Slaves by Another Name Clear of Charges in NY

Pic courtesy of Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine

Victims of human trafficking are finally getting further rights under a recent New York state policy, and it’s about time. Under the new law, women will have the right to clear their names of prostitution charges.

The business of sexual slavery and human trafficking is growing around the world. It is one of the many negative impacts of global financial meltdown, and perhaps one of the most overlooked issues of our times. It can also be said that forced labor flourishes in times of disaster and financial distress. A perfect storm of economic hardship in an increasingly post-industrial, globally integrated world, modern day slavery impacts women and children the most. According to the U.S. State Department, in 2007, 50% of transnational victims were children, and 80% were women and girls.

Recently I came across an article about the sex trafficking industry in the small Mexican town of Tenancingo. An economically depressed town with a large Indian population valuing forced marriages, many men have lured women into forced sex work by first proposing marriage and then kidnapping them. The Washington Post reported that as many as 3,000 people, of a total population of 10,000, are directly involved in the sex trade there. Oftentimes, the women are smuggled into the U.S. where their work will support a lavish lifestyle for their captors back home in Mexico.

MAKE CHANGE: Support Team Congo Paris

According to Run for Congo Women, "Congo presents one of the world's deadliest emergencies to date. More than 5.4 million people have died since 1998. Gang rape and brutal torture are a daily reality for the women and children of Congo. Women as old as 80 and as young as five have been victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence. 38,000 continue to die every month, 1200 a day. Half of these deaths are children under the age of five years."

On 10.10.10, Team Congo Paris will race/walk the 20 KM de Paris for Run for Congo Women and Women for Women International (WfWI). WfWI has officially been operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2004. According to the WFWI web site, "the organization has helped thousands of female survivors of war, civil strife, and other conflicts rebuild their lives and regain their sense of self. Through their one-year programs, women are given the tools they need to get back on their feet and contribute to their community. For example, in 2008, 86% of the participants reported having improved their economic situation, 88% of women expressed increased self-confidence, and 83% reported having a greater knowledge of their rights."

Contribute at the Team Congo Paris fundraising page, join the team by contacting Kate Stence at kstence@gmail.com for details, or learn more here.



Web ad design: Nicole Fischetti

Resiliency, Congo, and Rape As a Weapon of War

Last week in London’s Tate Modern, I was just as enthralled with their collection as always, but it was Magda Cordell’s Figure (Woman) pictured here, that I kept returning to because the plaque beside the painting shared that although her work was originally seen as a “break with traditional representations of women,” more recently, it has been regarded by critics as “images of heroic femininity with the distortions signifying the resilience of the human body against injury and change.”

Those last words have run through my head many times this week as I heard radio reports and read CNN and BBC articles reporting “allegations of rape as a weapon of war” in the Congo and the UN’s and major politicians, hopefully, mounting response. These women and children are resiliency. Their bodies and beings have been pushed far past that word’s very definition.

According to Feminist News, on August 13, Margot Wallstrom the UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, stressed in an interview with reporters that sexual violence during war is, “one of the greatest security risks of our time,” and she cited it “no more acceptable nor inevitable than committing mass murder.”

That same day Wartime Rape No More Inevitable, Acceptable than Mass Murder, appeared on CNN.com, and the article quotes Letitia Anderson, women’s rights specialist with the UN’s Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative as sharing, “Rape is being used by armed groups to reignite flames of conflict and to terrorize and humiliate communities in Africa.”

BOOKS: I Am an Emotional Creature

Eve Ensler, acclaimed author of The Vagina Monologues, has a lot to say about women, and now, girls. After promoting her theatrical hit around the globe and in turn creating the "V-Day" movement, Ensler has come back with I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World.

Emotional Creature finds Ensler channeling the voices of adolescent girls and penning confessional first-person narratives inspired by the young women she experienced on her travels. Through poetry and journal entries, she imagines the plight of girls from the U.S., Iran, The Congo, China, Palestine, and more. To older readers and Ensler fans, these works may come across as overly simplistic and less than thought-provoking as she tackles eating disorders, human trafficking, teen sex and child labor through adolescent voices. But overall, the project is commendable, and notable for the author's ability to find a common emotional thread connecting young women around the globe.

Gay Marriage, Women's Suffrage, and the American President

Photo courtesy of Change.org

Today The New Republic came out with a thought provoking Op-ed comparing U.S. President Barack Obama to President Woodrow Wilson, who was in office just a few years prior to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote. Both were liberal American presidents who wanted to be known for their progressive stances. Both were also populists, and therefore wanted to appease citizens across the political spectrum. But both presidents, in doing so, wavered on civil rights issues and compromised liberal causes.

And both presidents, in the view of TNR writer Richard Just, are destined to have tarnished legacies as a result of their failure to clearly and actively support civil rights issues.

