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For centuries this question has haunted European thought, and as new fences are erected and bodies wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean its implications reassert themselves with renewed urgency. For over twenty years the outsourcing of migration controls has meant that European publics have been protected from the practical reality of forced displacement and the economic desperation that is now showing up on holiday beaches.

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By Jenny S. Martinez

Today, 25 March, is International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. But unfortunately, the victims of slavery were not all in the distant past. Contemporary forms of slavery and forced labor remain serious problems and some reputable human rights organizations estimate that there are some 21-30 million people living in slavery today. The issue is not limited to just a few countries, but involves complex transnational networks that facilitate human trafficking. Just as in the past, international cooperation is necessary to end this international problem.

International law played a key role in ending the transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century. In the year 1800, slavery and the slave trade were cornerstones of the Atlantic world and had been for centuries. Tens of thousands of people from Africa were carried across the Atlantic each year, and millions lived in slavery in the new world. In 1807, legislatures in both the United States and Britain — two countries whose ships had been key participants in the trade — banned slave trading by their citizens. But two countries alone could not stop what was a truly international traffic, which quickly shifted to the ships of other nations. International cooperation was required.

Beginning in 1817, Britain negotiated a series of bilateral treaties banning the slave trade and creating international courts to enforce that ban. These were, I suggest, the first permanent international courts and the first international courts created with the aim of enforcing a legal rule designed to protect individual human rights. The courts had jurisdiction to condemn and auction off ships involved in the slave trade, while freeing their passengers. The crews of navy ships that captured the illegal slave vessels were entitled to a share of the proceeds of the sale of the vessels, creating an incentive for vigorous policing. By 1840, more than twenty nations — including all the major maritime powers involved in the transatlantic trade — had signed treaties of various sorts (not all involving the international courts) committing to the abolition of slave trading. By the mid-1860s, the slave trade from Africa to the Americas had basically ceased, and by 1900, slavery itself had been outlawed in every country in the Western Hemisphere.

“East African enslaved people rescued by the British naval ship, HMS Daphne (1869)” via The National Archives UK on Flickr.

While treaties today prohibit slavery and the slave trade, international efforts at eradicating modern forms of slavery and forced labor trafficking are inadequate. Looking to the lessons of the past, international policy makers should consider implementing a more robust system for dismantling modern day slavery. A system of property condemnation with economic incentives for whistleblowers could again be used to leverage enforcement power; someone who turns in a human trafficker could be entitled to a share of the proceeds of a sale of the trafficker’s assets. Similarly, international courts could be used in especially severe cases. Enslavement is a crime against humanity under the statute of International Criminal Court, and severe cases involving transnational trafficking networks with large numbers of victims might meet the criteria for ICC jurisdiction. Violent acts in wartime are more visible international crimes, but the human impact of enslavement is no less severe or deserving of international justice.

It is not enough to remember past victims of enslavement; to truly honor their memory, we must do something to help those who are enslaved today.

Jenny S. Martinez is Professor of Law and Justin M. Roach, Jr., Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School. A leading expert on international courts and tribunals, international human rights, and the laws of war, she is also an experienced litigator who argued the 2004 case Rumsfeld v. Padilla before the U.S. Supreme Court. Martinez was named to the National Law Journal’s list of “Top 40 Lawyers Under 40.” She is the author of The Slave Trade and The Origins of International Human Rights Law (OUP 2012), now available in paperback.

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Today author S. Bergstrom talks to us about human trafficking–an inhumane practice that happens all too often–as well as his new book The Cruelty. Human trafficking is very close to what I went through myself as a child and teen through the cult, so it really affects me. No human should be treated this way. I’m very glad S. Bergstrom is speaking out, and helping people become more aware through his book. I’m glad to be part of his tour. I hope you are moved by his post, as I was.

Jasmine of Berlin
by S. Bergstrom, author of The Cruelty.

The girl wears her hair in schoolgirl braids tied with pink ribbon. An attempt, I suppose, to look even younger than her seventeen or eighteen years. Despite it being a brutally cold Berlin night in February 2012, she wears a very short skirt and I can see bruises the color of eggplant on her bare legs.

