lost & found

Wednesday, January 11, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. President Obama has again proclaimed the month of January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, urging all Americans to become educated about human trafficking so that we can put an end to this modern day slavery.  Below is a copy of the proclamation.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Nearly a century and a half ago, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation -- a document that reaffirmed the noble goals of equality and freedom for all that lie at the heart of what it means to live in America.  In the years since, we have tirelessly pursued the realization and protection of these essential principles.  Yet, despite our successes, thousands of individuals living in the United States and still more abroad suffer in silence under the intolerable yoke of modern slavery.  During National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, we stand with all those who are held in compelled service; we recognize the people, organizations, and government entities that are working to combat human trafficking; and we recommit to bringing an end to this inexcusable human rights abuse.

Human trafficking endangers the lives of millions of people around the world, and it is a crime that knows no borders.  Trafficking networks operate both domestically and transnationally, and although abuses disproportionally affect women and girls, the victims of this ongoing global tragedy are men, women, and children of all ages.  Around the world, we are monitoring the progress of governments in combating trafficking while supporting programs aimed at its eradication.  From forced labor and debt bondage to forced commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude, human trafficking leaves no country untouched.  With this knowledge, we rededicate ourselves to forging robust international partnerships that strengthen global anti-trafficking efforts, and to confronting traffickers here at home.

My Administration continues to implement our comprehensive strategy to combat human trafficking in America.  By coordinating our response across Federal agencies, we are working to protect victims of human trafficking with effective services and support, prosecute traffickers through consistent enforcement, and prevent human rights abuses by furthering public awareness and addressing the root causes of modern slavery.  The steadfast defense of human rights is an essential part of our national identity, and as long as individuals suffer the violence of slavery and human trafficking, we must continue the fight.

With the start of each year, we commemorate the anniversaries of the Emancipation Proclamation, which became effective on January 1, 1863, and the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery, which was signed by President Abraham Lincoln and submitted to the States for ratification on February 1, 1865. 

These documents stand as testaments to the gains we have made in pursuit of freedom and justice for all, and they remind us of the work that remains to be done.  This month, I urge all Americans to educate themselves about all forms of modern slavery and the signs and consequences of human trafficking.  Together, and in cooperation with our partners around the world, we can work to end this terrible injustice and protect the rights to life and liberty entrusted to us by our forebears and owed to our children.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 2012 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, culminating in the annual celebration of National Freedom Day on February 1.  I call upon the people of the United States to recognize the vital role we can play in ending modern slavery and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
thirtieth day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMA

From CNN's Freedom Project blog publi12/14/11
(CNN) - Google Inc. announced Wednesday that it's providing $11.5 million in grants to 10 organizations working to end modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

Gary Haugen, president and CEO of International Justice Mission, one of the grant recipients, called the move a "game-changing investment." IJM is a Washington-based human rights agency that works to rescue victims of slavery and sexual exploitation in about a dozen countries.

"This is the largest corporate step up to the challenge that is beginning to apply direct resources to the fight against slavery," Haugen said.

According to estimates by grant recipients, Google's support will free an estimated 12,000 people from slavery and prevent millions more from being victimized. Numbers vary widely, but policymakers, activists and scholars estimate the number of modern-day slaves at somewhere between 10 million and 30 million people worldwide.

Google's director of charitable giving, Jacquelline Fuller, said the company chose to spotlight the issue of slavery because the topic of freedom - "the most basic of human rights," as she puts it - resonated with company employees around the world.

"Many people are surprised to learn there are more people trapped in slavery today than any time in history," Fuller said. "The good news is that there are solutions. Google is supporting organizations that have a proven track record and a plan to make a difference at scale."

Google made the announcement through a link posted on its web page. The gift is part of a total of $40 million the Internet giant is giving in charitable donations during the holiday season.

The grant will be shared by newly formed coalitions of international anti-trafficking organizations. The bulk of the donation, $8 million, will go to two coalitions led by IJM in India, with about half going toward direct intervention and government-led rescue operations, and half toward advocacy and awareness projects. In addition, $1.8 million will go to the U.S. Anti-Trafficking Initiative - a partnership between Polaris Project, which operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline, Slavery Footprint, an interactive Web site and mobile app that estimates how much of a user's lifestyle relies on forced labor, and IJM.

IJM says most of its funding comes from private donations. In 2010, it notes, less than 1% of its funding came from big business or corporate foundations.

"It gives us a sense of what's possible," said IJM's Haugen. "We can actually change the whole balance of resources between those who are the criminals, hurting human beings and those who are on the side of those who need freedom today."

