Skyline of Baku, Azerbaijan, where the USAID and OSCE signed an agreement last week to cooperate to combat modern-day slavery.
In this week’s news, several organizations have made attempts to not only aid the victims of human trafficking, but also to introduce new resolutions to combat slavery. Both New York’s Legal Aid Society and the U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human trafficking launched projects to assist formerly trafficked humans through financial, humanitarian, and legal aid. Other efforts include global partnerships working to strengthen systems of justice internationally. Read below about these inspiring initiatives!
- Latimes.com: New sex-trafficking law in New York clears prostitute’s record: “A new New York law that recognizes minors forced into the sex trade as victims not criminals was used Wednesday to cleanse the record of a former Bronx prostitute.” After eight years under the control of pimps, twenty-two year-old Leni Johnson has shed her former convictions. In addition, New York’s Legal Aid Society “launched a pilot project focused on the comprehensive needs of women who are victimized at a young age.”
- Trend: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and USAID join forces to combat modern-slavery in Azerbaijan: The United States Agency for International Development has signed a grant agreement with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to combat human trafficking. “The grant will also strengthen access to justice, fund legal resource centers in Sheki and Lankaran, and provide free legal assistance and information to the public.” U.S. Ambassador to Baku, Mathew Bryza, explained, “There is already strong cooperation between the U.S. and Azerbaijani governments in fighting this form of personal slavery.”
- Examiner.com: Fight against sex trafficking linked to immigration reform: National Immigration Reform has been deemed essential in fighting human trafficking. “Those who are either victims or witnesses are reluctant to report criminals for fear of being arrested themselves or deported,” allowing Arizona to become a hub for human trafficking. In other news, Mexico’s two most important newspapers have agreed to stop publishing sex ads, “a staple of the papers’ advertising revenue.”
- U.N. News Centre: World must do better to tackle human trafficking, stresses Assembly President: In the second ministerial meeting of the Group of Friends United Against Human Trafficking, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser called “for redoubling efforts to ensure that the rights and freedoms of every person are upheld.” His proposed plan calls on the international community to adopt “good governance” and to provide debt relief, measures that should help limit the supply and demand for trafficking. The U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking launched a project to aid the victims of human trafficking.
Hey New Yorkers! You have a special opportunity to support Congress in removing slavery from products that we all use every day!
New York City’s very own Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D), together with Reps. Chris Smith (R) of New Jersey and Jackie Speier (D) of California are introducing a bill—H.R. 2759—that will help us all take a step closer to ending slavery. Rep. Maloney will be at New York’s City Hall tomorrow, Wednesday, to make this announcement. Her bill requires major businesses in the United States to tell you, their customers and investors, what they’re doing to end slavery. Rather than creating cumbersome requirements in the current economic downturn, the bill would allow the market—that is, you—to decide whether to reward a business with YOUR business, when it takes steps to address slavery.
Read: ‘Rep. Maloney to Introduce Federal Law Against Supply Chain Slavery
Show your support for this bill and send a message to companies that you want them to do the right thing. Thank you, Reps. Maloney, Smith and Speier for introducing this important bill!
WHO:
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, anti-trafficking advocates including FTS’ colleagues in the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST), others TBA.
WHAT:
Introduction of the Business Transparency on Trafficking & Slavery Act
WHEN:
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 12:00pm
WHERE:
New York City Hall Steps. Click here for directions.
New York Assemblywoman Grace Mengis the co-sponsor of a bill to extend New York's human trafficking task force to 2013
State legislatures across the country are considering legislation to combat human trafficking last week. In the Empire State, Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing) and Senator Stephen Saland (R-Poughkeepsie) sponsored a bill to extend New York’s Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking through 2013. The task force was established, in 2007, to implement “harsher penalties for human traffickers and provide assistance to victims of prostitution and involuntary labor.” The renewal of the task force’s mandate is crucial to the continued fight against trafficking in the U.S. because so many of the victims trafficked into the U.S. each year enter through New York. According to a recent report from the U.S. State Department “[o]nly Texas, California and Florida have higher occurrences of human trafficking than New York.” Read more in the Legislative Gazette.
Down South, Representative Walt Leger (D-New Orleans) after a request from Governor Bobby Jindal is proposing a bill in the Louisiana Legislature “that would increase the penalty for those who aid and abet in human trafficking and the child sex trade.”
‘It’s really focused on reaching out to those people who may provide assistance to human trafficking, and it’s similar to what we’ve done with racketeering laws, is you reach out and involve anyone involved in the criminal enterprise,’ said Rep. Leger. ‘It seems that laws around the country are seeking to crack down on this type of behavior.’
