in private apartments. Children have been particularly affected – out of school and needing to support parents who have lost their livelihoods, increasingly targeted by traffickers at the local level and online, says this report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Traffickers responded to the closure of bars, clubs and massage parlours (due to lockdowns, curfews and other measures to control the spread of COVID-19) by moving the sexual exploitation of adults and children to private homes and apartments. In some countries traffickers have also capitalized on social distancing measures to transport victims across national borders, knowing that law enforcement has, at times, been unable to carefully inspect vehicles,” the report states.

According to this report, there are at least three ways in which COVID-19 impacts efforts to end modern day slavery: 1) heightening risks for those already exploited; 2) increasing the risks of exploitation, including child labour and child marriage; and 3) disrupting response efforts.

“Very simply put, traffickers target the most vulnerable and it is the women and children that fit this category, and especially those that are from poorer communities, perhaps are refugees, and those who lack education fall into the highest risk category of those who are trafficked.

“This is not just a third world problem; human trafficking is happening literally everywhere. Wittingly or unwittingly, we are all consumers that create demand and work in or drive supply chains that use and abuse fellow human beings. We therefore have an obligation to help fix it,” said Hawatt.

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Trafficking survivor turned activist, and consultant Shamere McKenzie trains authorities and mentors survivors. The use of technology and awareness of how to spot and avoid traps used by human traffickers. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
Kingston, Jan 31 2022 (IPS)

A single line at the end of the United States State Department 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report made headlines in Jamaica and had many perturbed. “Some police allegedly facilitated or participated in sex trafficking,” it read.

While the report cited no incidents, investigations, or police officers’ convictions for sex trafficking, Jamaicans on social media called for investigations. People cited the increasing levels of sexual abuse reported during the COVID-19 pandemic as justification.

US authorities have categorised Jamaica as “a source, transit, and destination country for adults and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labour”.

Manager of the Trafficking in Persons (TiP) Secretariat Chenee Russell Robinson told journalists recently that more than 110 victims of sex trafficking were rescued in the last ten years. At an average of ten per year, she believes the number is far too high “because this number represents only the tip of the iceberg”.

Some matters are before the court, and investigations into other activities were ongoing, noting that while girls make up the majority of sex trafficking victims, there are a growing number of boys, too, she said.

Between 2015 and 2019, the number of teens reported missing on the island averaged approximately 1,400 a year, data from the Child Protection and Family Services Agency shows. With numbers increasing annually and the figures for those returning home or recovered declining, the spectre of a rising sex trafficking trade is becoming one of the biggest worries for local authorities.

Child protection activists believe that most missing children who do not return home are victims of sex trafficking. Here, it is not uncommon for families, including mothers, to traffic their girl children in exchange for monetary or material payment, police say. This form of child sex trafficking may be more widespread in some communities.

Experts say that children who are sent by their parents to live with their more affluent relatives in urban areas regularly become victims. And according to the State Department report: “Sex trafficking of Jamaican women and children, including boys, occurs on streets and in nightclubs, bars, massage parlours, hotels and private homes, and resort towns”.

So, while the report commends Jamaica for its strides and multi-agency approach to combatting human trafficking, it scolds the government for reduced spending, a fall-off in apprehension and training. It also criticised the absence of “long-term services to support victims’ reintegration, prevent re-exploitation, or sustain protection throughout lengthy court cases”.

The report noted that Jamaica “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.” These efforts included a trafficking conviction with significant prison terms and restitution paid to the victim, a national referral mechanism that aims to standardise procedures for victim identification, referral to cross-government entities services and an annual report.

Significantly, authorities hold up several improvements The Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Suppression and Punishment) Act, first enacted in 2007. Amendments speed up the prosecution of cases by introducing bench trials and increasing the penalties.

On July 9, 2013, the government amended the Act to increase incarceration periods to 20 years. The 2021 amendments removed the alternate and often controversial fine in place of imprisonment.

