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2. How to Dismantle the Business of Human Trafficking: Blueprint for Congress
- Author:
- Annick Febrey
- Publication Date:
- 02-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Human Rights First
- Abstract:
- Since passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000—and its subsequent reauthorizations—the U.S. government has taken steps to build an anti-human trafficking infrastructure. Through annual publication of the Department of State’s (DOS) Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report,[ii] the United States has led the movement to call worldwide attention to this problem. The DOS Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) provides grants to both American and foreign institutions involved in prevention and awareness raising, protection and victim services, law enforcement and efforts to increase prosecutions, research and data collection, and evaluation. J/TIP also facilitates coordination between U.S. agencies, both at home and abroad, including those on the President’s Interagency Task Force (PITF).[iii] Despite these efforts, human trafficking continues to be a massive human rights problem across the globe, one that inflicts suffering on millions and undermines legitimate, law-abiding U.S. businesses and their workers. Victims are forced to work in fields and factories and on fishing boats for little to no pay, while others are held captive in private homes. Forced prostitution rings imprison women, girls, and boys in brothels or make them to work on the streets under threat of abuse. The primary reason for the persistence of slavery is clear: the crime pays. Operating with virtual impunity, traffickers earn an estimated $150 billion annually in illicit profits worldwide.[iv] The 2016 DOS TIP report used law enforcement data to determine that there were only 6,609 human trafficking convictions globally in 2015—a paltry figure considering the millions of victims. The U.S. government reported just 297 convictions in 2015.[v] The United States should flip the financial equation for traffickers: dismantle the business of human trafficking by increasing the risks and decreasing the profits. To that end, the 115th U.S. Congress has an opportunity to prioritize policies that will increase prosecutions through the annual appropriations process and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which is up for reauthorization this fall. These policies should strengthen partnerships across federal, state and local law enforcement and related agencies, and increase funding to create more effective and sustainable efforts to combat this horrific crime.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Sex Trafficking, Domestic politics, and Human Trafficking
- Political Geography:
- United States, Washington, and D.C.
3. Migrants, Housewives, Warriors or Sex Slaves: AQ’s and the Islamic State’s Perspectives on Women
- Author:
- Andrea Sjøberg Aasgaard
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Connections
- Institution:
- Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
- Abstract:
- Why do young Muslim women from the whole world join the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, despite the fact that the group is notorious for conducting terrible sexual violations against women? Through comparing how al-Qaeda (AQ) and IS are positioning women in their ideological literature, this article sheds light on IS’ appeal to women. This is interesting, as AQ in a historical perspective only attracted a handful of European women to physically join the group. The comparison highlights that AQ and IS position women in different ways: as housewives, migrants, warriors and sex slaves. Both groups’ ideologies agree that a woman’s primarily role is to be a housewife and mother, and exclude in principle women from the battlefield. However, only IS is emphasizing that Muslim women have a right and duty to migrate to its territory. Through using ideological arguments in its literature, IS convinces its supporters that it is a religious duty to enslave women the group defines as idolaters. For this reason, IS’ brutality against non-Muslim women will not discourage its female supporters from joining the group.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Migration, Sex Trafficking, Islamic State, and Sexual Violence
- Political Geography:
- Iraq, Middle East, and Syria
4. What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize What They Do
- Author:
- Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
- Publication Date:
- 03-2017
- Content Type:
- Book
- Institution:
- Columbia University Press
- Abstract:
- Drawing on fifteen years of work in the antislavery movement, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines the systematic oppression of men, women, and children in rural India and asks: How do contemporary slaveholders rationalize the subjugation of other human beings, and how do they respond when their power is threatened? More than a billion dollars have been spent on antislavery efforts, yet the practice persists. Why? Unpacking what slaveholders think about emancipation is critical for scholars and policy makers who want to understand the broader context, especially as seen by the powerful. Insight into those moments when the powerful either double down or back off provides a sobering counterbalance to scholarship on popular struggle. Through frank and unprecedented conversations with slaveholders, Choi-Fitzpatrick reveals the condescending and paternalistic thought processes that blind them. While they understand they are exploiting workers' vulnerabilities, slaveholders also feel they are doing workers a favor, often taking pride in this relationship. And when the victims share this perspective, their emancipation is harder to secure, driving some in the antislavery movement to ask why slaves fear freedom. The answer, Choi-Fitzpatrick convincingly argues, lies in the power relationship. Whether slaveholders recoil at their past behavior or plot a return to power, Choi-Fitzpatrick zeroes in on the relational dynamics of their self-assessment, unpacking what happens next. Incorporating the experiences of such pivotal actors into antislavery research is an immensely important step toward crafting effective antislavery policies and intervention. It also contributes to scholarship on social change, social movements, and the realization of human rights.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Sex Trafficking, and Slavery
- Political Geography:
- India and Global Focus
- Publication Identifier:
- 9780231543828
- Publication Identifier Type:
- ISBN
5. What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research
- Author:
- Carlo Koos
- Publication Date:
- 06-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- German Institute of Global and Area Studies
- Abstract:
