UN News Centre – Women, Children, Population
Through a striking art installation, actress Emma Thompson chronicles the story of a naive 18-year-old from a small Eastern European republic who was caught up in London’s sex trade. Her name is Elena, and her story makes its debut in New York on Nov. 10. This art installation will be in Washington Square Park, New York City, November 10-16. Thompson will be in the seventh container.
Countries of Destination, as measured by the extent of reporting of trafficking
Right now before the US Congress there is a bill that could make a real difference in the fight against the buying and selling and trafficking of innocent children, most of whom are girls.
This bill, International Megan’s Law, would mandate reporting requirements for convicted sex traffickers trying to engage in international travel, and prevent entry into the U.S. by any foreign sex offender against a minor.
In the U.S. and around the world, thousands of pimps, traffickers, and child molesters treat girls like objects to be used and discarded. This bill will send a loud and unambiguous message to those who believe they can buy, sell and abuse girls with impunity: never again.
Please send your Congressperson a letter today to help protect girls before more are solicited or kidnapped by the pimps who steal their childhoods for profit.
Click on the Change widget in the left hand column of my blog or visit: http://www.change.org/actions/view/help_stop_child_sex_trafficking to take action.
Photo # 418239 UN Photo/Mark Garten
The United Nations hosted a special event at its New York Headquarters yesterday for the victims and survivors of human trafficking, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issuing a broad-based call to action for States to tackle the root causes and ensure swift justice against the perpetrators.
“Our fight against human trafficking is guided by three Ps: prevention, protection and prosecution,” he said in an opening address at the event at which four survivors bore living witness with accounts of their own horrific plight, including a girl who was abducted at age 14 by Ugandan rebels and kept as a sex slave for eight years.
“We must also empower victims. They need support systems, information and education. They need viable ways to earn a living. They also need criminal justice systems to pursue traffickers, and subject them to serious penalties. Conviction rates in most countries are microscopic compared to the scope of the problem. But when States help victims, the victims can help States break up trafficking networks.”
Mr. Ban cited a litany of abhorrent practices, including debt bondage, forced labor, torture, organ removal, sexual exploitation and slavery-like conditions. “Human trafficking injures, traumatizes and kills individuals. It devastates families and threatens global security,” he declared of a worldwide industry that generates billions of dollars in profit at the expense of millions of victims.
“Human trafficking touches on many issues, from health and human rights to development and peace and security. Our response must be equally broad, and must tackle this challenge at its roots,” he added, noting that the global economic crisis is making the problem worse as jobs and food get scarcer and rising social exclusion makes minorities and women especially vulnerable.
Survivors of human trafficking who addressed the event included Charlotte Awino, abducted at age 14 by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in Uganda and kept as a sex slave for eight years; Buddhi Gurung from Nepal, trafficked for labor to Iraq to work on a United States military base; Kika Cerpa from Venezuela, forced into prostitution by a man she thought of as her boyfriend; and Rachel Lloyd, an activist who survived commercial sexual exploitation as a teenager and started a New York organization to aid girls victimized by sex traffickers.
Today in the world, there are more slaves than when slavery was legal. There are an estimated 27 million victims of human trafficking that live in every major city across the world. Contemplating this, we see a picture of suffering on a magnitude too staggering to comprehend.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, whose office organized the Giving Voice to the Victims and Survivors of Human Trafficking Special Event, stressed that persisting economic disparities, conflict and discrimination, particularly against women and migrants, continue to push those least able to protect themselves into dangerous situations from which they cannot escape.
The demand for prostitution is the main driver of the business of human trafficking. The best way to stop the demand for prostitution is to make the act of paying for sex illegal. See: Stopping the Demand for Trafficking in Women & Children and Norway Makes Paying for Sex Illegal.
There will always be some individuals who will not be stopped from buying sex by such legislation, but the experience of Sweden and Norway has shown that most are deterred by the risk of such penalties as having their name printed in the newspaper, having their car impounded, having to do community service or having to attend educational sessions on human trafficking.
There are many things that you can do to stop the demand for trafficking in women and children.
For more information go to:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html
Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in in a remote village in Deoghar district in India’s Jharkhand state. Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labeled as witches by a local cleric.
This is a very disturbing story, but all too common. Widows in many parts of the world are abandoned by their families, deprived of their property, accused of witchcraft, abused and sometimes even killed. What is particularly terrible about this story is that the abusers appear to be other, younger women.
There is a really excellent article about the status of widows in the developing world and especially on the Indian subcontinent and in Africa at: http://www.deathreference.com/Vi-Z/Widows-in-Third-World-Nations.html
Yesterday, I learned of a wonderful program that seeks to facilitate the integration of refugee and migrant women in Auckland, New Zealand, called Cooking and Friendship.
The concept is simple. Bring together women from many different cultures and create an environment for raising cultural awareness through sharing skills and other social values.
In Auckland, woman from Somalia, Burma, Sri Lanka and many other cultures join with women who are long-time residents to share recipes, learn new cooking skills, improve their English and make new friends. The result has been enhanced confidence and self esteem for the women.
This is a great idea that could be replicated almost anywhere!
Article 548 of Syria’s Penal Code had previously allowed for a complete “exemption of penalty” for the killing of female family members who had been found committing “illegitimate sex acts”, and for the murder of wives having extramarital affairs.