After scanning the bar for a few seconds, the girl takes a seat next to me. The bartender gives her a look and doesn’t bother asking if she wants anything to drink. She is, evidently, known here. Jasmine is how she introduces herself, and that’s what I call her for the remainder of the ten second conversation that follows. If possible, her German is more basic than mine, and filled with enough Russian vowels and rolled r’s that I have to assume she’s from one of the former Soviet Republics.

“Why you here alone?” she asks.

“Waiting on a friend,” I answer. “Why are you here alone, Jasmine?”

She looks at me in a way that means I’m impossibly stupid or impossibly cruel for making her say it out loud. “Sex for money,” she says. “Do you want? Very cheap.”

I tell her no and reiterate that I’m waiting for a friend. She gets up without another word and approaches two middle-aged business men drinking at the other end of the bar. No more than a minute passes before she leaves with one of them, the man’s arm around her waist.

This is not a remarkable story. I’m not even sure I mentioned to the friend who came in a few minutes later. To men especially, it’s all pretty familiar. Travel enough by yourself and approaches such as these happen too often to count. It happens not just in Europe, of course, but in North America, too. Miami. New York. Toronto. Topeka. But it’s precisely because it’s unremarkable and universal that it’s so tragic.

Jasmine—or Anna, or Olga, or Sveta, or whatever her real name is—did not end up in Berlin by accident. If you travel extensively in this part of the world, you know it’s not too far a logical leap to guess at the story that came before her arrival in Germany’s capital. Jasmine was, very likely—in fact, almost certainly—the victim of human trafficking.

Trafficking in human beings for both sex and labor happens everywhere, but it’s most obvious in places like Berlin where the impoverished East borders the relatively more prosperous West. Class distinctions there are sharp and it’s a mecca for immigrants, mainly from Turkey, but from former Soviet satellite states, too. It’s these latter countries—particularly the poorest of the poor, such as Moldova—that are the epicenters of human trafficking in Europe.

In such countries there is little industry or infrastructure. But what these places do have in abundance is young people on whom human traffickers prey by promising them lucrative, easy work abroad. It often begins with the offer of a waitressing gig in Dubai, or modeling job in Paris. Such connections are often made through brokers who advance sums of money to the young woman’s family. Sometimes it’s even a relative—an uncle or cousin abroad who’s made arrangements with his acquaintances there.

What happens next varies in specifics, but typically ends the same way. Upon arriving in a new country, the victim’s passport is confiscated and the true nature of the work she’ll be doing is finally disclosed. Leaving is impossible without her passport, and threats to quit are countered by threats to either her life, or the lives of her family back home. There is also the issue of spurious “debt,” which the victim has accrued both through the advance often paid to her family, and the purported costs of transport, lodging, and other “fees” such as bribes to officials for work visas which almost never materialize. This debt, along with the interest it accrues, is typically so inflated that there is no realistic way for the women to repay it.

Those brave enough to escape this life often find themselves victimized again by the legal system in their host country. While tremendous gains have been made in much of Europe in recognizing these women as victims rather than criminals, this is not the case in many Middle Eastern or Asian countries. Branded as criminals both for the work they performed and their lack of documentation, the victims of human trafficking often face prison sentences and further abuse at the hands of the police.

The idea of slavery is, today, almost universally repellent. But then, so is war. So is starvation. Yet these things go on anyway. Some time ago, when I approached a magazine to write an article about sex trafficking, the editor’s face contorted in visible disgust. “No one wants to read about that,” she said. I explained to her that according to the United Nations, there were more human beings enslaved in the 21st Century than there were at the height of the Atlantic slave trade. She only shrugged. “My readers can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Mostly, that editor is right. Human trafficking, whether for sex or labor, is a decentralized problem. There is no single nation from which the women come, and no single nation that is their destination. Thankfully, through the attention of the UN and many NGOs, reforms are taking place worldwide that enact tougher penalties for the traffickers themselves while providing support for the victims. We can only encourage the spread and strict enforcement of these laws, all the while raising awareness whenever possible and with whatever media is at hand. Is that enough? Will such reforms work? I don’t know. Neither does anyone.

I thought about Jasmine as I wrote my novel The Cruelty, where the woman I knew for all of ten seconds became Marina, guide and benefactor to my protagonist. It was a hopeful gesture, but ultimately a meaningless one. In the book, Marina survives. She defeats the man responsible for her bondage, triumphing over him. But in real life I’m not sure Jasmine fared so well.