“Now a person convicted of trafficking can only be imprisoned or imprisoned and fined, so you cannot be fined only,” Russell explained.

Trafficking survivor turned activist, and consultant Shamere McKenzie told IPS in an interview that community awareness, involvement, and the use of technology to enhance the safety of possible victims could be the tools that tip Jamaica into Tier 1.

“There’s a lot we can do as a community to help our young people shape their morals and values and build their sense of awareness,” she said, noting that traffickers can recognise people with low self-esteem.

Since 2016 authorities have funded the development of two apps – Stay Alert and Travel Plan – to make it safer for especially young girls and women who use public transport. McKenzie believes communities and parents must learn to use technologies to keep their children safe.

“We should be teaching people how to protect themselves, how to memorise numbers, develop code words, develop safety methods and use text messages to protect themselves,” said McKenzie, who mentors survivors and educates others on how to spot and avoid the traps.

A former student-athlete, she was lured by someone she thought was a caring friend into 18-months of living hell. Sidelined by a serious hamstring injury, the young Jamaican’s athletics scholarship to a top United States university was suspended. She was forced to work for the extra money she needed for school fees and rent when she accepted a friend’s help.

The short-term offer of a rent-free basement apartment and ‘extra work’ at the trafficker’s nightclub turned into forced sex work after being beaten into submission by a man she believed to be her friend.

While this episode took place in the US, it is not uncommon for Jamaicans and foreigners to be lured young women into prostitution by offering them jobs or simply ’a better life’.

In 2016, a court sentenced Rohan Ebanks to 40 years and imprisoned and fined his common-law wife Voneisha Reeves after trafficking a 14-year-old Haitian girl. The judge convicted Ebanks for rape, trafficking, and facilitating trafficking in person while his co-accused had pleaded guilty to facilitating trafficking.

The fisherman had met the girl’s father on one of his many trips to Haiti and had convinced him to send her to Jamaica for a better life. Three years after the ordeal began, police rescued the teen from Ebanks and Reeve’s home, where she had been looking after the couple’s children.

As the pandemic progresses, Robinson and other members of the Traffic in Persons (TiP) task force warn parents that traffickers have gone online, making it more difficult to track them. They’ve also warned teens and their parents that families are also trafficking their relatives.

The 110 rescued by the TiP task force are among the .04 per cent of the estimated human trafficking survivors worldwide identified. The number is an indicator that most go undetected.

Experts conclude that assessing the scope of human trafficking is difficult because many cases go undetected. However, estimates are between 20 million and 40 million people n modern slavery today earn the perpetrators roughly 150 billion US dollars annually. Some 99 billion US dollars comes from commercial sexual exploitation.

“We must begin to teach our youth to use the technology we have to protect themselves,” McKenzie said.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN )  is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Friends Ajay and Durgesh are returned to their families with the help of ActionAid India and the All India Bonded Labour Liberation Front. The boys were tricked into bonded labour by a trusted fellow villager. Credit: ActionAid

By Mehru Jaffer
Lucknow, India, Jan 28 2022 (IPS)

Friends Ajay and Durgesh were lured from the same village in the remote and poverty-stricken countryside of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) in January 2021.

Friends Ajay and Durgesh were lured from the same village in the remote and poverty-stricken countryside of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) in January 2021.

The boys, aged 16, were whisked away from their homes, transported, and sold as bonded labour to a garment factory in Rajkot in the western state of Gujarat. Rajkot is some 2000 km from Ajay and Durgesh’s village in UP.

Along with two other boys from the same village, Sanjay (15) and Pavan (14), Ajay and Durgesh were befriended by a man, only identified as Gulab, and promised an eight-hour a day job, with a salary of Rs 7500 (about US 100 dollars) per month at a garment factory. The boys accepted the offer immediately because Gulab was from the same village and had known them since childhood.