On 1 June, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad replaced this Article with one reading: “He who catches his wife, sister, mother or daughter by surprise, engaging in an illegitimate sexual act and kills or injures them unintentionally must serve a minimum of two years in prison.”
Syrian Women Observatory, an independent Syrian website for women’s rights, estimates there are nearly 200 honour killings there a year. The UNFPA estimates that as many as 5000 women and girls are victims of honour killings each year worldwide.
Human rights activists welcome Syria’s move to enforce a minimum jail sentence for honour killers as better than nothing, but are asking that the Syrian government go further and treat all murderers alike – no exceptions.
Prostitution is not illegal in Rhode Island, nor is it regulated. Only street prostitution is prohibited.
This has created a favorable climate for sex related businesses. Massage parlors, strip clubs, and “spas” have proliferated as well as sex trafficking and sex slavery.
Recently, girls under the age of eighteen were discovered dancing in strip clubs in the State and right now according to Rhode Island law, that’s not illegal.
State Rep. Joanne Giannini is currently working on a bill to prohibit minors from working in strip clubs. She blames legalized prostitution for creating the atmosphere where such a thing could happen in the first place.
If Ms. Giannini really wants to change the climate; reduce the number of sex clubs, fight human trafficking and protect girls and boys, I would suggest that she go for the jugular and sponsor a bill that makes paying for sex illegal. Stop the demand! It has worked well elsewhere and I the think Rhode Islanders will appreciate the change in climate.
More info: http://www.stopdemand.org/wawcs016272/ln-home.html
A new family centered approach to maternal and newborn child care piloted in the Hospital Ramón Sarda in Buenos Aries is decreasing neo-natal mortality and will be replicated on a massive scale by UNICEF around the world.
Dr. Miguel Larguia, who has been with the hospital for 40 years, is the person responsible for the new approach.
“The concept of family-centred hospitals is a real change of paradigm because we now recognize as the owners of the house, not the medical doctors or the health agents, but the pregnant mothers and their babies,” he said.
Key features of the program include:
“This model includes practices that have been shown to be effective in preventing neo-natal mortality,” said UNICEF Health Specialist Zulma Ortiz. “And all of them are based specifically in the relationship between the mother and the son or the daughter – and also the whole family – so the idea is to promote the implementation of this strategy all over the world.”
Two thirds of neonatal and young child deaths – over 6 million deaths each year – are preventable. Supporting programmes like this one is an efficient, cost-effective way to help children survive.
In September of 1995 the United Nations convened the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. The official name of the Conference was “The Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace”. 189 governments participated in the conference and more than 5,000 representatives from 2,100 non-governmental organizations.
The outcome document of this conference known as The Platform for Action set out a number of actions that were to lead to fundamental changes in the lives of women and girls. Section L of the document focuses on the girl child and contains nine strategic objectives with corresponding actions that were to be taken by governments and civil society.
The objectives are:
In 2010 the United Nations will review progress on Beijing. An important part of this Beijing +15 review will be to ask how and in what ways girls are better off or worse off than they were in 1995.
As an NGO representative at the UN working on girls’ issues I am interested in what you think, especially if you are a girl.
Can you cite one success and one failure regarding any or all of these objectives? Thanks in advance for sharing your ideas.
Read more at: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/girl.htm
Neda Agha Soltan was a daughter, sister and friend, a music and travel lover, a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life. Killed by a Basij militiaman during a protest march on June 20, she has become the face of the opposition movement in Iran.
Soltan was among countless women, of all ages and backgrounds, who have taken to the streets in recent days to demand a recount of the presidential vote they and others say was won by Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister. Mousavi made his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a feature of his campaign and promised to give women more rights.
The Ahmadinejad era has been a giant leap backwards for women in Iran. His government has spent millions on propaganda telling women their proper place is in the home. Universities capped the number of female students admitted. In 2005, the regime launched a “culture of modesty” campaign aimed at enforcing stricter veiling. It replaced the Center for Women’s Participation, founded under the liberal presidency of Mohammad Khatami, with the Center for Women and Family, whose exclusive goal is to promote “modesty.”
Last summer Ahmadinejad and his supporters attempted to push a “family protection law” through parliament, easing restrictions on polygamy and taxing mehriyeh, the traditional payment a husband gives a wife upon marriage. In a country where 42 percent of young women looking for a job are out of work, Ahmadinejad went so far as to cite polygamy as a solution to female unemployment. Mehriyeh is the only source of financial independence women have within a legal system that severely limits their rights to divorce, child custody, and inheritance.
Worst of all Ahmadinejad supports sigheh, the religious “temporary marriages” that allow men to engage in consequence-free sex with prostitutes or to marry little girls and then divorce them when they are finished with them.
Iran’s 34 million women, disgruntled by Ahmadinejad’s gender policies are demanding female cabinet ministers, the right to able to run for president and the revision of civil and family law.
Neda Agha Soltan was not an activist. She was just a woman who wanted to be heard, wanted her vote to be counted. Her friends say that her outrage over the rigged election filled her with an unexpected daring and a willingness to stand up for her beliefs. I hope that I can be blessed with some of her courage.