In the years leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Wilson became cagey and tried in vain to avoid the question of whether or not he supported a woman's right to vote. Instead of taking a stand, he deemed women's rights a local rather than federal issue. Just writes that this moment in history now seems oddly familiar:

"An evasive stance on a controversial civil rights issue from a liberal president; an insistence that the issue is primarily local, rather than national, in character; a complete failure of sincerity, nerve, and will: If these things sound familiar in 2010, it is because Barack Obama is taking exactly the same approach on gay marriage."

I'd like to think that Obama cannot simply be reduced to an ineffectual, spineless Woodrow Wilson of his day. But his lack of support for gay marriage positions him to the right of republicans Laura Bush, Cindy McCain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; as well as 52% of the American people, according to a recent CNN poll.

What do you think? Is Obama destined for less-than-greatness on civil rights issues?

1000 Words: A Moment of Freedom

Khaled Hasan's series in Economica, "Stone Women," depicts the harsh working conditions of day-laborers in Bangladesh, but also shows that the workers in the community manage to steal a few moments of freedom now and then.

Sex Trafficking: A Reality for Hungary, Europe, and the World

Before I left for Paris in 2009 to study at the Sorbonne and run the 33rd Paris marathon to celebrate my own physical health and ascension from a challenging childhood to a healthy young woman, I returned to my home state of Pennsylvania and ran my old childhood route. I ran for two hours and could feel my almost 30-year-old body morph back into that determined eight year-old-girl who was already witnessing too much violence, swearing I would travel the world and help ignite positive change. The same hills of my childhood seemed so small that day, and as I ran onward I found myself in an open cornfield swathed in golden sunlight. I just stood there. So strong. So free.

While in London yesterday running along the River Thames, I stopped to breathe the biggest sigh of relief, because I felt like for the first time in some months I had my own safety back. Viable threats to my body and to harm have been decreased by rigorous follow ups, reminders, and DNA tests; even after I was told an escalation of harm to me would be more helpful to the law. I leaned over the bridge and just thought, “I’m an athlete, a writer, and if it’s this hard for me, what about women who actually work in the sex industry, much less those who are trafficked?”

For the past year, I have been following the work of Andrea Matolcsi who joined MONA Foundation for the Women of Hungary, a gender equality NGO, in late 2008. MONA is one of the founding members of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby, which is a member of the European Women’s Lobby. Andrea is the project coordinator of the Development of Interdisciplinary Cooperation in Hungary to Support the Fight against Trafficking and Prostitution.

Recently, Andrea explained that some of the major shortcomings in Hungary in the field of trafficking for sexual exploitation and prostitution are legislation, victim assistance, and interdisciplinary cooperation. According to Andrea, the MONA project “developed proposals for a thorough and appropriate revision of the relevant legal–institutional framework, for the development of an institutional system that is able to care for victims, and for the initiation of prevention programs, both on a societal and an individual level, including research, public awareness-raising, education, and training programs.”

She shares MONA’s goal is to create, “as soon as possible a law as a result of which it will be less worthwhile and risk-free to pimp prostitutes, to keep a brothel, to recruit, sell or buy women and children; a law which ensures respect for victims and provides them with assistance, and also guarantees protection for those who assist them.”

In fact, in her interview with me Andrea twice cited that MONA, “considers it necessary that a legal framework is developed that does not confuse the rights of women with a right to women: one that protects the right of all women to a life free from prostitution.”

Officially completed in March 2010, MONA’s project still continues activities, and it does so during a highly relevant time, because sex trafficking numbers are growing fast. According to Rich Daly’s article Sex Traffic Rises, Along With Scramble for Solutions released on June 16 via Women’s e-News, “the State Department's annual release of trafficking figures estimated 12.3 million adults and children were trafficked in 2009, at a rate of 1.8 people per 1,000 worldwide. The Trafficking in Persons Report 2010 graded 175 nations on their efforts to combat all forms of human trafficking and found local officials were able to identify 49,105 victims of all types of trafficking, which is 59 percent more than in 2008.”

A recent Ms. Blog post, 10 Things Men and Boys Can Do to Stop Human Trafficking states: “Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person to provide labor or commercial sex against their will, and it is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world.”

Ms. Blog also cites the Polaris Project, which gives even higher statistics than the State Department. According to them, “27 million people are enslaved globally. 14,000–17,500 individuals are brought into the U.S. as human trafficking victims each year. One million children enter the global commercial sex trade every year.”

As I ran back to my London hotel, I realized again how deep my desire for safety and health in this world so I can write about and run for those who do not have the means to create it for themselves as of yet. Dana Popa’s Not Natasha, pictured here and originally published by the International Museum of Women’s Imagining Ourselves, features women who were sex trafficked in Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe. Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes.

