Members of the Scottish parliament have been hearing testimony by Amnesty International on the trauma suffered by women who have been trafficked into sexual exploitation, a trauma so severe that Amnesty found 40% of victims had considered suicide.
Dr Cathy Zimmerman from Amnesty International said: “Serious levels of anxiety, sleep disorders and depression, severe depression. In fact, the women that we interviewed their depression levels compared with the ten percent of those most depressed women in the general population.”
Despite successful raids across the UK during the recent police “Operation Pentameter”, it is difficult to assess the extent of the problem because many of the women brought to the country are kept locked in private houses and apartments.
The UK government is still unsure of signing and ratifying the Council of Europe Convention on human trafficking because that would grant victims the right to remain in the country for a 30 day reflection period, but this is what is necessary as a minimum for people to start to recover from their ordeal and make informed choices about their lives. The government is afraid that such a move might encourage illegal immigration.

There have been more reports of the trafficking of women and children into forced prostitution and forced labour in South Africa. Babalwa Makawula, a co-founder of the New Life Centre, an outreach centre in Berea, said;
“The problem we face is that a lot of these children have pimps who lock them up the whole day and only let them out at night to work,”
“What we are seeing is a large number of girls from the rural areas of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal who are being trafficked to Joburg by their friends, who tell them that there are plenty of jobs here.”
“When they get here they find that there are no jobs and are forced into prostitution. In some cases, the older girls and even their friends become their pimps,”
NGOs in Johannesburg estimate that there are around 2000 underage prostitutes working in the Hillbrow and Berea areas alone. In addition to this there is a problem with children being trafficked into forced labour, a problem which is difficult to deal with in the Sub-Saharan Africa context where millions of children are economically active.

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has acknowledged that corruption in the judiciary and government has aided human trafficking. Trafficking, both within the country and across borders has become endemic since the fall of communism in the early 1990s.
The Prime Minister said; “Such a phenomenon, which stains Albanians’ national image and dignity more than anything else, is not receiving the answer it deserves,”
“It is undeniable that the money of this ugly crime has enriched judges, prosecutors, government officials,”
Berisha insisted that the country, which hopes to join the EU in the future, must pass adequate laws against trafficking and also enforce them;
“This is our absolute priority,” he said, “all law-enforcement agencies will have one main duty, fighting human and drug trafficking because that is what Albanian taxpayers pay them for.”

Three young Filipinas have claimed that they were trafficked to Dubai and sexually exploited. They have asked for the assistance of the Philippines Consulate and filed cases against their former employer. The women claimed that they were staying in the Emirate on a visitor’s visa and had expected to work as waitresses, but instead were forced into prostitution by a trafficker called Malou. One of the women, from Baguio City, a province in Northern Luzon, Philippines, said;
“We were recruited in the Philippines by Malou’s cousin. When we got here, we were immediately brought to a flat in Deira, but we didn’t know that we will be turned into prostitutes. I had my monthly period immediately after I arrived in Dubai, so she made me start seeing clients on the first week of June,”
One of the other women from Davao City in Philippines, said they were forced into prostitution against their will “Sometimes, I would sleep with three different men in a day. Each customer would pay Dh500, but we never received a single dirham because Malou would take the money directly from the customers,”
The third woman, who escaped later, also alleged that she had been promised work as a waitress, but had been sexually exploited. She told about her escape while being forced to pick up clients;
“After having some drinks in President Hotel, we took a taxi and while the vehicle was moving, I jumped out of it. My companion tried to stop me but I managed to let go,”
Rafael Palencia, Assistance to Nationals Coordinator of the Philippines Consulate-General, said that the issue of human trafficking is a long standing problem “It has been a modus operandi where Filipinas back home are promised jobs as waitresses in hotels or employees in malls here in Dubai, but are actually being recruited as prostitutes by some pimps. Now, the PCG will make sure that serious cases will be filed against these pimps so that their activities will be put to an end. We have already coordinated with the authorities concerned in Dubai,”
This case once again highlights the problem of human trafficking which exists in Dubai. Not only are women and children trafficked into sexual exploitation, but there is also widespread trafficking of people into forced labour. Business Travellers against Human Trafficking is currently campaigning for action by the authorities in Dubai. You can join that campaign by clicking the link at the top of the page.

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Because of the large scale trafficking of people from villages into the major cities, the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) is to work with NGOs in India to help village councils across that country to keep track of people who travel in search of work. They will also be asked to report any villagers who disappear and do not return. Keeping a register of people who have migrated for work will help police know who needs to be traced, it may also discourage traffickers from luring people into situations of slavery by offering them good jobs in the city. “For the first time, we are going to fight trafficking at the source,” Mona Mishra, who heads UNDP’s HIV and trafficking project in India, told the news agency Reuters on Thursday.
“Beating the traffickers requires a day-to-day, minute-to-minute surveillance that only the community itself can do.”
The scheme will be rolled out to 15,000 village councils in 11 states within India. The UNDP also wants to start building links between villages that have lost people and the usual trafficking destinations, such as Mumbai and Kolkata, so that it will be easier for victims to get back in touch with home.