SHAME ON US .. take a look

*please read all the way through to read about 'Kuwati Company Accused of Labor Trafficking Builds US Embassy in Baghdad'




Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report 2007
http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2007/


12 June 2007
Public Awareness of Human Trafficking Increasing, Rice Says
New Trafficking in Persons Report gives Georgia special praise
By Eric GreenUSINFO Staff Writer

Secretary Rice announces the release of the Trafficking in Persons Report June 12 at the State Department. (Janine Sides/State Dept.)
Washington -- U.S. efforts to raise awareness of trafficking in persons are paying off, and now millions more people know about the global problem, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In introducing the State Department’s seventh annual Trafficking in Persons Report on June 12, Rice said human trafficking until recently was “akin to a global family secret. It was known but not often discussed publicly.”
Rice said that in her travels around the world, she has noticed “a greater desire by our partners to fight this crime and protect its victims.” The United States, she said, is helping to lead a global movement “not just to confront this crime, but to abolish it. More and more countries are coming to see human trafficking for what it is -- a modern-day form of slavery that devastates families and communities around the world.”
Mark Lagon, the new director of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking in Persons, said in detailing the 236-page report that Georgia merited special praise in its trafficking efforts. That nation, he said, has shown “admirable political commitment” to confront the problem. Georgia’s improvement, Lagon said, includes efforts to prevent girls and women from being lured into the global sex trade, where employers turn them into “mere commodities, with their bodies for sale.”
The report, mandated by the U.S. Congress, grouped Georgia for the first time with what is called the “Tier 1” countries -- those doing the best job of controlling human trafficking, prosecuting those involved, and supporting and assisting trafficking victims. Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic are also newcomers to the Tier 1 group.
The report lists 75 countries in an intermediate Tier 2 group -- those that are demonstrating a “significant” commitment to address their trafficking problems but have not yet achieved international standards -- while 32 countries are on a Tier 2 “watch list” for having shown signs of failing to make improvements. The report places 16 countries in the bottom Tier 3 -- those governments that have shown no commitment to meeting international standards.
Lagon said that the list of countries in the Tier 3 group has grown to 16, compared to 12 from the previous year, “due to a lack of effort” by these nations to combat trafficking. Countries new to the Tier 3 group are Algeria, Bahrain, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman and Qatar.
Lagon said India stayed on the Tier 2 Watch List for the fourth straight year and was not downgraded to Tier 3, despite the fact that the world’s “largest democracy” has the “world’s largest problem of human trafficking.” The United States, he said, needs to “engage in a very serious dialogue with India” on the South Asian nation’s trafficking problem, since the countries are “two serious democracies” with a “developing alliance.”
The U.S.-India relationship is such, said Lagon, that the “level of communication between our two governments” can “stand some serious, frank talk about a problem like bonded labor or sex trafficking.”
One country that fell off the Tier l list was Ireland, placed instead in a group called “Special Cases.” The report said the presence of “foreign women in prostitution and a growing migrant labor population raise concerns about a potential trafficking problem” in Ireland. Other special cases are the Bahamas, Barbados, Brunei, Haiti, Iraq, Kiribati, Lesotho, the Solomon Islands, Somalia, Swaziland, Tunisia and Turkmenistan.
The report does not exempt the United States from a cataloguing of its own trafficking problem, including women and girls who migrate to America and become prostitutes. An unknown number of U.S. citizens and legal residents are also trafficked within the United States, primarily for sexual servitude and forced labor, the report says.
While the United States is not assigned a tier rating, Lagon said America stands “ready to be judged” on the problem. He stressed that the United States should be seen as an ally against trafficking.
In fiscal year 2006, the United States contributed more than $74 million abroad to fund 154 international anti-trafficking projects in 70 countries. Since fiscal year 2001, Lagon said, the U.S. government has funded more than $448 million to fight a problem in which an estimated 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Some 80 percent of that total is female, and up to half are minors. (See related article.)
The United States is “not just standing with our arms folded, judging others,” because trafficking is a “transnational problem,” Lagon said. “We offer our hand as a partner to try and solve this problem of modern-day slavery.”
For additional information, see 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report.
Rice's remarks, Lagon's remarks and more information about human trafficking are on the State Department Web site.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov/)
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=June&x=200706121538261xeneerg0.3716089