- Since the war in Bosnia‐Herzegovina and the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, sexual violence in conflict has received increasing scholarly attention. While earlier research focused on documenting cases of sexual violence and investigating the topic from a metaperspective, in the last decade an increasing number of empirical, largely qualitative studies have been published. This paper critically reviews this recent literature on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) according to two lines of inquiry. It first examines the literature on the causes of CRSV, then surveys the research on its social consequences. Overall, the growing body of research on CRSV has considerably advanced our knowledge. However, methodologically there remains a shortage of comparative, and particularly quantitative, research. Much of the qualitative research relies on convenience samples, which result in a clear selection bias. This hampers our ability to make more general statements about the causes and, in particular, the social consequences of CRSV.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Human Rights, and Sex Trafficking
6. Conflict and Extremist-Related Sexual Violence
- Author:
- Kerry Crawford
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Abstract:
- As extremist groups in the Middle East and North Africa perpetrate sexual violence against women as part of their campaigns to further their interests and propagate fear, scholars are reaching a deeper understanding of the ways in which sexual violence, before, during, and after conflict, arises from a complex pattern of political, military, social, and economic factors. International actors can draw from this work to craft responses that better assist survivors and hold perpetrators accountable.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Human Rights, and Sex Trafficking
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and North Africa
7. The UN Security Council and Organized Criminal Activity: Experiments in International Law Enforcement
- Author:
- James Cockayne
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- On 30 November 1943, Franklin Roosevelt was in Teheran, celebrating Winston Churchill's sixty-ninth birthday with Josef Stalin. FDR gave Churchill a Persian vase, and as discussion turned to the post-war order he passed an aide a pencil sketch of what was to become the United Nations.
- Topic:
- Crime, International Cooperation, International Law, Narcotics Trafficking, Sex Trafficking, Law Enforcement, and Piracy
8. Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia
- Author:
- Siddharth Kara
- Publication Date:
- 09-2012
- Content Type:
- Book
- Institution:
- Columbia University Press
- Abstract:
- Siddharth Kara's Sex Trafficking has become a critical resource for its revelations into an unconscionable business, and its detailed analysis of the trade's immense economic benefits and human cost. This volume is Kara's second, explosive study of slavery, this time focusing on the deeply entrenched and wholly unjust system of bonded labor. Drawing on eleven years of research in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, Kara delves into an ancient and ever-evolving mode of slavery that ensnares roughly six out of every ten slaves in the world and generates profits that exceeded $17.6 billion in 2011. In addition to providing a thorough economic, historical, and legal overview of bonded labor, Kara travels to the far reaches of South Asia, from cyclone-wracked southwestern Bangladesh to the Thar desert on the India-Pakistan border, to uncover the brutish realities of such industries as hand-woven-carpet making, tea and rice farming, construction, brick manufacture, and frozen-shrimp production. He describes the violent enslavement of millions of impoverished men, women, and children who toil in the production of numerous products at minimal cost to the global market. He also follows supply chains directly to Western consumers, vividly connecting regional bonded labor practices to the appetites of the world. Kara's pioneering analysis encompasses human trafficking, child labor, and global security, and he concludes with specific initiatives to eliminate the system of bonded labor from South Asia once and for all.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Sex Trafficking, and Slavery
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Asia, India, Nepal, and Global Focus
- Publication Identifier:
- 9780231528016
- Publication Identifier Type:
- ISBN
9. No Life Left Untouched by Human Trafficking
- Author:
- Chrisella Sagers
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Diplomatic Courier
- Abstract:
- A special session of the United Nations General Assembly made headlines last week with a disheartening announcement – 2.4 million people today, across the globe, are victims of human trafficking. Of those, 80 percent are being forced into sexual slavery, and 17 percent are enslaved into forced labor. Even the statistic of 2.4 million people does not truly reflect the impact that this phenomenon has; the number only represents the souls caught up at any given time, but does not track those who escaped their living nightmares and found freedom. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking is “the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud, or deception, with the aim of exploiting them.” Some prefer to dispense with the seemingly whitewashed term and refer to the practice as modern-day slavery. No country is unaffected. Because of the way traffickers transport their “goods,” the human cargo often follows the same shipping lines as illegal drugs. It is one of the world’s most lucrative forms of organized crime, creating a draw for cartels seeking to diversify as well as for individual pimps on the street. Women make up nearly two-thirds of the world’s trafficked persons, and it is shockingly easy to sell these women for sex. Madrid police began an investigation last month into a prostitution ring, in which the pimps violently forced the women into sex slavery. The victims were chained to pipes and beaten into submission, and if they tried to escape or failed to pay their pimps, bar codes were tattooed onto their wrists.
- Topic:
- Narcotics Trafficking, Sex Trafficking, Slavery, Sexual Violence, and Human Trafficking
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. Corruption and Human Trafficking
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Transparency International
- Abstract:
- Human trafficking is a 'high profit – low risk' venture. This cost-benefit equation results because the perpetrators of the crime have sizable monetary gains compared to the limited risk of getting caught and being brought to trial. Corruption allows this perverse incentive to continue.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and Sex Trafficking