While this is a positive step forward in the fight against trafficking in Louisiana, community advocates are calling for more to be done to address this issue. Martin Gutierrez, Director of Neighborhood and Community Services for Catholic Charities, commented:
“I think it’s a matter of identifying the cases and prosecuting them . . . [y]ou can have a bunch of laws on the books, but if you don’t have the cases to apply the laws too, then what good is it?”
In the neighboring state of Texas on Wednesday, both lawmakers and advocates came together at the State Capitol to call for more stringent human trafficking laws in Texas. Greg Abbott, the state’s Attorney General, shared the stories of ‘a 12-year-old child who was found in a strip club totally nude [and a] 16 year-old-girl who hungered for food and desperately needed shelter and was taken in by a trafficker’ with those gathered.
This legislative session, Senator Leticia Van De Putte (D-San Antonio) and Representative Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) put forward a bills in the Texas Senate and House to “put into a gear a 2011 Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force report.“ Also, check out Senator Van De Putte discussing her bill here.
More from the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking’s groundbreaking PSA campagin in Times Square! Read more about this campaign here.
Has anyone seen this live? Tell us what you think!
If you are in Times Square today, you will be able to see the above message live. The Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST), a coalition of U.S.-based anti-slavery groups—of which Free the Slaves is a founding member—has set up this PSA to be run in the New York City hot spot. The ad will spread the message that “slavery lives” to potentially millions of people. (According to Times Square’s website, 500,000 people go through Times Square every day, and more than 10 million viewers see Times Square through television broadcasts!)
Read Free the Slaves’ action agenda for the Obama administration.
In a press release about this PSA, ATEST says “‘Slavery Lives,’ come[s] at a critical time for those who seek to end all forms of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. In the coming months, the Obama administration and Congress will debate renewal of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA), the cornerstone of U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking in the United States and around the world.”
Let Obama know that the passage of TVPRA is of crucial importance! Sign ATEST’s petition and find out more about their “slavery lives” campaign here!
And watch the second “Slavery Lives” PSA after the jump!
Blogging and anti-slavery come together as one! Via PR Web: First annual bloggers soiree to benefit anti-sex trafficking organization: “Bloggers and anti-human trafficking advocates will take over the Lower East Side Monday, September 27 at Libation NY for the First Annual Bloggers Soiree hosted by DesireeFrieson.com, RedRoverStyle.com and HerJourneyMag.com… 25% of proceeds from this event will go to benefit Restore NYC, a non-profit organization providing long-term aftercare services to international sex trafficked victims in the city. Last month, Restore NYC launched their ‘Brick by Brick’campaign which aims to raise $50,000 to build a safe house in New York City for sex trafficked survivors.”
- TDN.com: Exploited minors need our help, not punishment: Last week Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International testified at the House subcommittee on sex trafficking of minors. “Sex-trafficking victims, whose average initial exploitation age is 13, are often treated as juvenile delinquents or adult prostitutes by the criminal justice system. ‘Those who are identified as minors are frequently charged with a delinquent act, either prostitution-related activities or a related offense such as drug possession,’ Smith explained. That treatment, Smith added, only compounds the trauma of sexual violence the minor has already experienced.
- TheLedger.com: A South Florida couple guilty of human trafficking: “Sophia Manuel and Alfonso Baldonado Jr. schemed to force Filipino nationals to work in South Florida country clubs and hotels and threatened them with deportation. In exchange, they were offered little or no pay, and inadequate food or water.”
It’s hard to believe that it has taken this long, but the first ever extensive domestic workers’ rights measure was signed into law yesterday by New York Governor David Paterson.
The measure bestows basic rights to all New York domestic workers—people employed as nannies, housekeepers and at-home caretakers. The law gives domestics one whole day off a week, three paid days off a year after a year of employment, and ensures that they receive minimum wage, as well as overtime pay. The law also extends state law protections against sexual harassment and discrimination.
Domestic slavery happens in the U.S., in part, because our laws don’t adequately protect this sector of the labor force. The 1935 passage of the National Labor Relations Act under President Roosevelt gave millions of workers in America basic workers rights—including the right to collective bargaining. But, as Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter write in The Slave Next Door, these rights were not extended to domestic workers and farm laborers, “largely because of pressure from southern congressman.” To this day, domestic workers and farm laborers ”are still denied the rights enjoyed by all other workers.”
With the passage of the domestic workers Bill of Rights yesterday, there is now one US state that has extended basic rights to domestic workers—one modest measure of protection against worker abuse and possible enslavement.
When Governor Paterson signed the measure yesterday, he remarked, “I wonder if President Roosevelt ever dreamed that it would take until 2010, 75 years until after he died, for there to be action taken by even one state on this issue,” adding, “We have totally disrespected [domestic workers] until today.”