08 June 2007
State Department Offers Film Program on Trafficking in Persons
Goal is to raise worldwide awareness of “modern-day slavery”
By Eric GreenUSINFO Staff Writer
Washington -- U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide are arranging screenings for foreign audiences of several films that vividly display the evils of trafficking in persons, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
This film program is designed to raise global awareness of how trafficking victims are used for sexual exploitation or forced labor, according to the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP).
State’s Summer of Anti-Trafficking in Persons Movies outreach program coincides with the June 12 release of the department’s 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report. The annual report is intended to highlight the growing efforts of the international community to combat human trafficking and to encourage foreign governments to take effective actions to counter all forms of trafficking in persons.
The screenings of the films will take place exclusively through the auspices of the U.S. embassies and consulates.
An official in the TIP office told USINFO June 6 that “it is hard to count the number of human trafficking victims worldwide” because trafficking is a hidden crime that occurs “under the shadows.”
The TIP film outreach program, now in its second year, has gotten a “tremendous response” from foreign audiences, and the high-quality American films have proven “very effective” in raising awareness of the trafficking issue, the official said.
If this program results in saving “even one person from being a victim of trafficking, then clearly we have made a difference,” said the official.
TELEVISION FEATURE, DOCUMENTARIES
One selection from the TIP program is a full-length feature movie entitled Human Trafficking. It was produced in 2005 by the Lifetime Channel and stars award-winning actors Donald Sutherland and Mira Sorvino. The movie tells the story of unsuspecting individuals who are lured into an international sex-trafficking ring by ruthless criminals. The movie follows the investigations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (played by Sorvino and Sutherland), who break up an international human-trafficking ring and rescue victims.
The TIP’s office has arranged for Human Trafficking to have subtitles in French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian. (See related article.)
Another offering is called Sex Slaves, a program produced by public television station WGBH in Boston. It was shown on the Frontline public affairs TV series in February 2006 and portrays how five women from countries in Eastern Europe and Turkey were duped into sexual slavery, beaten by traffickers and “pimps” and sexually exploited for profit.
Three documentaries, presented by the Washington-based nongovernmental group Free the Slaves, concern labor trafficking in the United States and India. The documentaries are called Dreams Die Hard, Freedom and Beyond and The Silent Revolution.
The documentaries drive home the message that modern-day slavery exists nearly everywhere in the world, and that the U.S. government is working to eradicate the problem and rescue victims at home and abroad.
The documentaries also show that “bonded labor” in South Asia is an all-too-common form of slavery, which is “passed from generation to generation.” Bonded labor refers to employers that give high-interest loans to workers whose entire families then labor at low wages to pay off the debt. It is considered the least known and most widely used method of enslaving people worldwide.
The documentaries also show that it is possible for victims of modern-day slavery to regain their freedom.
MAJORITY OF VICTIMS WOMEN, GIRLS
The State Department says an estimated 800,000 people are victims of transnational human trafficking each year. The vast majority of the victims are women and girls. Trafficking victims, who are frequently from rural areas and have little education, are tricked into traveling abroad for what they are led to believe are better job opportunities.
The U.S. government maintains that human trafficking deprives people of their basic human rights and freedoms and has serious public health implications, including the spread of HIV/AIDS. Human trafficking also fuels the growth of organized crime.
Since fiscal year 2001, the United States has funded more than $448 million for international anti-trafficking projects.
See also the electronic journal article, "2007: The Year of Abolition."
More information about human trafficking is available on the State Department Web site.
Additional information on human trafficking films in available on the Web site of the nonprofit group Vital Voices Global Partnership.
Further information about Free the Slaves and its three documentaries is available on the group’s Web site.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov/)
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=June&x=20070608130830X1eneerg0.3753168


Articles and online views on human rights in Kuwait

Key U.S. Allies Added to Trafficking Blacklist
By MATTHEW LEEAssociated PressJune 13, 2007


WASHINGTON — The Bush administration yesterday added seven nations, including several key allies in the Middle East, to its human trafficking blacklist for failing to halt what it called the scourge of "modern-day slavery."
Countries on the list are subject to possible sanctions for not doing enough to stop the yearly flow of some 800,000 people, 80% of them female and more than half of them children, across international borders for the sex trade and other forms of forced and indentured labor.
Among America's friends getting a failing grade were Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, which along with Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Malaysia joined for the first time perennial offenders like Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria in the State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report."
Sixteen states in all — four more than in 2006 — were given so-called "Tier 3" status in the 236-page survey of global efforts to combat trafficking in people, many of whom are seeking to escape poverty in Eastern Europe and South and Southeast Asia and are sold into the commercial sex trade, manual labor, or mistreated as domestics.
Despite the additions, Secretary of State Rice said, "More and more countries are coming to see human trafficking for what it is — a modern-day form of slavery that devastates families and communities around the world."
"We hope this report encourages responsible nations across the globe to stand together, to speak with one voice, and to say that freedom and security are non-negotiable demands of human dignity, and to say ... ‘No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave,'" she told reporters.
http://www.nysun.com/article/56434




Kuwaitis & Saudis Among Worst Offenders in Human Trafficking
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/12/16284/7132



Listen to the Prophets : Modern Day Slavery
http://www.prayforkuwait.com/kwpress/arabic-%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a8%d9%8a/modern-day-slavery/


Swept Under the RugAbuses against Domestic Workers Around the World
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/wrd0706/



7 Nations Added to Trafficking Blacklist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6703120,00.html



Kuwati Company Accused of Labor Trafficking Builds US Embassy in Baghdad
http://www.davidphinney.com/pages/2006/02/kuwati_company.php


Gender and Migration in Arab States
http://www.gender.gcim.org/attachements/Book%20in%20ArabStates.pdf



That's all..... for now.