“At the factory, the boys were thrown in with dozens of other children who were never paid. They were woken at 7 am and forced to work till 11 pm. The factory owner threatened to kill them if they stepped out of the factory,” Dalsinghar told IPS speaking from Lucknow. “The children were abused and kicked when the supervisor felt that they were not working fast enough. None of the children was given enough to eat.”

Dalsinghar, who goes by his surname, is a trade union leader and head of the UP office of the All India Bonded Labour Liberation Front. With ActionAid India, Dalsinghar helped to rescue the four boys in August 2021. The boys are now finishing their studies in their village.

These boys are lucky to have escaped the clutches of traffickers. Ajay found a mobile phone one day and quickly called his family. He told them the exact location of the factory in faraway Gujarat.

The family got in touch with Raju, a volunteer with ActionAid India, who lived near their village. With the help of Dalsinghar, Raju and the district administrations of Kushinagar in UP and Rajkot in Gujarat, the boys were rescued, and their eight-month ordeal at the hands of the garment factory owner ended.

There are numerous incidents of victims being deceived by people they know.

Families celebrate the return of four boys trafficked into bonded labour in a factory far from home. Credit: ActionAid, India

Take Gulab as an example. Gulab came from the same village as the four teenagers he trapped and sold to a garment factory owner.

In the hope of avoiding deprivation and starvation in difficult economic times, the teenagers took up Gulab’s offer. They trusted him and fell for his lies because it did not occur to them that he would betray them.

ActionAid quotes other instances when a loved one has tricked victims. When that happens, the victim often does not fight back.

Sita was sold to traffickers by her alcoholic father in a West Bengal village as a bride. She was taken from place to place until she found shelter in an ashram in a city in UP. The police were informed, and she returned to her village in West Bengal.

Frequently missing children and adults cases include abduction and trafficking. Most of the time, missing people are not reported to the police, and if reported, the reports are not registered.

Children from the poorest of low-income families are most vulnerable. They are the main target of traffickers as poor and illiterate families are most likely not to approach authorities for help. There are instances of children and adults leaving home searching for glamour and fortune in big cities like Mumbai. Once there, touts find them and force them to beg or work as sex slaves without remuneration or concern for their health.

ActionAid India continues to work in villages providing support to survivors of trafficking and violence with medical, psycho-social and legal support.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that times are extremely challenging for communities. Schools closures and work opportunities in most villages have shrunk, which means that social activists like Dalsinghar need to be more vigilant today than ever before.

Nobel Peace Prize winners Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai have rescued thousands of children from the worst form of child labour and trafficking.

Satyarthi has led a Bharat Yatra, a nationwide march in India to demand legislation against child rape, child sexual abuse and trafficking.

The Kailash Satyarthi Children Foundation conducted a study in 2020 that concluded there was a high likelihood of an increase in human trafficking in the post-lockdown period for labour.

About 89 per cent of NGOs surveyed said that trafficking of both adults and children for labour would be one of the biggest threats in the post-lockdown period as household incomes of the most vulnerable deplete.

There is concern that the desperate and vulnerable populations of unorganised workers, who are in no position to negotiate wages or their rights, will be a massive pool for cheap labour. Many of these labourers could be children, forced out of school and forced to earn a living.

The fear is that thousands of children will likely be trafficked across the country to work in manufacturing units where they will be paid meagre to no wages and will most likely face extreme physical, mental and sexual violence.

Thousands of children like Ajay, Durgesh, Sanjay and Pavan are easy targets for an organised crime network of human trafficking. It is feared that many more children will be enslaved during the pandemic by those looking for cheap labour when many economic activities have come to a standstill.

“It is tragic when people betray the trust of children,” concludes Dalsinghar.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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A woman hides her face with the poster protesting forced conversions during the Aurat March (Women's March) in 2021. Experts say ‘forced conversions’, usually of underage girls, involve abduction, rape, human trafficking and other serious offences. Activists and experts have called improved legislation. Credit: Aurat March Karachi

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jan 19 2022 (IPS)

Two years after Michelle, 15, was kidnapped, sold, forced to convert to Islam and married to a stranger, relatives still ostracise her.

