Despite recent crackdowns, there is still a large problem with child sex tourism and human trafficking in Mexico, particularly in the resorts of Acapulco and Cancun as well as border cities such as Ciudad Juarez. The numbers of child victims of commercial sexual exploitation has risen over the past five years to around 20,000. Many of those who pay for sex with these children are European, US and Canadian citizens.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, has welcomed the efforts of the Mexican authorities, but wants to see more concrete results;
“Mexican authorities used to be in denial about the problem. Now they are starting to address it,” said Teresa Kilbane, the fund’s Mexico projects director. “But the authorities still fail to give out solid figures on things like the number of paedophiles actually arrested or convicted.”
Elizabeth Moreno, who heads a city government program to combat child prostitution is frustrated with the failure to effectively prosecute hose who abuse children;
“Even if we see suspects we can’t act. We just pass the information on” “Sometimes, nothing seems to be done with it.”
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A Hungarian couple were arrested on December 26th in England’s Stanstead Airport, accused of trafficking women into forced prostitution. The arrest of Andrea Kinga Borcsok, 27, and Atilla Makai, 21 is thought to be linked to the raids on Cuddles massage parlour in Birmingham, England in September of this year when 19 women were released from what was thought to be sex slavery. The couple will appear before magistrates on Wednesday. At the time of the raid on the massage parlour, a police spokesperson said:
“The women are believed to be of Eastern European origin and were tricked into the sex industry. They had their passports taken. They were locked into the venue during the evening to work and taken away during the day and locked in a house.”
Despite this fact the police have found it difficult to gain testimony from the victims who were probably scared of the consequences of talking to the police and six of whom were threatened with deportation. The arrest of the Hungarian couple is a break through in the case.

A court in Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro, has sentenced 10 members of a human trafficking gang to prison terms. The “Pancevo group”, named after the Serbian town they operated out of, were found guilty of deceiving women with offers of good jobs and then forcing them into prostitution. They were exposed in 2003 after a woman who had been trafficked by the gang escaped from a brothel in Italy. She had been trafficked on a forged passport to neighbouring Croatia and then onto Italy where the gang leader Dejan Stosic beat her and forced her into prostitution. Stosic has not been extradited to Serbia and has been sentenced to four years in absentia. The other members of the gang received lighter sentences. While the convictions are to be welcomed it is doubtful whether light sentences will ever dissuade criminals from engaging in human trafficking when it is such a lucrative activity, now netting organised crime as much as arms trafficking and second only to drug trafficking.

A court in Ogun State, Nigeria has sentenced two Republic of Benin nationals to seven years in prison for human trafficking. Jean Adafayi (21) and Gilbert Ganysode (33) decieved four young girls, two from Togo, one from Ghana and one from the Republic of Benin and sold them into prostitution in Nigeria. They were, however, arrested by the Nigerian National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other related matters (NAPTIP). This is only the third conviction that the agency has achieved in three years. Justice O. Mabekoje said the sentence was to deter traffickers and to give a message to non-Nigerians that thet could no longer come to Nigeria to commit such offences. Arinze Orakwe of NAPTIP urged parents to look carefully at job offers made to their children, pareticularly over the festive season when traffickers take many children.

An Indian national is asking to be recognised as a victim of human trafficking in Israel. The woman claims that she was held in conditions of slavery as she worked as a domestic servant in Tel Aviv. The NGO Hotline for Migrant Workers has written to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asking that the woman be given the same status as those who have been sold into prostitution. The woman claims that she was deprived of her freedom, was forced to work from 6am to 11 at night and that any wages were given directly to her brother not to her. The letter notes that in November a bill was placed before the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) asking that the definition of who is a victim of human trafficking be expanded. The NGO hopes that the woman will not be deported whilst investigations are ongoing and point out that she needs rehabilitation just as much as other victims of trafficking.
Around the world thousands of women and children are trafficked into domestic servitude. The fact that they are in their employers houses and often not seen by the general public can make them very vulnerable to abuse.