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Faces and Sorrows of Human Trafficking

NCJ Number
229137
Journal
Agora Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Dated: 2009 Pages: 42-47
Date Published
2009
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article highlights the victims of human trafficking and foreign governments' efforts to eliminate all forms of trafficking.
Abstract
A detailed description from the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, submitted by the U.S. Department of State to Congress on foreign governments' efforts to eliminate severe forms of human trafficking is presented as well as the myriad forms of exploitation that helps define these efforts. Forms of global exploitation include; women escaping from poor economic and humanitarian conditions in North Korea cross the border into China where they are captured by traffickers for both sexual exploitation and forced labor; child sex tourism involving people who travel to engage in commercial sex acts with children, with Ghana and Gambia facing a growing problem of boys in prostitution; and globally street children lured into brothels. Initiatives undertaken across the world to stem the flow of human trafficking and presented in the 2009 report include: 1) the establishment of Child Protection Units (CPUs) in Ethiopia; 2) initiation of "Direct Action," a pilot program in Panama addressing trafficking in three neighborhoods; 3) ratification of the Council for Europe's Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings offering protection of trafficking victims; and 4) the creation (by the National Agency Against Trafficking in Persons) of a centralized national database in Romania for law enforcement personnel to input data on individual trafficking victims.