“My aunts and uncles have left us, and my two older brothers, till a few months ago, were not even talking to me,” said Michelle, talking to IPS over the phone from Faisalabad, in the Punjab province of Pakistan. They believe she has brought dishonour to them.

Her captors and even the cleric who officiated the marriage are free despite committing multiple offences, including abduction, trafficking and rape.

“There are several laws that can be invoked for tackling offences, such as kidnapping and abductions,” lamented Peter Jacob, executive director of the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), a research and advocacy organisation. “But the prosecution has failed to do so.”

Most of the young, female victims belong to the Christian (in Punjab) and Hindu (in Sindh) minorities and followed the same pattern.

Experts and activists demand legislation to prevent ‘forced conversions’ that are often associated with human trafficking, abduction and rape. The white poster on the left says: ‘Forced conversion unacceptable’. The blue poster says: ‘Underage marriage is a crime’. Credit: NCJP.

“This year, at least 62 such cases have been reported,” he told IPS over the phone from the eastern city of Lahore, in the Punjab province.

In the predominantly Muslim nation of 220 million people, the Christians and Hindus in Pakistan are estimated to be 1.27% and 2.14%, respectively, according to the 2017 census.

Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, a member of the national assembly from the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, also the patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council, told IPS “hundreds of cases” remain unreported.

Rukhsana Khokhar, senior project manager at the Karachi-based non-profit, Legal Aid Society, agreed with Vankwani.

“The victim’s family is hesitant to approach the police because of their harsh attitude,” she said.

“The affected family is diffident to report the crime because of the repercussions from the powerful and influential another side.”

Moreover, Khokhar said, the road to justice was tedious and complicated, but it was also expensive and often beyond their means.

In a majority of the cases, the adolescent girls from Hindu communities are uneducated, belong to poor families and are “surrounded by misogyny and patriarchy,” she said.

However, the reason for the conversion of educated Hindu girls belonging to well-off families was different. They want to seek escape from being forced into marrying uneducated Hindu men from their community. The only way out is for them is to convert to Islam.

Khokhar, who has been studying this issue for over a decade, believed that sensitisation was one way of overcoming the issue since societal prejudices remained the most significant barrier. This should include the clerics who officiate the nikah (the ceremony where the couple is legally wed under Islamic law), the investigating officers working on such cases and the district administration.

According to Vankwani, many parliamentarians concede the issue persists, but it is not as rampant as to be of concern.

“I say, even if it’s just one person who is forcibly converted, it becomes our responsibility to stop this practise through legislation,” he says.

Over the years, there have been several attempts to regulate conversions through legislative means without success.

In 2019, the Sindh assembly, for the second time, rejected a bill criminalising forced religious conversions. The first attempt was in 2016.

Safina Javed, Vice President Pakistan Minority Rights Commission, Sindh chapter, holding a poster. Credit: Safina Javed

In 2020, the Standing Committee on Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony had rejected the Protection of Rights of Minorities Bill, 2020, which recommended an age limit of 18 years for conversion.

The parliamentary committee shot down a draft of yet another anti-forced conversion bill opposed earlier in the year by the ministry of religious affairs even before it could be tabled in the national assembly.

The excuse made by the minister for religious affairs, Noorul Haq Qadri, was the “unfavourable” environment.

According to political and integrity risk analyst Huma Yusuf, the current “social, religious and political environment” was too oppressive in a Talibanized Pakistan for the law to find favour from any quarter.

“A key problem is that the term ‘forced conversion’ glosses over what’s really at stake. Reportedly, some 1,000 girls from religious minorities, primarily Hindus, are forced to convert each year,” Yusuf says.

