We are between issues, so work at Horizons Magazine has been a bit slow, which means I've had the opportunity to contribute to some of our ongoing research into sex trafficking in South-East Europe.
This is something that I'd very much hoped to be able to be involved in, as it's a subject that has been close to my heart for some time. I first came face to face with sex trafficking while living and working in Sierra Leone in 2011. I volunteered with an NGO that taught English in some of Freetown's poorest slums, and was staggered to hear that one of the biggest causes of attrition in youth classes was sex trafficking. This was not generally the forced abduction that I, in my ignorance, thought was the start of the process of most young women. More commonly, girls were told that they would be found jobs or husbands abroad, but instead were sold to pimps in Europe or the U.S., who would take their passports away from them and force them to engage in sex work. Targeted girls could be as young as 15. This broke my heart; it was almost impossible to imagine that this could be the fate of the giggling teenagers that patiently bore my somewhat clumsy attempts at teaching English.
I saw a different side of sex trafficking when working in a women's drop in center in East London last year. We saw about 50 women a day, most of whom were regular visitors born and raised in the local area. Every now and then, however, we'd get referrals from various branches of social services, and would see women who had been rescued by the state having been allegedly held as sex slaves. Most were from Africa or from Eastern Europe. I have a basic grasp of a number of West African languages, and was therefore able to spend considerable time with these women. Many of the stories they told were completely heartbreaking. They had truly lived through a nightmare and now, to make matters worse, many were struggling to get justice - or even the help they needed. The British justice system too often simply bracketed them in with illegal immigrants, or treated them as if they had somehow been the perpetrators of crime. It was, and is, a national disgrace.
Europe is, in fact, at the center of many human trafficking networks. The scale of the problem is hard to estimate, due in part to the innately covert nature of the dealings, but the ILO estimates that about 2.5 million people were trafficked between 1995 and 2004. A considerable portion of these come from Eastern Europe.
This is a problem that is surprisingly hard to pin down and tackle, but in the last few years there are signs that both origin and destination countries are prepared to exert more effort to track down and prosecute smugglers, and to rescue - and get some form of justice for - women and children who have been trafficked.
CIRSD, where I'm spending the summer, is committed to tackling gender prejudice and oppression in all its forms, and the salience of the issue of human trafficking in the Balkans means that a number of upcoming events and publications will be directly addressing the issue. I've been able to assist with research around the issue, looking both at the current situation here and examples of best practice around the world.
Serbia is thought to be central to the current system of recruitment and transportation of trafficked women - it is itself an origin, transit and destination country. Many women from across the Balkans are brought here en route to Italy and other countries. Until recently NGOs have condemned efforts to shut down brothels as somewhat half-hearted, and therefore simply leading to the better concealment of victims of trafficking. According to the US, Serbia did not fully comply with the minimum standards set for the elimination of trafficking by the US. Thinks have improved since 2007, when the government established 11 new municipal teams to assist victims. More work still needs to be done however; Serbian courts often impose relatively lenient sentences for convicted offenders, and trials can last months or even years, sometimes resulting in convicted traffickers remaining free and possibly able to continue to exploit victims. In addition, the National Strategy to Combat Trafficking in Persons has yet to be fully implemented and the anti-trafficking team meets just once a year. This is clearly something that needs to move up the domestic political agenda, and I'm proud of the work that CIRSD and others are doing to ensure this happens. I hope to post a little more about what we're doing, and about best practice legislation from other counties, in the future.
(On a side note: if anyone is looking to learn a little more about this horrendous 'trade', I thoroughly recommend Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, which looks at all aspects from victim identification to liberalization, as well as touching on how policymakers in a variety of different western countries are trying to deal with the issue.)