S. Bergstrom is a writer and traveler fascinated by the darker, unloved corners of world’s great cities. His books and articles on architecture and urbanism have been widely published in both the United States and Europe. The Cruelty is his first novel. He can be reached at sbergstrom.com or on Twitter @BergstromScott

When her diplomat father is kidnapped and the U.S. government refuses to help, 17-year-old Gwendolyn Bloom sets off across the dark underbelly of Europe to rescue him. Following the only lead she has—the name of a Palestinian informer living in France—Gwendolyn plunges into a brutal world of arms smuggling and human trafficking. As she journeys from the slums of Paris, to the nightclubs of Berlin, to the heart of the most feared crime family in Prague, Gwendolyn discovers that to survive in this new world she must become every bit as cruel as the men she’s hunting.

You can find S. Bergstrom on:
Author Website
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I had the  privilege of interviewing award-winning  journalist Dan Archer, the creator of the Kickstarter project Graphic Journalism on Human Trafficking in Nepal.

Project: Graphic Journalism on Human Trafficking in Nepal.

Talent/Project Manager: Dan Archer

Days to Go: 5

Goal: $12,000

The spiel:  For the last three years Dan Archer has been teaching a graphic novel project through the Creative Writing department at Stanford University.  Archer has been nominated for an Eisner for his collaboration on Yiddishkeit with the legendary Harvey Pekar.  Dan is the first comics journalist to be elected to the John S. Knight  Jourlism Fellowship. You can read his journalistic pieces on various websites like  Huffington Post, Alternet, The Guardian UK, Presente, Operamundi(Brazil), Expressbuzz (India) and Independent World Report.

An investigative journalism project to report on human trafficking in Nepal in real time in the form of a webcomic and graphic novel.

Dan is going to use the funds for his travel in Nepal to gather testimony from people who have been directly effected by human trafficking.  He has a staff of translators, fixers and survey givers he will pay with the money raised.  This is something that has never been done before, and if that’s not enough, he will give backers the opportunity to watch him report/create the comic in real time.  Real time online art videos have become very popular and I think builds a bigger bond between fans and the creators.  It should be interesting to see how this comic is created and his commentary as he makes it.

Archer is offering prints of individual web comics, and  interactive PDFs with multimedia content like audio and video footage.  If you kick in $50 you get the paper back and for only an extra $25 you can get the book personalized and a sketch.  The book will be published in English and Nepali.  The price seems a little high but I think readers and potential backers can have faith that if this project succeeds this will be a rewarding experience for everyone.

Mr. Archer was kind enough to take time from his busy schedule from interviewing people that have been slaves and give an interview and elaborate what will go in to making this project come to fruition.

Henry Barajas: With so many problems in the world like climate change, food shortages and political corruption, why do you feel the need to report the social injustice in Nepal?

Dan Archer: When I started making non-fiction comics I focused on the larger issues like political corruption (in my graphic history of the Honduran Coup), prop 8, the military-industrial complex in the US and so on, but I slowly gravitated towards telling personal stories, adapted from first-hand testimonies from people whose voices were often absent from mainstream media. I became interested in human trafficking after my 2009 project through the Fulbright program with the wonderful Olga Trusova, in which we used comics to tell the stories of seven trafficking survivors from eastern europe. After finishing that project in 2010, I continued working on trafficking/violence against women in the US, but it was when I spoke to Madhu during my Knight fellowship that I saw an opportunity to use comics in an environment where literacy levels were low and a significant chunk of the target audience was children.

How are you going to find people that are going to willingly share their stories without any kind of reprisal?

A mixture of different approaches: I’m pairing with a professor at Vanderbilt University who ran a huge study on trafficking as part of her Phd at Stanford in 2009, who already has experience and a pre-built network we can use; through NGOs; through a colleague who was on the same journalism fellowship I was on at Stanford in 2010 who has extensive links to Nepal’s community radio stations (having essentially built them from scratch over the past decade), which is ideal for reaching out to local populations; through schools; and through the sheer interest that people have in the project, the response to which has been positive across the board.