“These conversions can involve abduction, rape, violence, human trafficking and extortion. They also enrich clerics who receive payments for solemnising such marriages, corrupt police officials who take bribes instead of investigating, and magistrates who look the other way. By rejecting the bill, our lawmakers are condoning these other activities. How does this serve Islam?”

The reasons for rejecting the most recent bill by the ministry and the parliamentary committee were the minimum age (set to be 18 years) kept for converting to another religion, a 90-day contemplation period before conversion and testifying before a judge.

The bill stated that the “age will be ascertained based on the child’s birth certificate, school enrolment certificate, or the official database. In the absence of all, the person’s age may be determined through a medical examination”.

“There are about 20 laws that place some or the other restrictions on a person below 18 years of age,” pointed out Jacob, including getting a driver’s license, voting or seeking employment.

“These are reasonable restrictions and enhance the scope of freedoms and protect the rights in those specific areas.”

He also found the 90-day contemplation period logical for a “matter that is individually and socially important and should not be dealt with casually or hastily”.

Further, says Jacob, testifying before a judge eliminates the possibility of covering the crime of kidnapping by marriage and will ensure that conversion is not under any duress, deceit, threat or fraudulent misrepresentation.

Terming the bill a “dam” that was drafted to “restrain the spread of Islam,” Pir Abdul Khaliq, 66, who heads the century-old madressa Ahya Darul Uloom, in Dharki, in Sindh province’s Ghotki district, was happy it was “rejected”.

This madressa (a “hotbed” for alleged conversions), next to the shrine of Khanqah-i-Aalia Qadria Bharchundi Sharif, has a chain of nearly 200 seminaries spread across Sindh (140), Punjab (30) and almost two dozen in Balochistan.

Since he took over the reins of the seminary from his father 50 years ago, he says, he has converted scores of men and women of their “free will”. Talking to IPS over the phone from Dharki, he conceded he was among those who had threatened the ministry that his followers would “come on the streets and hold protests” if the bill was passed.

Having converted entire families, “from 80-year-olds to some as young as eight”, he says no one ever objected to that, so why the need for a law.

“If an underage child converts alongside the parents or guardians, there is no objection,” responded Khokhar. The objection raised was of the conversion of single adolescents like Michelle.

“Why are they never elderly women, why do they have to flee to another city to convert and why are the parents not allowed to meet them?” she asked.

“There is no age to conversion,” responded Khaliq, but insisted he “respected the age of marriage”, which is 18 in Sindh.

However, many underage Hindu girls from Sindh are taken to Punjab, where the legal age of marriage is 16, says Khokhar. She believes it would help halt forced conversion if the age restriction of 18 years for conversion and marriage was “enforced uniformly” throughout the country.

In 2019, two Hindu sisters, Raveena and Reena, made headlines by going to the court seeking protection from their family, saying they had wilfully accepted Islam. The family insisted they were abducted.

The sisters were converted before their marriage in Sindh (where the age for marriage is 18) but married in Punjab (where the age for marriage is 16).

However, the court allowed the sisters to go to their husbands but sent a five-member fact-finding team to ascertain this was not a forced conversion.

The report recommended religious conversion be carried out through a “proper process and be formalised or registered in a court of law”.

At times, says Khaliq, girls eloped and converted to Islam because they had fallen in love with Muslim men and “not for the love of religion”.

In that case, says the cleric, the woman is given “a day or two to think over her decision”. But if she still insists on conversion, he performs the ceremony. “Marriage between a Muslim and Hindu is not permissible in Islam,” he says, and so she converts.

He also pointed out that there are times the woman realises she has made a wrong judgement, but after having fled her parent’s home, the chances of her being accepted by her family are very slim on her return.

“She has little recourse but to follow the original plan of converting to Islam”.

However, he reiterated, his seminary would not perform the nikah if the girl was underage.

“We will convert her only, and then she can go back to her parents till she attains the age of marriage. If her family won’t accept her new religion, and which happens in most cases, we provide her shelter, till she attains the legal age of marriage,” says Khaliq.