In February 2010, the European Women’s Lobby released From Beijing to Brussels an Unfinished Journey, which summarizes what the organization sees as a need for greater progress during an exceptionally challenged time. “Both new and persistent challenges for actors working to achieve effective equality between women and men exist at local, national, European and the global level. The most immediate and visible of these challenges is the financial and economic crisis, which has become a social crisis. The European Women’s Lobby’s strong and consistent message is that the crisis is gendered in both its nature and its effects and that, given this, it is all the more necessary to pursue and strengthen policies for the protection of women’s independence, integrity, and equality.”

Photo credit: Dana Popa

MAKE CHANGE: International Violence Against Women Act

Amnesty International cites that "one out of every three women worldwide has been physically or sexually abused during her lifetime with rates of domestic violence reaching 70 percent in some countries." Currently, the International Violence Against Women (IVAWA) act is making its way through Congress.

Take action. Create difference. Provoke change. Pass the International Violence Against Women Act.

Global AIDS Alliance's Policy Director Lisa Schectman explains the importance of the bill, "IVAWA will provide strategic, technical and financial support to a set of focus countries with high prevalence of violence against women and girls, and will look for ways to build off existing programs that are failing due to experiences of violence had by those the programs are trying to serve. This bill provides for the most efficient and effective use of US taxpayer dollars for addressing violence; both the House and Senate are set to consider the bill in Committee in early September, and Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi must pave the way for IVAWA to reach the President’s desk this fall."

You can learn more about the bill at Women Thrive Worldwide, the Global AIDS Alliance action alert page, or UNIFEM's support I-VAWA page.

Photo credit: Women Thrive Worldwide

The Devil of Female Bosses

"They are hormonal, incapable of leaving their personal lives at home and only too happy to talk about their staff behind their backs."

Pic of Anna Wintour courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald

So begins an article in the UK’s Daily Mail, which recaps a recent survey about men and women’s perceptions of female bosses by the website UKJobs.net. The job search site claimed to have interviewed 3,000 men and women; with three-fourths of men claiming they prefer male bosses and a whopping two-thirds of women preferring males as well.


The top reasons for this assessment? Those interviewed claimed that women were more competitive, had a sharper tongue, and weren’t as straight-talking as men. Another disturbing conclusion: interviewees viewed women as more prone to mood swings, especially during “that time of the month.”

Health Versus Harm: Youth Advocacy and the Fight Against Violence Against Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS

Read Part 1, Health Versus Harm: Zero Tolerance on Violence Against Women and Girls.

PART 2
Winnie Ncongwane is a 34 year-old single mother of two currently residing in Mbabane, Swaziland. Winnie and I met at the 2010 AIDS Conference and her strength resonated as soon as I sat down next to her.

Recently, Winnie shared with me her thoughts on how she has come into her current role as an empowered HIV-positive woman journalist and activist, “Losing family and friends from HIV/AIDS made me choose to live positively than to die in an abusive have-it-all marriage. I left all the luxury and walked out of my marital home with a bag of clothes for me and my children. I had to start life from scratch, sleeping on a mat on the floor with my children, but at least I had a job. Today, I am happy and I never regret leaving that house for a second. Now, think of a young woman, who has no job or education and depends fully on the man, who might be in the same situation as mine. What can she do, than to stay in such a situation and wait for her last hour? If there are no policies to protect abused women, they will stay as they see no other option out.”

Accordingly, in Swaziland women are more infected by HIV/AIDS. There, females aged between 15 and 19 are infected five times more than their male counterparts, and the ages of 20 to 24 are infected three times more than the males in the same age group.

In July 2010, Winnie started working for the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS after being a member since 2007. She finds her work fulfilling because she is doing what she has always wanted to do, which is communicating and showing her peers that there is life after HIV. Her dream “is to make the HIV/AIDS story worth understanding and most of all remove the stigma that HIV comes with.”

Neelanjana Mukhia is the International Women’s Rights Policy and Campaign Coordinator at ActionAid’s international secretariat and one of the founders who currently manages the international campaign secretariat of Women Won’t Wait: End HIV and Violence Against Women and Girls Now. She shared with me their report What’s the Budget? Where’s the Staff? Moving from Policy to Practice. It cites, “Violence against women and girls and HIV are global, intersecting health and human rights crises. Research demonstrates how women’s risk of, and exposure to, threats or actual violence, particularly intimate partner violence, is a leading factor in women’s heightened vulnerability to HIV. Meanwhile, women are subjected to different forms of violence on a daily basis due to their real or perceived HIV status, whether in their homes, in the workplace, in schools, in health facilities or elsewhere. Both epidemics limit women’s power and participation in society and their agency over their own lives and bodies, sustaining women’s economic, political, social and sexual subordination as well as denial of women’s human rights.”

Where is the good news? UNAIDS recent release of their report, How Young People Are Leading the HIV Revolution, highlights that “HIV prevalence trends in 16 countries show decline among young people 15-24 years.”