Are there any taboos or misconceptions about this situation in Nepal and human trafficking that the general public has that you want to clear up?

At the risk of painting the issue in too broad brush strokes  yes, most definitely. The dramatic rescue approach, careening into locations where trafficking is reported and pulling out the victims, is no longer an option – or at least an option that will be beneficial in the long-term without a significant improvement in after-care infrastructure. In those cases, despite them generating media attention for all the drama involved, one of two things tend to happen: either the survivors, after being released from custody, find themselves back in the same desperate economic situation that led them to resort to trusting a dalal (trafficker) in the first place (with the added challenge of now having to overcome their community’s stigma at having been trafficked) or they are detained in custody (often because they’re the only ones at the scene of the crime, the traffickers long gone by then) and dependent on the same criminals who enslaved them to bail them out. Which is of course added to their ongoing bill, and cements the notion that only the trafficker cares about them. Trafficking is also not only sex trafficking, which makes up only a fraction of incidences, and was more prevalent a decade ago. Bonded labour and domestic servitude amongst children is a huge problem that many papers perhaps feel lacks the emotive punch of sex trafficking. Plus the risks of workers going abroad (especially to the Gulf/Qatar etc) are huge, and few protection systems are in place for those who risk everything to leave their country and provide for their families.

This project could have been made as a documentary or a novel and probably received more notoriety.  What gave you the idea to use this visual narrative to shed light on this subject?

The age-old question about comics being intrinsically comic! Comics (or graphic novels, which non-comics folks seem to find more palatable) are increasingly being taken more seriously: from Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer or Maus in 92 to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis being required reading for US troops stationed in the middle east to Joe Sacco recently being awarded the Ridenhaeur prize for Investigative Reporting for Footnotes in Gaza – slowly the prejudice is being overcome.

Comics effectively give the creator the power of director, cameraman, set designer, writer, actor etc – but without any budgetary strings. So you’re able to work with source material in a way that gives the reader a unique reading experience: they control the pace of the narrative as only they have the agency to piece together the narrative from one panel to the next. Unlike film, which is more passive. I wanted to tell the story of trafficking not from the cliched POV of an outsider looking in, but through their eyes, using their words – and drawn visuals give me the ability to corroborate what I’ve sketched with the interviewee to ensure that I get the images as close to their recollection as possible. Visual narratives are also very malleable: I can pull out the words and make the stories work wordlessly if need be, or translate the text into different registers to suit the audience. Plus it’s very low-tech media: screening a documentary might work at a one-off event, but I wanted to produce something that would have a lasting benefit, that could be shared long after we leave the villages we’re working with: and comics are the ideal medium for that. Not to mention the power of connection that sketching someone in the field has, as opposed to putting recording equipment in their face.

What goes in to preparing for this journey on a logistical and mental level?

Having Madhu (the colleague I mentioned in the previous question) as a local with lifelong experience of working nationwide has been invaluable for getting things off the ground – at a logistical and linguistic level (my Nepali is getting there, slowly but surely…) His wife Jaya is also a prominent figure in Nepali media and a staunch advocate of women’s rights, and the pair of them have gone out of their way to lend me their expertise and knowledge as I’ve set things up. I also reached out to a ton of different NGOs before I left to set up meetings and interviews for when I arrived, so was able to get a fast sense of the lay of the land. Mentally, the challenge of being in an entirely foreign situation actually appealed to me (I studied languages at university way back when, so I love the chance to immerse myself in another culture), and of course there was the thrill (and risk) of trying to report in a more real-time fashion using comics, as well as to run a quantitative assessment of comics in the field for the first time. So there’s a lot at stake in a relative short timeframe (I’m here til May) – something that’s all too metaphorically represented in the tick tick tick of the Kickstarter campaign, which ends on Saturday.

If this is successful, what other social injustices do you plan to plan to cover using comic’s journalism?

Comics are very versatile and would be well suited to any sort of grass-roots awareness campaigns in countries facing the same barriers to visual media access as Nepal. Economic injustice within the globalized supply chain (indirectly related to trafficking) is another area I’m interested in working on, and in fact I’ll be stopping over in Delhi to visit some of the failed resettlement projects outside the capital to cover a story on that next week.