CNN has also joined the fight against modern-day slavery and collaborates regularly with many advocacy groups, including the recipients of these Google grants. Since launching the CNN Freedom Project in March, CNN has broadcast more than 200 stories and a half-dozen documentaries on the issue of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Nearly 2,000 people have come out of slavery, either directly or indirectly, as a result of those stories.

From CNN's Freedom Project
Post by: CNN's Leif Coorlim

Editor's note: "Common Dreams", which aired on CNN at the weekend, can now be viewed online in its entirety. Find out more about how you can help the Haitian children at CommonDreamsHaiti.com A Grammy Award-winning musician and actor is using his star power to help rescue children being exploited in Haiti, a nation founded by freed slaves.

In a Freedom Project documentary, Common shines a light on the plight of the Restaveks, the estimated 300,000 children working as domestic servants in Haiti.

The United Nations says the deeply rooted practice is a form of modern-day slavery.

Common said, "I just felt like I was entering another place, another world I had never experienced, and I really had to prepare my mind to be in it."

In Haiti, he met children who are forced to work long hours and denied an education. He also met a team dedicated to securing their freedom.

"Often you speak to them, their heads are down, they don't make eye contact. Most of all, they feel very inferior and that carries them into adulthood," Common said.

"We have a nation where the children who become adults have very little skills. They are illiterate, and they are not integrated into Haitian culture."

The practice of Restavek - from a French word meaning "to stay with" - began with the noble intentions of educating children from rural villages. But over the years, the practice has become twisted. The result is that many children are now exploited rather than helped.

As poverty and misrule held back Haiti over the decades, the chances to go to school became fewer. The Restavek system remained, with children being forced to work instead of receiving an education.

Even when an earthquake almost two years ago devastated large parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the Restavek system remained.

In view of the still-destroyed presidential palace is a tent city with trash piled up in the streets, where children can be seen working. Many of them are Restaveks in forced labor, not kids helping mom or dad.

Among them is a 12-year-old girl whose back is scarred from months, possibly years, of carrying water for 30 minutes over rough ground to the canvas-walled home where she lives.

The Restavek Freedom Foundation tries to get the children into school to help make their lives a little easier and their futures brighter.

Haitian-born New Yorker Fabiola Desmont goes searching out Restavek homes, trying to convince the adults that the children should be in school, not working.

At one home, a man was persuaded to let his Restavek child go to school. The child's eyes lit up. But not everyone is able to see the system is wrong.

Common said, "The children are removed from their parents and sent to live with other families where the adults treat them like slaves. They do not get to go to school or enjoy themselves.

"They can encounter mental, physical and emotional abuse with these families. It's a tough situation for me to see them (in), but imagine what it is like to be the kid - it's much tougher for them.

"Restavek Freedom tries to reason with the adults looking after these children, and tries to get them into a better environment.

"We were going (into homes) to say 'it's a child's right to learn.' It will help Haitian society, but some of them could not see that.

"We talked to little kids about what they wanted to do. Some said they wanted to do something great; others dreamed of going to school. Everyone should be allowed to fulfill their dream."


Post by: CNN's Leif Coorlim

By Jessica Dabrowski | jessica.dabrowski@fox8.com Staff Writer 5:09 p.m. EST, December 2, 2011

CLEVELAND— A man who pleaded guilty to three counts related to attempted sex trafficking of children was sentenced Friday.

Otto Linzenbach, 63, of Leipzig, Germany, will spend 15 years in prison.

"The details laid out in this case reveal a secret world that targets our society's most precious assets -- our children," Steven M. Dettelbach, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said. "We will work cooperatively and vigilantly to protect our most vulnerable."

Undercover Homeland Security Investigations agents created a phony website to cater to individuals seeking to have sex with children.

The agents told the child predators that for about $1,600 they would meet them in Cleveland, then take them to Canada or Michigan to rape a child or children.

The predators were told to pick their victims through photos on the fake website.

No real children were involved.

Linzenbach flew to Cleveland from Germany with the intent to rape children.

"This operation shows the length to which those who seek to have sex with children are willing to go -- even if it means flying across the globe," said Brian Moskowitz, Special Agent in Charge, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

"It also underscores the fact that lengthy federal prison terms await those who engage in this depraved behavior. HSI will continue to use our unique authorities to confront this threat wherever it exists," Moskowitz added.

Linzenbach was arrested on April 1 after an undercover agent picked him up at the Sheraton Airport Hotel in Cleveland.

Court records show he paid $1,600 in cash before being arrested.

On Aug. 9, Linzenbach pleaded guilty to attempted sex trafficking in children, attempted exploitation of children and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.