This is something that I'd very much hoped to be able to be involved in, as it's a subject that has been close to my heart for some time. I first came face to face with sex trafficking while living and working in Sierra Leone in 2011. I volunteered with an NGO that taught English in some of Freetown's poorest slums, and was staggered to hear that one of the biggest causes of attrition in youth classes was sex trafficking. This was not generally the forced abduction that I, in my ignorance, thought was the start of the process of most young women. More commonly, girls were told that they would be found jobs or husbands abroad, but instead were sold to pimps in Europe or the U.S., who would take their passports away from them and force them to engage in sex work. Targeted girls could be as young as 15. This broke my heart; it was almost impossible to imagine that this could be the fate of the giggling teenagers that patiently bore my somewhat clumsy attempts at teaching English.
I saw a different side of sex trafficking when working in a women's drop in center in East London last year. We saw about 50 women a day, most of whom were regular visitors born and raised in the local area. Every now and then, however, we'd get referrals from various branches of social services, and would see women who had been rescued by the state having been allegedly held as sex slaves. Most were from Africa or from Eastern Europe. I have a basic grasp of a number of West African languages, and was therefore able to spend considerable time with these women. Many of the stories they told were completely heartbreaking. They had truly lived through a nightmare and now, to make matters worse, many were struggling to get justice - or even the help they needed. The British justice system too often simply bracketed them in with illegal immigrants, or treated them as if they had somehow been the perpetrators of crime. It was, and is, a national disgrace.
Europe is, in fact, at the center of many human trafficking networks. The scale of the problem is hard to estimate, due in part to the innately covert nature of the dealings, but the ILO estimates that about 2.5 million people were trafficked between 1995 and 2004. A considerable portion of these come from Eastern Europe.
This is a problem that is surprisingly hard to pin down and tackle, but in the last few years there are signs that both origin and destination countries are prepared to exert more effort to track down and prosecute smugglers, and to rescue - and get some form of justice for - women and children who have been trafficked.
CIRSD, where I'm spending the summer, is committed to tackling gender prejudice and oppression in all its forms, and the salience of the issue of human trafficking in the Balkans means that a number of upcoming events and publications will be directly addressing the issue. I've been able to assist with research around the issue, looking both at the current situation here and examples of best practice around the world.
Serbia is thought to be central to the current system of recruitment and transportation of trafficked women - it is itself an origin, transit and destination country. Many women from across the Balkans are brought here en route to Italy and other countries. Until recently NGOs have condemned efforts to shut down brothels as somewhat half-hearted, and therefore simply leading to the better concealment of victims of trafficking. According to the US, Serbia did not fully comply with the minimum standards set for the elimination of trafficking by the US. Thinks have improved since 2007, when the government established 11 new municipal teams to assist victims. More work still needs to be done however; Serbian courts often impose relatively lenient sentences for convicted offenders, and trials can last months or even years, sometimes resulting in convicted traffickers remaining free and possibly able to continue to exploit victims. In addition, the National Strategy to Combat Trafficking in Persons has yet to be fully implemented and the anti-trafficking team meets just once a year. This is clearly something that needs to move up the domestic political agenda, and I'm proud of the work that CIRSD and others are doing to ensure this happens. I hope to post a little more about what we're doing, and about best practice legislation from other counties, in the future.
(On a side note: if anyone is looking to learn a little more about this horrendous 'trade', I thoroughly recommend Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, which looks at all aspects from victim identification to liberalization, as well as touching on how policymakers in a variety of different western countries are trying to deal with the issue.)
There is a great new CEU course for nurses about Sex Trafficking. It includes three experts in Sex Trafficking giving their perspective on how a nurse can identify victims and help them in a clinical setting.
ReplyDeleteThere are video's along with text that all three experts provide.
The experts include:
Greg Bristol - Former FBI Agent, that started the Human and Sex Trafficking investigation unit for the FBI
Dr. Jessica L. Peck DNP, RN, MSN, CPNP-PC, CNE, CNL
K.D. Roche - Sex Trafficking survivor.
https://enursingresources.com/course/sex-trafficking-awareness-for-the-healthcare-professional/
Sex Trafficking Nursing Course