Comics Journalism is becoming rapidly popular, where do you see this going in the future?

There’s the undeniable rise of digital comics journalism from the likes of Sarah Glidden, Susie Cagle, Wendy MacNaughton, The Illustrated Press, Andy Warner or Matt Bors’ work as comics journalism editor for Cartoon Movement, plus the launch of tablet-targeted publications like Erin Polgreen’s Symbolia, which has been cleverly optimized to deliver interactive comics journalism content to the ipad. I think the future will see more interactivity incorporated into this sort of work – we’re already seeing embedded audio and hotlinks (via soundcloud and thinglink), but soon it will feature animation, multimedia and so on.

I’m not really aware of the history that comics have in Kathmandu—are there any other comics to come from there or is this the first?

I confess I’m not too familiar with the local scene here either – there have been some illustrated attempts at covering trafficking, but they’ve typically been very generic in their approach, often collapsing different fictional stories, which I don’t think resonate with the same power as real stories told by real people. There’s also a history of satirical/humorous comics, like the “Yak and Yeti” strip that used to run in one of the big dailies in Kathmandu, but it’s a comics strip more in keeping with the setup/conflict/punchline rhythm of strips like Garfield. I’m definitely interested in finding local artists doing the same kind of work as I am.

Henry Barajas is the co-creator, writer and letterer for El Loco and Captain Unikorn. He has also written and lettered short stories for two successful Kickstarter projects: Unite and Take Over: Stories inspired by The Smiths and Break The Walls: Comic Stories inspired by The Pixies.  He is the Newsroom Research Assistant for The Arizona Daily Star and was nominated for the Shel Dorf Blogger of the Year award.  You can follow him on Twitter @HenryBarajas.

photo by isafmedia Flickr.com

Basically, on March 8, women and men around the world will join together on bridges for peace and to take a stand against violence towards women. This event started in Africa in the countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo when country directors from Women for Women programs stood together on a bridge between the two countries. When you stand with at least one other person on a bridge, you are supporting the theme: “Stronger Women Build Bridges of Peace.” To find events in your area, go to the website through the link above. If you can not stand on a bridge, which I know many of you cannot because you will be teaching or with your kids, then you can look into other ways to do something special for women around the world on March 8. You can blog about it like I am, tweet about it, write it on your Facebook page, or how about donating to water.org?

I learned about water.org helping women and children around the world when I saw Matt Damon on the Ellen show. He co-founded this organization, which is helping to bring clean water to ALL people in the world. As he said on the Ellen show, it is ridiculous that there are still people dying from drinking dirty water when we have known forever how to purify it and make it safe. He talked about some water bottles you can buy for $25, which is how much it costs to give someone a lifetime’s supply of clean water. Anyway, I went on the website to find these water bottles and show you a picture, but they are currently on back order. You can donate $25 there, however. Matt Damon is not just another pretty face.

So, how will you celebrate International Women’s Day? I just had another thought. You can celebrate it by calling a girlfriend who is down in the dumps and building her up, giving your mom a kiss, or offering to help out your sister. You can do a big thing for the world like stand up for peace or a small thing for the women in your family. It doesn’t really matter. Just be aware that tomorrow is the day to honor women (and make sure the men in your life know it)!

PS: I am reading an amazing book right now about the sex trafficking problem in Russia (and the world). It is a fiction book, but it is excellent. Please check it out.

I don't intend to use this blog as a platform for rants (although the temptation to just shriek what? you can not be serious! is often simmering beneath the surface...) but this is a petition I think we can all get behind because the EU has developed new regulations and the UK has yet to sign up to them. And it's especially relevant now because the Olympic Games are apparently going to be a wonderful money-making, misery-making opportunity for modern slave traders.

It doesn't bear thinking about, does it? But that's what we have to do.

Dear David Cameron and Nick Clegg, 

Please guarantee the UK government opts in to the EU Directive on Human Trafficking to ensure that trafficking into and within the EU stops and that those involved are properly prosecuted. Please make sure that the UK opts in to new rules to help stop trafficking.

This petition has been organised by 38 Degrees and you can sign it by clicking on the title of this post. They are working with other organisations such as The Anti-Slavery International, the Independent on Sunday and ECPAT UK to convince the Coalition not to opt out of the new rules.

