San Diego is a major target for human traffickers and with more than 17,000 women children and men being trafficked into the US every year, the county has received a federal grant of US$450,000 to help to deal with the problem. Situated directly on the border with Mexico, the city is a destination for women who are trafficked and sold into sex slavery. There are also many men who are trafficked into forced labour in the country. The victims are not only from Mexico, but also other countries in South America. Traffickers also use Mexico as a stopping off point for women from as far away as Russia. The San Diego county Sheriff’s department launched a training session yesterday for police officers, teaching them to recognise the signs that someone had been trafficked.
For a document by Professor Donna M Hughes on recognising the signs that someone has been trafficked, click here.

Large scale poverty in Uzbekistan has lead to approximately 600,000 Uzbeks seeking work illegally in Russia and Kazakhstan. With the average monthly wage in the cities at less than US$30 per month and in rural areas US$10, it is not surprising that people are looking for work elsewhere, this does, however, leave them vulnerable to being trafficked into forced labour and prostitution.
Muzaffar Aminov, from the south of Uzbekistan said
“I was sold to a Chechen by Uzbeks. Then he sold me to an Armenian. And each of them wanted their money back. So, I worked for over five months just to get my passport back. And I came back without any money,”
Poverty and corrupt law-enforcement have lead to the increasing power of human trafficking rings. The US Trafficking in Persons report records that the Uzbek government is making strenuous efforts to fight human trafficking, but finds that it lacks the resources to deal with the problem as forcefully as it would like.

Bhagyaraj used to have a kiosk selling utensils until the Tsunami washed it away. Now he is trying to get a middle man to take his 14 year old to the city to work as a domestic. It has become too hard to feed her at home. He lost two other daughters in the disaster.
Although child trafficking of this kind is common in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the area of Nagapattinam had been protected by its lucrative fishing industry. Now, since the devastation of the tsunami many of the area’s children are being trafficked to the city or quarries to work.
Arul Mani, a local community activist said that;
“Two other girls, 13 and 14, have gone to work as maids, one 14-year-old boy has gone to a stone quarry, three boys were taken to work in Bangalore, two went to aluminium factories,”
With the collapse of the local economy children are very vulnerable to being trafficked into forced labour because their families simply cannot support them. Trafficking and child labour are illegal in India, but they continue to flourish. The Indian government has recently been criticised for not doing enough to combat trafficking.

Despite recent efforts by the authorities in the UAE, the trafficking of young boys into the Arab state to be used as camel jockeys is still a major problem. John Miller, the director of the US office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons said
“When someone from our office goes over to one of their [camel] tracks and sees 50 children, and we’re not talking 14, 15 or 16 years old but 5 and 6 and sometimes 3 and 4 years old … the situation has to stop.”
The UK based organisation Anti-Slavery International estimates that the number of children being used as slaves to ride camels at about 10,000. The children, who are mainly from the Indian sub continent, are often kept in prison like conditions and are underfed so that they are light enough to race. In response to this, human rights activist Ansar Burney has called for top athletes to boycott lucrative sporting events in Dubai.
The UAE have promised to introduce a law banning the use of jockeys under the age of 16. A government official was quoted as saying;
‘‘The desire at a high level to combat this is obvious, especially since it became clear that it was a bigger problem than we thought,’’ after Anti-Slavery International showed that the practise was still continuing despite earlier crack-downs.

“I think there has not been emphasis on rich destination countries probably maybe subconsciously there was more emphasis on source countries, poorer source countries …. In this coming report we are going to focus more on destination countries and demand.” said John Miller, the director of the US office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, at a seminar held this month at Harvard University.
In the past the US Trafficking in Persons report has been a strong tool for putting pressure on poorer countries which act as source countries for women and children being trafficked into slavery, but has not been used so much to pressurise rich countries to curb the demand which creates the market.
“Every wealthy nation in the world is involved, they’re involved maybe not as source countries, but as destination countries, so we have an obligation there and we have an obligation when it comes to demand when it originates in destination countries.” John Miller said. You can watch the entire seminar by following the link found on the page linked here.