Responding to Khokhar’s query of moving to another city to convert, Khaliq explains: “Once the girl elopes with the man and the parents go to the police, many forces come into play, including the feudal lord of the area and the police. Fearful of their life, their first thought is to find a safe place.”

If it were passed, the bill would have effectively addressed this issue by restricting the person applying for a conversion certificate to get it issued from the judge of the area where the non-Muslim resided, says Jacob.

He, however, refuses to let the rejection dampen his spirit. “We have no other option but to fight taking the legal route to ensure a fixed process for conversion is followed,” says Jacob.

Along with Dr Vankwani, he is working with the Council of Islamic Ideology (tasked with giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the government and the parliament) to develop a draft bill that would be acceptable to all faiths.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Trafficked, kept prisoner in Saudi Arabia Wanjiku Njoki was lucky to escape unharmed. She has since found work serving tea for a government parastatal. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 14 2022 (IPS)

Distress calls from vulnerable Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia experiencing mistreatment and torture at the hands of their employers went from 88 in 2019/2020 to 1,025 just one year later.

And this fear is all too familiar for 28-year-old Wanjiku Njoki. The young woman’s whose search for greener pastures in the Gulf landed her in the hands of a physically, mentally, and verbally abusive employer.

In 2018, she travelled to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

That year, Wanjiku was one of an estimated 57,000 to 100,000 Kenyans who travel to Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain annually, for unskilled and semi-skilled work, according to the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Services.

“I heard stories of suffering and death, especially from Saudi Arabia, but the recruiting agent told us they only work with employers who have no history of abuse,” she tells IPS.

“They also lied about the salary. I received $180 per month and not the $700 promised. My employer would pay me, make me sign a document confirming the payment and then steal the money back. When I told them about the missing money, the man and his wife would slap me and refuse to feed me.”

Her life as a shagala, which she says is Arabic for house helper or servant, became a year-long nightmare. With her passport and mobile phone confiscated by her employer, cutting her off from the rest of the world, she saw no way out.

“I worked from 5 am to midnight every day. I spoke only when spoken to and was very depressed. With time, I befriended the gardener who allowed me to secretly use his mobile phone,” she says.

Eventually, she connected with Kenyans in Saudi Arabia through social media, who told her how to escape, get arrested and deported. In 2020, Wanjiku returned to her village in Kagongo, Kiambu County, empty-handed but alive.

Saudi Arabia has a modern slavery prevalence rank index of 138 out of 167 countries as per the Global Slavery Index. The index also estimates that 61,000 people live in modern slavery and that 46 out of every 100 people are vulnerable to modern slavery.

Confronted by unemployment rates that are among the highest in the world as per the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), hundreds of vulnerable women like Wanjiku continue to take, more often than not, a doomed voyage to the Gulf.

The parliamentary committee on labour and social welfare indicate the number of Kenyans working in Saudi Arabia has risen from 55,000 in 2019 to 97,000. The number of deaths and distress incidences has also increased.

In 2019, three deaths were reported to the Kenya embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, rising to 48 deaths in 2020 and, as of September 2021, 41 deaths.

Thus far in 2021, three deaths have been reported in Qatar, one in the United Arab Emirates, two in Kuwait, nine in Oman and two in Bahrain.

“There are at least a hundred backstreet agencies linking workers to the Middle East. Only 29 agencies are government approved and licensed. Many agencies are very greedy and are least concerned with the safety and security of their recruits,” says Suzanne Karanja, a Nairobi-based recruitment agent.

“There is money to be made because a prospective employer will pay me $1,800 to $2,000 per head to facilitate travel to their country. Most agents do not intervene when trouble comes. Their work is done once they receive the commission.”

Karanja says the slave and master scenario presents itself among female domestic workers and employers in the Middle East mainly because employers incur the entire cost of processing travel documents, training, and travel.

She tells IPS that a potential employer pays at least $2500, split between a recruitment agent in the country of origin and the destination country.

