As Britain continues in its crackdown on human trafficking, their latest drive to stop the crime involves targeting gang leaders and their trade routes.  Authorities call their new crackdown Pentameter Two and hope to surpass the results of the previous crackdown. That operation last year freed 84 women and teenage girls from brothels and massage parlors and led to 232 arrests.

Detective Chief Superintendent Nick Kinsella, who runs Britain’s Human Trafficking Center, says, “We need to make this, the U.K., a hostile environment for traffickers where, if they are involved in trafficking activity, it’s a high-risk, low-profit crime.”

Authorities cite that Britain is a main destination in the international human trafficking market and many victims get trapped in it with the promise of a good job.

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Two Iranian nationals were banned over the weekend from entering the Philippines for their alleged involvement in human trafficking operations.

They were arrested Saturday in possession of fake Israeli passports while attempting to leave for Palau.

Due to their arrest, a strict monitoring and profiling of foreigners arriving as transit passengers has been instituted, in order to thwart attempts by human trafficking syndicates using Manila as a transit point for smuggling illegal aliens to other countries.

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The Philippine embassy in Singapore warned against a human trafficking ring that is using fraudulent electronic plane tickets to smuggle Filipinas into Singapore.

The embassy cited that human traffickers entice their victims with false promises of high-paying decent jobs and minimal recruitment fees. They are then given a return e-ticket — sometimes faked with the help with travel agencies. Filipino tourists who travel abroad are required to purchase return tickets, in an effort to curb illegal immigration.

“Traffickers then extract profits from their victims by compelling them to repay their spurious debts ranging from S$1,200 up to S$6,000,” the embassy said.

The increased incidence of trafficking of Asian women, including Filipinas, to Singapore has prompted the United States’ Department of State to downgrade the city-state’s rating from Tier 1 in 2006 to Tier 2 in 2007.

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Chief Minister Nitish Kumar inaugurated the anti-human trafficking unit in a joint effort between the state government and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime.

The government has instituted measures to train the police and educate the public of human trafficking. The government also appealed to private organizations to raise awareness on the local level while helping the state in recovering and rehabilitating the victims of human trafficking.

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In Sweden, the first law of its kind has been introduced that criminalizes the purchase and brokering of sexual services, although the selling of sexual services remains legal.

The law provides for up to six years in prison for pimps and up to 10 years for traffickers of prostitutes. “The goal is to criminalize the demand side of the equation, the johns, rather than putting emotionally and physically imperiled women behind bars,” says an inspector with the Stockholm police.

The ban has been mostly well received across political lines as well as amonst the public, 80 percent of which support the ban. Conservatives are the legislation’s main opponents, as they argue that the ban would drive prostitution underground and make life more difficult for the women.

The ban has also been positive in that hardly any country in the European Union has fewer problems with human trafficking. According to the Swedish police, 400 to 600 foreign women are brought to Sweden each year to be prostitutes. In Finland, which is only half the size of Sweden, that number is between 10,000 and 15,000 women