| Panel discusses the horrors of human trafficking BY MIKE UNGER John Picarelli is among the throngs of experts who consider human trafficking to be the second most significant form of human rights abuse in the world, behind genocide. Picarelli, a PhD candidate at the School of International Service, was one of four speakers who discussed the troubling topic Wednesday during a lunchtime conversation sponsored by AU’s Project HOPE International Club, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the problem and raising money for groups in Southeast Asia working to combat it. “It’s generally considered that hundreds of thousands of people each year are trafficked,” said Picarelli, who recently completed a law enforcement training curriculum given by the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. “Trafficking in persons is a form of organized crime. It is just like drugs. It requires efforts from a broad array of agencies if we’re going to solve the problem.” While the issue was once again thrust into the spotlight after the tsunami in Southeast Asia late last year left thousands of children orphaned, it has plagued varying cultures for years. Sarah Ahmed, a master’s student in SIS’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution program, said human trafficking has two key elements: exploitation and coercion. “It does not mean people have to be physically transported across borders,” she said. “A lot of victims come from extreme poverty. Women trying to escape violence, organized crime, government corruption, and political instability. People can be used for the sex industry and exploitative labor. To have effective anti-trafficking we have to target three aspects of the traffic: the supply side, the traffickers, and the demand side. We have to promote the equality of human rights throughout the globe.” Eradicating human trafficking is, of course, a monumental task. But AU alumna Christina Arnold was so moved by the heart-wrenching scenes of enslavement she saw while growing up in Asia, she founded Project HOPE in 1999 to work toward doing just that. “I think the economic factor is the biggest,” said Arnold, a visiting scholar in residence at the School of Public Affairs. “If there were better job opportunities, things would be a lot better. Our goal is to be able to help organizations that provide aftercare to women who escape trafficking.” Complicating matters is that women who are freed from brothels and forced labor camps often are returned to countries such
as Burma from which they originally fled in search of economic opportunity. “The rates of retrafficking are crushing,” Arnold said. “It’s a very complex problem, and there are no simple solutions.” Vidyamali Samarasinghe, a professor at SIS, has traveled to Nepal, Cambodia, and the Phillippines, to research female sex trafficking. “While I do agree that poverty is an issue that drives sex trafficking, it is not” the sole cause, she said. “They are not the poorest of the poor, they are the ones willing to take a risk. It is more this concept that the grass is always greener on the other side.” Trafficking’s tentacles reach farther than just the sex and forced labor industries. Trafficking in domestic workers, landscapers, camel jockeys in the Middle East, poultry workers, and even in human organs has been documented. Yet Ahmed, who studied the problem while in Pakistan, remains hopeful. “The most important thing I learned there was this is a problem that is highly preventable,” she said. |