(Fox 8 News Reporter Emily Valdez Contributed to this report.)

By Fred Pleitgen and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, CNN November 3, 2011 -- Updated 1622 GMT (0022 HKT)

El Arish, Egypt (CNN) -- Bedouin smugglers involved in people trafficking are also believed to be stealing organs from refugees who are unable to pay their demands for large amounts of cash to take them into Israel.

The New Generation Foundation for Human Rights and the EveryOne Group, from Italy, have presented evidence that the bodies of African refugees have been found in the Sinai desert with organs missing.

The Sawarka Bedouin tribe, one of the largest in the Sinai, was named by one Bedouin source as being involved in organ thefts.

A Sawarka leader said he was aware that people trafficking was going on in Sinai and that in some cases refugees were held in bonded labor and tortured. But he added only rogue elements of his tribe were involved.

According to rights groups, refugees -- from places like Ethiopia, Eritrea or Sudan -- are enslaved and tortured and the women raped if they cannot come up with the large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families to smuggle them into Israel.

Among Bedouin leaders in the Sinai, no one was willing to speak openly about the organ theft. Tribal leaders said they knew nothing about it or had only heard rumors.

But Hamdy Al-Azazy, head of New Generation Foundation, has photos showing corpses with distinctive scars in the abdominal area. All the photos were taken in a morgue in the Egyptian port town of El Arish after the bodies were brought there.

Al-Azazy says the organs are taken from refugees while they are still alive. "The organs are not useful if they're dead. They drug them first and remove their organs, then leave them to die and dump them in a deep dry well along with hundreds of bodies."

He says he was once taken to the area where the bodies are dumped after the organ removal process. He says he believes corrupt Egyptian doctors are working with the Bedouins, coming to Sinai with mobile hospital units to perform the operations to remove especially corneas, livers and kidneys.

"Mobile clinics using advanced technology come from a private hospital in Cairo to an area in the deserts of Mid-Sinai and conduct physicals on the Africans before they choose those suitable, then they conduct the operation," Al-Azazy said.

CNN showed some of the photos of the dead to Dr. Fakhry Saleh, the former head of Cairo's forensic department and an expert on the illegal organ trade.

"There are two kinds of scars. One is from a postmortem autopsy and one from surgery," Saleh said, pointing to a scar that he says came from an operation that must have been performed shortly before the person died.

According to Saleh, the operation was conducted no more than 48 hours before death, indicated by the freshness of the scars.

Furthermore, all the scars are in the area of the liver and kidney. "They are good stitches in the area of the liver and the kidney," Saleh said while examining the photos on a laptop.


While Saleh says he has never heard of organ theft involving African refugees, he says it seems highly probable that the scars on the bodies come from organ removal.

"They could open you up, take it out and just let you die. The mafia does not care whether you live or die. When they cut you open, it would be very painful, so they would give you anesthesia," Saleh later said.

Saleh has done extensive research on the illegal organ business in Egypt, which preys on poor people. The World Health Organization in a recent report called Egypt a regional hub for the trade.

An investigation headed by Saleh found illegal organ trafficking to be one of the most profitable criminal activities.

"Organ trade is the second most profitable trade behind only weapons trade," he said. "It brings in more money than drug dealing and prostitution."

One Bedouin tribal chief did put CNN in touch with a Bedouin who used to be involved in people smuggling and who was close to the organ theft scheme. The source spoke on condition of anonymity but offered insights into the scheme.

"The doctors deal directly with the Sawarka family, and they buy the organs starting from $20,000," the source said in a phone interview.

He offered further details of the logistics required to keep the organs fresh for the transplant into their new owners' bodies: "The doctors come with some sort of mobile fridge where the organs can be stored for six to eight hours and resold in Cairo or elsewhere."

The source claimed doctors from Cairo are involved in the organ theft, a claim that has proved impossible to verify.

"It's like spare parts for cars," the Bedouin, who later agreed to meet one member of the CNN crew in person, said sarcastically toward the end of the interview.

A second Bedouin, who also refused to be identified, later gave a similar account.

The police general in charge of security in Northern Sinai tells CNN that his forces are aware that organ trafficking and theft are going on in their area of operations but that the authorities have not identified who is behind the schemes.

From CNN's Freedom Project
By Sara Sidner, CNN 10/24/11

SVAY PAK, Cambodia (CNN) -- Svay Pak has a disturbing reputation. The village outside Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is known as a place where little girls are openly sold to foreign predators looking for sex.

One of the girls who was sold into the sex trade told CNN that before she could read she was working in a brothel.