If the recruited domestic worker leaves before the contract is completed, employers insist on a refund.

She says the government must step up and crack down on backstreet agents for violating terms of operation, not registering their businesses at a cost of $5000 or paying the $5000 to $10 000 once-off bond.

The $5,000, she says, is supposed to be used to rescue distressed women who, so far, are rescued by Kenyans of goodwill when their distress stories circulate on social media.

Additionally, Karanja speaks of Kenyans illegally detained in the Middle East for challenging poor working conditions and others stranded and living on the streets hoping to be arrested and deported.

“All the deaths are among young women, and their employers say they died of cardiac arrest. How is this possible? Young, energetic women who went through and passed mandatory medical tests dying within one to four years of being in the Middle East?” Karanja questions.

Wanjiku says that the Kenya Embassy in Saudi Arabia should be scrapped because it is notorious for turning a blind eye.

“Families of women who died in the Middle East have video and text message evidence of their loved ones crying for help, but the embassy and agents did nothing to rescue them. The women record themselves on mobile phones and send these videos to their families and social media but help only comes through ordinary Kenyans.”

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Labour and Social Welfare travelled to the Gulf region in April 2021 to find solutions to the crisis.

Karanja stresses that the situation is dire, prompting the Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau to write to the Ministry of Labour in July 2021, strongly recommending a temporary ban on recruitment and export of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia until protection measures are in place.

Thus far, no concrete actions have come from the recommendation or others made by politicians after the Gulf visit. Meanwhile, blinded by poverty and desperation, vulnerable women continue to make their way to the Gulf.

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Desperate for work Kamikazi put her faith in ‘agents’ to find her a job. Instead, she found herself working without pay as a domestic worker in Kuwait. Photo: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Rwanda, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

When Kamikazi * from Gisagara, a district in Southern Rwanda, was forced to quit her job due to COVID-19 last year, she desperately sought other employment.

A former co-worker in the food processing firm where Kamikazi once worked introduced her to “agents”. They assured her she would find decent employment in the Middle East, but little did she know her co-worker had delivered her into the arms of human traffickers.

The following day, with her passport in hand, the 22-year-old approached the agent, who told her to pay about 300 US dollars as a facilitation fee.

“One day, I received a call from the agent who told me that I had to travel to Kenya where I would secure my visa to Kuwait,” Kamikazi told IPS.

At the border between Tanzania and Kenya, the young woman met other members of the human trafficking syndicate who helped her to cross into Kenya unnoticed before travelling by road to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

In Nairobi, she and the ‘agents’ hid residential house with several other young women of different African nationalities. Driven by fear and desperation, she continued with the ruse until the group finally boarded a plane to Kuwait.

“I was told that domestic workers from our region (East Africa) were more highly valued in Kuwait than those from other countries,” she says.

Kamikazi recalls her arrival. The traffickers took their passports and held her and some other young women prisoner in an apartment.

“We believed them because my hope was that the new opportunity would help change my life for the better,” she told IPS.

However, her hopes for a better future were soon dashed.

She was “hired’ by a family – but found herself locked up and unpaid. And if it suited them, her employers would swap the domestic workers between themselves.

“I didn’t have any valid travel document, and I was treated like an animal being traded by one family to another,” she said. To make matters worse, she realised that her ex-colleague, whom she considered a close friend, was responsible for her situation.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in most countries in the Middle East, domestic workers are excluded from labour law, which means they have no social, health or legal protection.

Domestic workers suffer from particularly arduous conditions, and their situation is all the more vulnerable because most countries have no laws governing their employment, the report said. Because they are excluded from labour law provisions, written employment contracts are not required.

Victims of human traffickers often become sexually exploited, forced into labour, slavery and can become victims of organ removal and sale.

Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) has warned that thousands of people fall prey to traffickers who portray themselves as recruitment agents. Vulnerable young women seeking greener pastures fall prey to these traffickers.