• An end to tax dodging
• Protection against homelessness
• Against government plans to sell off our forests

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By: Lobster Press, on 6/27/2008
Blog: Lobster Press (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  interview, charity, donations, teen books, human trafficking, Add a tag

Christina Kilbourne's powerful forthcoming novel They Called me Red* addresses issues of trafficking and the exploitation of children. Working with Christina's book has greatly increased our awareness of this devastating issue, so when we discovered Climb for Captive's innovative efforts to combat human trafficking, we knew we had to tell more people about it. On July 4th, a team of six climbers will set out for the summit of Mt. Rainier with the hope of earning $14,410 to combat human trafficking - a dollar for each vertical foot of the mountain. You can help Climb for Captives reach its goal by donating through their web-site.

We spoke to Jeremy Vallerand, who will make the steep climb up Mt. Rainier, to learn more about what motivated this group of six to celebrate United States' Independence Day on the top of a mountain.

1. What inspired you and your team to climb a mountain to combat human trafficking?

A few months ago I had the opportunity to spend some time in Mumbai/Bombay India with an organization that works in the Red Light District trying to rescue children out of the brothels. I saw first hand how terrible the suffering is for the victims and I realized that the ones who are affected the most by Human Trafficking are children. When I heard that a majority of the girls were kidnapped and forced into prostitution before the age of 13 my heart completely broke and I knew that when I got back home to Seattle, WA, I would have to do something about it.

I started talking to a group of my friends about the issue of human trafficking and we began brainstorming ways that we could make a difference. It seemed natural to do something on July 4th since that is the day our nation celebrates its independence and so Climb for Captives was born. What better way to celebrate our Independence Day, our freedom, than to fight for those who can't fight for themselves.

2. Can you tell us more about the current state of domestic and international human trafficking?

It's pretty overwhelming to look at the numbers related to human trafficking both domestically and abroad. To give you a brief snapshot, UNICEF estimates that there are 2 million children exploited in the commercial sex trade every year. I don't even know how to imagine that number… 2,000,000. I do know that there are only four cities in the US with a population over 2 million and only 2 cities in Canada. That means that every year the number of children that are forced into the sex trade is greater than the entire population of Seattle, or San Francisco, or Ottawa. In fact, you would have to add the total population of those three cities together just to equal 2 million.

The good news domestically is that people are starting to become aware of the issue. In Seattle, where I live, the police department has formed a Human Trafficking Task force to focus specifically on this issue and other cities are following suit. According to most estimates, there are over 100,000 children in the US that are victims of commercial sexual exploitation and 20,000 more are being trafficked in every year. Though the numbers seem overwhelming, I really believe that we can make a difference…in fact, I believe we already are.

3. How long will it take to climb Mt. Rainier?

Mt. Rainier is the most glaciated volcano in the contiguous United States. At 14,410 feet the mountain is full of challenges that force over 50% of all climbers to turn back before the summit. Our group of six is hoping to climb to the summit in two or three days depending on the weather and the snow conditions. Altitude sickness is also a major factor for a lot of climbers so there is no guarantee that we will all make it to the summit.

4. How will Climb for Captives donate the funds it collects?

Climb for Captives is donating 100% of the funds received to the Home Foundation, a non-profit charitable foundation dedicated to the eradication of human trafficking both domestically and abroad, and all of the donations are tax deductible. I recently met singer/songwriter Natalie Grant who started The Home Foundation and was very impressed by the work they are doing and by the way they use their resources. If people are interested in contributing to the Climb for Captives they can do so via our website at www.climbforcaptives.com. They can also email us any questions they have at [email protected].




*Christine Kilbourne's They Called Me Red will be released in Fall 2008. Her novel Dear Jo: The story of losing Leah...and searching for hope was shortlisted for the Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Awards in 2007 and has received praiseworthy reviews from School Library Journal, Montreal Review of Books, and more. Read a review of Dear Jo by The Literary Word to learn more.

0 Comments on Interview: Jeremy Vallerand Climbs Mountain to Combat Human Trafficking as of 1/1/1900

Brendan Woodward said, on 6/27/2008 4:57:00 PM

This is a great thing! Way to go and thanks Lobster Press for picking up this story.

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