"I was about five or six years old," she said. "The first man said to me, 'I want to have sex with you.' At the time I didn't know what to do. No one could help me."

Dozens of girls have had the same experience in her neighborhood.

She says she was approached by a man while playing outside. He asked her to come over and talk to him, and before she knew it she was alone and being asked for sex. Some of the girls were actually sold into the sex trade by their own parents.

Many were housed with other girls her age in what looked like a cell. The room was pink had thick walls and no windows and was about 7 feet long by 7 feet wide. There were several rooms just like it stuffed into a building that had a gate over the front door and bars on the bathroom window. The brothel she lived in specialized in pre-pubescent girls.

The young girls were sought after by the foreign men who came to the area for one reason: They knew they could find young girls for sale.


"At the beginning they talked to me gently but when they raped me, they also beat me up," the former sex slave said, her head bowed and tears rolling from her eyes uncontrollably.

She is now 18 and no longer trapped in a terrible and painful life. Three years ago she found a safe haven after Don Brewster and his wife moved into the neighborhood and began operating a rehabilitation center for child sex slaves.

"I really think it's an evil -- I mean there is no understanding it. The girls, I mean, they're in such pain and suffer so greatly and it is obvious to the man that's raping them," Brewster said.

Brewster says things have changed in Svay Pak in the past several years. It used to be girls who hung out in the open, beckoning from behind barred windows to the men who walked by. Pimps no longer descend on every foreign man who shows up in the neighborhood offering to sell them virgins. While the situation is changing, there is still a nasty underbelly in the area, but travelers have to go looking for it now. The sex trade has gone underground, but it is still there.

"If you just look on the surface you would say that doesn't happen but just yesterday we rescued a 5-year-old girl here in Svay Pak," said Brewster, who works with Agape International Missions.

Now there is a place that provides a secure environment for children to just be children.

From www.internationlsupermarketnews.com
By Laura Elliot

US retail giant Walmart has shocked many with the announcement that from next spring, the company will begin selling handcrafted products made my women in developing countries. To begin with, the items will only be available to buy online, but by 2016 the retailer plans to offer up to 500 items made by more than 20,000 female artisans across two dozen countries. The move will certainly please urban liberals, who are uncomfortable with the company’s current business practices.  Among the handmade offerings available to be bought on Walmart.com, there will be dresses from Kenya, and jewellery from Guatemala and Thailand. Although many will see this new proposal as a good thing, Walmart’s announcement has been met with concern by importers and retailers, who say that they follow the precepts of fair trade.

“It certainly does seem in sharp contrast to Wal-Mart’s typical business model,” said Michele Loeper, a spokeswoman at the Akron, Pa. headquarters for Ten Thousand Villages, the Nation’s oldest and largest fair trade retailer.

“I’m not sure what their model will be,” Loeper said. “From our point of view we work with the artisans to identify a fair income, one that will benefit them and be sustainable. We’re the anti-Wal-Mart, a nonprofit company dedicated to providing sustainable income opportunities to artisans in developing countries — I doubt that’s what Wal-Mart is doing here.”

At the moment, the supermarket giant plans to acquire a number of products from Ethical Fashion Africa and Full Circle Exchange, a programme that is part of the International Trade Centre. The ITC is an agency which was grown from a partnership between the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation.

Leslie Dach, Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs at Walmart, said in a statement that their website is an “ideal venue” for artisans, who “may not have the size or scale to sell in our brick-and-mortar stores”. She went on to say that the new scheme gives them “the benefit of the company’s knowledge about customers, packaging and promotions”.

However, History Professor and author of “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-mart Created a Brave New World of Business”, Nelson Lichtenstein, has questioned the retailer’s motives.

He said in a statement that the US company would “make some money with this, but I suspect that’s not the main point — it’s public relations to soften its image among urban liberals.”

It is well know that this segment of the consumer market embraces an agenda that includes environmental issues, microfinance and the empowerment of women, Professor Lichtenstein went on to say. Reaching their hearts and their pocketbooks could mean making significant inroads for Walmart into some very desirable urban markets.

“Wal-Mart has been desperately trying to get into San Francisco, Boston and New York,” Lichtenstein commented, and it is well known that The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer only recently entered Chicago after a series of long battles with organised labour and political leaders.

Handcrafted items typically appeal to higher income shoppers, and this is a demographic that, according to Lichtenstein, Walmart is hoping to attract. However, the Professor of History said that he wonders whether Walmart – which has a reputation for “squeezing” suppliers – may ultimately end up pressuring artisans to step-up production, thereby “eroding the handmade aspect” of their scheme.