Latest estimates by UN Women indicate that while it’s challenging to get exact numbers of victims, the vast majority of detected trafficking victims are women and girls, and three out of four are trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Recent cases of maids being mistreated and assaulted by their employers in the Middle East have shone a light on domestic workers’ hidden and unregulated conditions.

In many cases, these women work illegally, which means they have little protection if their employers abuse them.

With tears in her eyes, Kamikazi remembers her first hours with her new employee.

“After confiscating my passport, I was told to stay at home (…) I was like in a cage,” Kamikazi said.

A typical working day started as early as 4 am and ended at midnight or later. There were no days off, and there was no going out unless to accompany the family somewhere.

“I had to take care of the house pets in addition to cooking, cleaning, washing clothes (…) I wanted to escape because I was abused by my employer but had no idea where to turn,” she said.

Whereas Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) findings indicate that the majority of the victims are intercepted at the point of exit – either at the airport or the different border points of the country – evidence shows there are cases where young women are trafficked to neighbouring countries as a transit for commercial sexual exploitation in the Gulf countries.

An investigation by law enforcement institutions in Rwanda found at least 47 local-based syndicate members were trafficking women from Rwanda to work abroad. As a result, 49 individuals, including company owners, were arrested and prosecuted in courts of law in 2018, according to judicial reports.

The trend shows an upward trajectory, with 131 trafficking victims identified in 2020, compared with 96 victims in 2019.

Like Kamikazi, most human trafficking victims are enticed from villages and towns with false promises of gainful employment abroad.

Studies have proven that when families are economically unstable, the vulnerability of children increases. Traffickers prey on such families by making false promises of a new job, augmented income, better living conditions and financial support abroad.

Even though Rwanda has a strict anti-trafficking law that penalises sex and labour trafficking with up to 15 years of imprisonment, the RIB Secretary-General, Jeannot Ruhunga, is convinced that trafficking, especially women and children, continues to be a serious challenge faced by the international community.

Speaking during the workshop ‘Law enforcement officers & Criminal Justice practitioners’ workshop under the theme: Combating Trafficking in Human Beings with a Multi-stakeholders’ approach for Central and East Africa, the senior Rwandan police investigator noted that organised trafficking in persons is transboundary. It’s a global problem but seriously affects Central and East Africa.

“The most important is about how countries work together to address challenges encountered during the investigation and prosecution of this transboundary offence and to strengthen cooperation and mutual assistance,” Ruhunga said.

According to data from the Rwanda Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration, the majority of suspected human trafficking victims identified in Rwanda were from Burundi (62.7%), followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (15%) and Rwanda (13.6%).

Case data by the National Public Prosecution Authority reveal between 2016 and 2018, most perpetrators were male (63%), with females still comprising a substantial percentage of traffickers (37%).

The 2019 study conducted by Rwandan NGO Never Again Rwanda stresses that the effective management of national borders constitutes a critical component of inhibiting human trafficking because it functions to deter criminals and identify victims.

The research found that the primary transit countries for trafficking in East Africa are Uganda, Kenya, and, to a lesser extent, Tanzania. Uganda ranks first, followed by Kenya and Tanzania as destinations for trafficking.

Dr Joseph Ryarasa Nkurunziza, Executive Director of Never Again Rwanda, told IPS that awareness and education are key to beating human trafficking in Rwanda.

“Awareness is important considering that the pandemic has worsened the situation for many vulnerable groups which are now more prone to human trafficking,” Nkurunziza said.

For Kamikazi, her ordeal has come to an end. After being forced to work night and day and kept prisoner in her employer’s home, she was rescued after asking assistance from a businesswoman in Kuwait.

Her rescuer contacted the Rwandan Embassy in Dubai.

“It seemed like my employer didn’t want to give back my passport, but the Kuwait Police told them to give it to me.”

*Kamikazi’s name has been changed to protect her identity.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN )  is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau