Human Rights Watch (HRW) charges that the Burmese army is forcibly recruiting children to cover for the lack of adult recruits. In a recent report, HRW cites that thousands of children as young as 10 are beaten or threatened with arrest to make them enlist. It also claims that recruiting officers falsify enlistment documents to register children as being 18, the legal minimum age for recruitment.

Jo Becker of HRW also cites government collusion in the process of “literally buying and selling children” to fill the ranks. Becker claims that “In this environment, army recruiters traffic children at will.”

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A pair of Indonesian women brought to the United States to work as housekeepers for a New York couple were reportedly starved, deprived of sleep and repeatedly stabbed and beaten by a millionaire couple, prosecutors said Monday at the couple’s trial.

Prosecutors allege the couple held the women as virtual slaves, subjecting them to serious physical abuse and paying them no wages except for $100 a month sent to relatives abroad.

One of the servants came to Long Island in 2002; the second in 2005. Prosecutors say the U.S. couple confiscated their passports.

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The rise of female Iraqi refugees turning to prostitution to survive reflects a troubling trend in the Iraqi refugee crisis. Most troubling to some human rights groups is the possibility that ever-younger girls may turn to, or be pulled into, the sex trade, desperate to support their families.

Financial opportunities provide the lure in places such as Damascus, where an Iraqi woman can earn 10 times more from a single encounter with a client than she can by working a full day as a housemaid. Better jobs are out of reach because Syria and Jordan generally refuse work permits to Iraqis.

Amnesty International reports that its representatives were told on a visit to Syria that young Iraqi girls were being pressured by families to engage in prostitution. The group said it was worried that Iraqi child trafficking could grow.

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An accused human trafficker in London, who is being indicted as one of the leaders of a gang that lured young girls into the sex trade, is to fight extradition from Britain.

Gilbert Ektor was arrested during a dawn raid in Coventry as a part of an international police operation that led to another 19 people being arrested in Britain, the United States, Belgium, Spain, Holland, Ireland and Nigeria.

Officials said the smuggling ring used fear of voodoo to force dozens of young Nigerian children and women to work as prostitutes in European countries including the Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain.

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Amnesty International has called for more of an emphasis to be placed on the protection of victims of sex trafficking in efforts to crack down on the crime.

This call was issued in response to a new report on trafficking from the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. The report calls for a timetable to be set for the ratification of the Council of Europe convention against trafficking and to ensure that all victims of sex trafficking are properly protected.

Amnesty International supports the view that the rights of the victims should put at the heart of measures to stamp it out. While this will include an increase in policing and awareness-raising measures, Amnesty desires to see the welfare of the victims to be placed at a higher priority.

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