By host on 2/25/2009 10:00 AM

In the US, police have rescued nearly 50 children, some as young as 13 years old, who had been trafficked into sexual exploitation and have arrested 570 people in an operation over three days in 29 cities. The police say they are still looking for a 16-year-old girl who was active in recruiting other minors.  To read more, please click here.

By host on 2/23/2009 5:05 PM

December is a special month in Argentina. On December 10, 1983 a president elected by popular vote took charge of office, bringing an end to the last civil-military dictatorship and thus starting the recovery of democracy. It was the 25th anniversary of that day this December and evaluations of the period were abundant.

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By host on 2/23/2009 4:55 PM

RCMP investigators have yet to convict a single person for human trafficking in B.C.

That's even though the specialized officers handle stacks of cases every year and know the hidden crimes happen regularly.Despite the fears of some groups in the B.C. that suspect the 2010 Olympics next year will bring an increase of human smuggling and exploitation, the spokesman for the province's border integrity unit disagrees.

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By host on 2/18/2009 2:23 PM

A Chinese national known as King James has been arrested in Ghana accused of trafficking Chinese women into Ghana, Togo and Nigeria for sex slavery.

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By host on 2/16/2009 6:50 PM

UNITED NATIONS—“Dora,” a young Mexican woman, was helped by another Mexican woman to cross the US border in the promise of a good job there. She ended up in Texas, working in a sweatshop and not allowed to go out or even take a shower. v “Sandra” was sold as a child for $400 to a pedophile, who repeatedly raped her for four years.

 

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By host on 2/16/2009 6:48 PM

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Sexual exploitation and forced labor are the most common forms of human trafficking in the world, a new report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said.

The "Global Report on Trafficking in Persons" is based on data from 155 countries and offers a global assessment of human trafficking and efforts to fight it.

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By host on 2/16/2009 3:30 PM

A new report published this week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), claims that human trafficking is a major problem around the world. The head of the UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, highlighted the fact that in 40% of countries where human trafficking takes place not a single person has been convicted on trafficking charges. He also drew attention to the fact that women and girls were the majority of victims,

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By host on 2/12/2009 7:54 PM

While it may not be widely acknowledged or recognized, according to some sources involved in farmworker services, the state's widespread plague of human trafficking is even present in some Sonoma Valley vineyards.

"We have ... people getting exploited," said Mario Castillo, outreach manager for Vineyard Worker Services, in a previous interview with the I-T. "The (wine industry) system is well placed to take advantage of people." But while many organizations and growers are doing what they can to avoid it, others say it's an issue they never imagined could occur here.

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By host on 2/12/2009 1:36 PM

A federal court this week convicted five people of trafficking young women from Guatemala and forcing them into prostitution in Los Angeles. The women were lured with offers of jobs such as baby-sitting and waitressing.

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By host on 2/5/2009 9:18 AM

The Magistrates’ Court will be able to hear the case against 4 men charged with the trafficking of Chinese to Sicily, after the Court of Criminal Appeal turned down an appeal by the Attorney General to add new charges.

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By host on 2/5/2009 9:15 AM

As many as 57 human trafficking victims in West Nusa Tenggara have suffered from mental distress and at one point were treated at Selagalas Mental Hospital in Mataram, said the head of a group concerned with the issue.

"Some of them are still being treated and the condition of the others is improving, but they are still receiving outpatient treatment," Endang Susilowati, director of the Mataram Panca Karsa Foundation (PPK Mataram), told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

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By host on 2/5/2009 9:13 AM

The first scene in “Trade,” a 2007 movie starring Academy Award winner Kevin Kline, takes place in Mexico City, Mexico. The country's capital, with almost 9 million inhabitants, is also the home for 13-year-old Adriana, whose brother surprises her with a pink bike on her birthday. Adriana, tickled by her new toy, takes it for a ride on a sunny afternoon – only to be followed, chased and caught by two men – human traffickers who have goals to sell her for sexual service.

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By host on 1/28/2009 3:27 PM

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, graced the front pages of many newspapers across the country last Friday. Clinton's qualifications were praised by her Senate colleagues, and John McCain even took fellow Republicans to task for delaying her confirmation. (The Washington Post reports that "A joke made its way around the Capitol yesterday: How do you know the 2008 election is really over? Because John McCain is causing trouble for Republicans again.)

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By host on 1/28/2009 3:24 PM

AMMAN, 27 January 2009 (IRIN) - The Jordanian parliament has endorsed legislation to combat human trafficking in light of international complaints that local companies are sending foreign workers to Iraq against their will.

The law, endorsed on 25 January, paves the way for the creation of an anti-human trafficking commission to oversee its implementation. The commission will be affiliated to the Ministry of Labour and will include officials from the police and Ministry of Justice.

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By host on 1/19/2009 11:47 AM

New legislation introduced in Norway will make it illegal to pay for sex in a bid to stamp out human trafficking and exploitation.

Anyone caught purchasing sex could face heavy fines or go to prison for up to six months. Where child prostitution is involved, the prison sentence could be extended to three years.

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By host on 1/19/2009 11:42 AM

Police authorities in Nigeria have rescued 17 suspected victims of human trafficking, including a nine year old, from a bus which crossed the Nigerian border from Benin. Two suspects arrested by the police say the boys were being taken to the southwestern state of Oyo, to work on a farm.

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By host on 1/13/2009 9:21 AM

LOS ANGELES—Ten unsuspecting female immigrants were lured into the U.S. under the promise of legitimate work, only to be forced into lives of captivity, abuse and prostitution, federal prosecutors have alleged.

A group of four women and a man told the immigrants they could secure work in the U.S. as waitresses or in another legitimate job, prosecutors said. But upon arrival the immigrants were told they would have to sell themselves into prostitution to cover the cost of being smuggled into the country.

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By host on 1/7/2009 1:39 PM

Human trafficking is a sterile term, used to mask the grimmest of realities. Popular culture - from Peter Robinson's police procedural "Strange Affair" to the film "Taken" - captures the more sensationalist dimensions of this vile and pernicious phenomenon: the coercion or abduction or of young girls (some of them minors) and their forced conversion into prostitutes. But there is a lot more to it than that.

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By host on 1/6/2009 10:33 AM

Human trafficking – better known as modern day slavery – is a worldwide problem that affects even the bucolic Sonoma Valley. While 70 percent of trafficked victims are women and children who are forced into hard labor or sexual slavery, the plight also hits us closer to home, extending to migrant farm and construction workers, household employees, and workers in motels and restaurants.
January 11 is National Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery Awareness Day. On this Sunday, Soroptimist International clubs in Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino counties are bringing awareness of this issue to citizens and agencies in the North Bay through a series of events at the Finley Community Center in Santa Rosa.

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By host on 1/6/2009 9:22 AM

Notwithstanding its other aspects, the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African- American president should close the circle on our shameful history of treating human beings as if they were nothing more than livestock.

Anyone who thinks that California, whose admission to the Union in 1850 hinged largely on its status as a nonslave state, doesn't share that history is ignorant of its own early tolerance, even advocacy, of human slavery, both of Africans and Native Americans.

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