Short URL: http://www.internationalsupermarketnews.com/?p=5238

By Margaret Bernstein, The Plain Dealer
published 10/13/11

Tina Frundt doesn't have happy memories of Cleveland. The former foster child arrived here from Chicago on her 14th birthday, in a car driven by a man who convinced her he loved her when no one else did.

She said she was taken to a house where four other teen girls livedand was raped by two men she didn't know, beginning what would become more than a decade of being trafficked as a sex slave.

"How do you get out when you have no resources to get out?" Frundt, now in her 30s, asked an audience of about 250 Thursday at the Human Services Institute, an annual conference on health, social and economic issues hosted by the Center for Community Solutions.

"It took me many years, which is why I started Courtney's House," a program that rescues and provides resources and shelter to trafficking survivors in Washington, D.C., Frundt said.

She is also a leader in efforts to end the multimillion-dollar sex trafficking industry. Frundt trains law enforcement officials and nonprofit groups to rescue and provide resources to victims.

Sex trafficking, Frundt said, is frequently dismissed as a foreign problem, allowing it to grow unchecked.

"Here we label it something else. We say it's prostitution, it's pimping," Frundt said.

But it's actually the marketing and selling of children, she said. Teens and even younger children are pulled in regularly to work as prostitutes, in strip clubs and to produce child porn, according to Frundt.

It's supply and demand economics at work, "and unfortunately the demand is for our children," Frundt said. Until society wakes up and views it that way, she added, children will continue to be exploited.

Frundt grew up in foster care until she was adopted at age 12, and said she was an easy mark when she gained the attention of a man who said he wanted to take her on a trip.

She wasn't a runaway, she said. But at age 14, she was too fearful and inexperienced to know how to escape.

She said many sex traffickers have multiple homes in different cities so they can spirit youngsters away from their hometowns.

"It's been going on in front of our noses. We don't know what to look for," Frundt said.

Renee Jones, who volunteers her time to operate a local outreach and advocacy program for sex trafficking victims, said she was grateful to see the issue given so much attention at the event, held at La Centre in Westlake.

"She's not making this up. This stuff is real," she said of Frundt's presentation.

Cleveland needs a specialized shelter similar to Courtney's House where survivors can recover from trauma and can be protected from sex traffickers, Jones said.

"I have victims being brought to me, and they have no where to go."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mbernstein@plaind.com, 216-999-4876

According to estimates by policymakers, activists and scholars the number of modern day slaves ranges from about 10 million to 30 million people.

But how many of those slaves work for you? Now that is the unsettling question being posed by a new online tool and mobile app. It's called Slavery Footprint. It's the latest initiative from the anti-slavery Call + Response campaign in partnership with the U.S. State Department.

It allows consumers to measure to what extent they are complicit in the use of forced labor around the world. (Learn more about the tool and technology's "slavery" problem from CNNMoney.com)

CNN talked to Justin Dylan, who leads the Call + Response campaign, for more information about the app.

CNN: What do you hope to achieve with the Slavery Footprint app?

DYLAN: Well, with Slavery Footprint what we didn't want to do is create another calculator that only spits out bad news. What I believe is that people carry around stories and not necessarily statistics. So with Slavery Footprint we actually wanted to be able to tell you the story of your life and how it fits in with the globalized economy.

Today, slavery is worse now than it ever was before, but most people have a hard time of understanding how it affects their lives. Slavery footprint is the first chapter for most people in understanding how it directly affects their lives, but most importantly about what they can do to change it.

CNN: Now you worked with the U.S. State Department to create this app. What kind of support did they give you?

DYLAN: Well, they were phenomenal not only in their sharing of knowledge, but they helped the beginning of the funding of the app and really were able to use a lot of their relational equity to be able to bring the right kind of experts and stakeholders to bare on this.

The technology that we've created and the algorithm that we've created around Slavery Footprint is a very vetted and multi-stakeholder approach where we're able to use vetted data to be able to determine the slavery in different types of products that we use every day while being very brand agnostic. We don't go after any particular brand, we're talking about different types of products that you use every day, which is very important.

CNN: Now this new app, it follows the Call + Response app as well as your documentary of the same name. So do you feel that consumers are taking notice? Do you feel that the concept of buying slave free is really gaining traction now?

DYLAN: Well, I think we're getting there. I think we've just lit the fuse on the rocket. What's really going to make the rocket take off is if a consumer start to embed the story of other people who are being exploited to produce their lifestyles. If consumers can start to absorb that, that story into their lives, and more importantly amplify that story in the marketplace.