India's children suffer in brutal conditions
Editor's Note: Anti-trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is the author of “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia,” providing the first comprehensive overview of bonded labor in South Asia.
During the CNN coverage of my last major research trip for my new book on bonded labor, I wrote an article about my findings of debt bondage, human trafficking, and child labor in several construction projects for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Thousands of workers had been trafficked into Delhi by labor contractors to complete the massive construction projects for the Games at minimal cost.
These findings proved consistent with much of the construction sector across South Asia.
In fact, the labor conditions for the Commonwealth Games in 2010 were shockingly similar to those almost 30 years earlier when New Delhi hosted the Asian Games.
Shrimp exports to West tied to bonded labor
Editor's Note: Anti-trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is the author of “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia,” providing the first comprehensive overview of bonded labor in South Asia.
In the third chapter of my new book on bonded labour, I explore the shrimp industry of Bangladesh. Chingri (shrimp) harvesting provides a highly illustrative case study of the very powerful ways in which environmental change can directly contribute to human trafficking, debt bondage, and forced labor exploitation, especially in the far reaches of the developing world.
To research the shrimp industry of Bangladesh requires a journey to the cyclone-wracked southwestern reaches of the country.
Here, one finds four stages to Bangladesh’s shrimp industry supply chain: 1 shrimp fry (baby shrimp) collection, shrimp farming, the distribution to processors, and shrimp processing. Each one of these stages is tainted by some form of severe labor exploitation.
Bonded labor stretches from third to first world
Editor's Note: Anti-trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is the author of “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia,” providing the first comprehensive overview of bonded labor in South Asia.
In September 2010, I met a young girl named Nirmala in the remote western Terai region of Nepal. Nirmala is one of the thousands of internally trafficked domestic slaves in Nepal, called kamlari, who belong to the outcast Tharu ethnic group.
Agents recruit Tharu girls as young as eight to work as servants in upper-caste homes. Aside from room and board, the children receive little to no payment for up to 10 years of work. Kamlari girls often suffer extreme abuse and maltreatment.
“I did all the work,” Nirmala explained, “cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, washing dishes. I woke each morning at 5 a.m. and went to sleep at 10 p.m. I slept on the floor…I did this work seven days a week. Sometimes the wife would beat me. The husband in the home would rape me. I did not want to be in that home.”
Researching the cruel world of sex trafficking in South Asia
By Siddharth Kara, Special to CNN
Editor’s Note: Trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is a Harvard fellow and author of the award-winning book, "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." For more than 15 years, he has traveled around the world to research modern-day slavery, interviewing thousands of former and current slaves. Kara also advises the United Nations and governments on anti-slavery research and policy.
When I walked into a brothel in Mumbai for the first time 11 years ago to research sex trafficking in South Asia, I was exceedingly nervous and did not know what to expect. The brothel was on an alley off Falkland Road, a well-known red light area in Mumbai. A middle-aged gharwali (madam or house manager) named Bipasha sat in a chair near the front door, chewing betel nut. Posing as a customer, I told her I wanted a Nepalese girl. She took me to a back room and had several young girls line up in front of me, hands folded. Most had at least one visible bruise or scar. FULL POST
Community vigilance: 10 steps people can take to help combat human trafficking
By Siddharth Kara, Special to CNN
Editor’s Note: Trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is a Harvard fellow and author of the award-winning book, "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." For more than 15 years, he has traveled around the world to research modern-day slavery, interviewing thousands of former and current slaves. Kara also advises the United Nations and governments on anti-slavery research and policy.
Whenever I talk on human trafficking, I am almost always asked what people can do to help.
To be sure, the forces that promote human trafficking are immense -– from extreme poverty, to corruption, lawlessness, population displacement, gender and minority bias, economic globalization and others. In the face of such vast and complex forces, everyday citizens can feel powerless to make a real difference.
Nevertheless, there are vital steps that individuals can take to help bring an end to human trafficking and other forms of contemporary slavery.
A $110 loan, then 20 years of debt bondage
By Siddharth Kara, Special to CNN
Editor’s Note: Trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is a Harvard fellow and author of the award-winning book, "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." For more than 15 years, he has traveled around the world to research modern-day slavery, interviewing thousands of former and current slaves. Kara also advises the United Nations and governments on anti-slavery research and policy.
A bonded laborer named Haresh in West Bengal, India, once described to me how he took a loan of approximately $110 from the local landowner to get married to his beloved wife, Sarika.
Two decades later, Haresh told me, “My entire family is still in debt to the landowner. Sarika and I work in the fields, my sons and their wives work at the brick kilns. One day my grandchildren will work for the landowner. There is no way to repay these debts. We will only be free when we die.” FULL POST
Attacking the demand for child sex trafficking
By Siddharth Kara, Special to CNN
Editor’s Note: Trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is a Harvard fellow and author of the award-winning book, "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." For more than 15 years, he has traveled around the world to research modern-day slavery, interviewing thousands of former and current slaves. Kara also advises the United Nations and governments on anti-slavery research and policy.
I recently had the privilege of talking to CNN’s Piers Morgan about the “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s DNA Foundation.
Siddharth Kara
This effort is intended to attack male demand to purchase commercial sex from minors, many of whom are by U.S. law prima facie victims of sex trafficking. (Related: Real men join stars in fight against slavery)
The importance of this effort cannot be overstated.
Most NGO’s and policy makers focus on the supply-side of sex trafficking, with efforts intended to protect people from being trafficked, such as awareness campaigns, education and economic training, and other efforts that attempt to mitigate the forces that render people vulnerable to being trafficked. All such efforts are crucial and should be expanded.
However, sex trafficking – like all forms of human trafficking – is a business, and for any business to survive it requires two forces: supply and demand. FULL POST
'Juju oaths' ensnare trafficking victims mind, body and soul
By Siddharth Kara, Special to CNN
Editor’s Note: Trafficking expert Siddharth Kara is a Harvard fellow and author of the award-winning book, "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." For more than 15 years, he has traveled around the world to research modern-day slavery, interviewing thousands of former and current slaves. Kara also advises the United Nations and governments on anti-slavery research and policy.
Edo State, Nigeria - The first victim of human trafficking I met from Nigeria was in a shelter in north Italy in 2004. Her name was Gift. Since that time, I’ve interviewed 27 Nigerian victims of human trafficking in the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and even Thailand.
All but one of them were from Edo State, an area east of the city of Lagos.
These women told me some of the most harrowing tales of trafficking I have ever heard. Some trudged through the desert for weeks to the North African coast, where they crossed dangerous waters in rafts to Europe. Others were flown directly from Lagos to Milan, Copenhagen or London. All of them suffered extremes of rape, torture and abuse that are impossible to imagine.
A few aspects of these ordeals immediately caught my attention. Each one of the women was fiercely committed to repaying debts to their madams of up to 50,000 euros. When rescued, they often refused assistance. When asked to testify in trials, some went into fits and trances in the witness box. FULL POST
Every Day in Cambodia
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The Numbers