Youth advocates are paving the way in HIV/AIDS prevention. As part of Vienna Youth Force 2010 and as an Intern at the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, Remmy Shawa joined the fight against VAW/G and HIV/AIDS after his Aunt became HIV-positive from her husband and gave birth to her HIV-positive son, his cousin. Born in Zambia, yet raised in a rural area called Chongwe, Remmy lived with his parents before moving to the main city of Lusaka for education. After trying to stay with relatives in Lusaka at 15 years of age, he started staying alone, renting a small room with support from his parents until he finished his high school education.

Remmy’s views on VAW/G as a major factor in HIV/AIDS are just as powerful as his reason for becoming an advocate. “The fight to end the social vulnerability of women to HIV, like harmful gender and cultural practices needs to start with bringing men on board as well. We need to design strategies that work with men and boys not only as perpetrators of gender violence, but as partners with an upper hand in the politics and the economy of our nation. The concepts of masculinity need to be redefined and fatherhood must also be used as one way men can show their love and responsibility to their family in the absence of violence.”

Yvonne Akoth and Kuena Diaho were also part of Vienna Youth Force 2010. From the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho, Kuena currently holds a bachelor’s in law degree from the University of Lesotho. Since 2004, she has worked with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) as a youth advocate. She shared how at her first meeting she kept looking at the door waiting for more young women to arrive, but as she kept attending she realized she was experiencing, “more than just meetings but also a safe space for the women to come together and share their experiences. The YWCA has since been my home and more.”

For Yvonne, who was born and raised in the Kwale District which is in the Coast Province of Kenya, her work as a young leader guide for the Kenya Girl Guides Association (KGGA) feels like a privilege. In our recent interview, she shared Kenya’s progress, “Statistically HIV/AIDS is decreasing in Kenya as a result of behavior change among the youth in the age cohort (15 – 24yrs) most likely to be infected. Rates have dropped down due to increase of condom use especially in urban centres, reduction of multiple partners, peer education programs in schools and colleges, TV and Radio advertisements targeting young people, youth friendly one stop centres in most districts, billboards, etc.”

However, Yvonne also shares that even though every African country has a national body to address HIV/AIDS. She still believes that if more young people “are co-opted as members of the various committees in the governing body, many issues affecting young people, especially girls and young women, will be [more] adequately addressed.”

The Global AIDS Alliance (GAA) agrees. GAA’s Policy Director Lisa Schechtman sums up their work ahead. “Through the press conference and the participation of Yvonne Chaka Chaka, we have begun exploring a partnership with the Man Up Campaign, which focuses on empowering youth leaders to end violence against women and girls. In addition, GAA has long been working with other partners that have also identified a multisectoral approach similar to the seven pillars, such as the Women Won’t Wait Campaign, and more recently, the CDC, which is developing a technical package of interventions for the Sexual Violence against Girls Initiative that nearly mirrors the seven pillar approach. That a comprehensive multisectoral response is the only way to halt and mitigate the impacts of violence against women and girls has been accepted; our goal with the new report [Political Breakthrough: Mobilizing Accelerated Action to End Violence Against Women and Girls by 2015] is to emphasize that rhetoric and technical documents alone will never protect women or change the power dynamics or social and gender norms that perpetuate violence. Only real political will and long-term predictable funding directed to local civil society and community-based organizations—those that know their own needs best—will get us there. And without this, our multibillion dollar fight against AIDS is certain to fail.”

No one wants to see this much potential melt away as we move beyond AIDS 2010. Yet even with the power of youth advocacy, new treatments, and the syncing up of organizations with comprehensive approaches, only time, stable funding, and continued action will show true change. As individuals, you can keep momentum going by taking your own steps in the fight against VAW/G and HIV/AIDS by supporting the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) through the Global AIDS Alliance action page. You can also check out Michelle Hamilton's A Magnificent Mile at Runner's World which highlight's Founder of Run for Congo Women Lisa Shannon's work along with Women for Women International. A team to race the 20 Kilometers de Paris on 10.10.10 at 10 AM for Congo Women is currently being assembled to run to benefit the organizations. You can learn more at the Run for Congo Women Team Paris site.

On August 12, 2010 in order to celebrate International Youth Day the UN launched the International Year of Youth. The the theme for 2010 to 2011 is "Our Year our Voice."

Photo credit: AIDS 2010

MAKE CHANGE: Recellular

Image via Flickr user Billie Hara

Surely most of us have been there: bringing our cellphones--cracked, scratched, held together by rubber bands but still functioning!--into our mobile phone stores and finally requesting an upgrade. But then what to do with those discarded old gadgets? Give them back to the retailer?

How about something a little more innovative, and with a bigger benefit to women?

Next time you find yourself with an extra cell phone, send it to the Women's Funding Network's Recellular program. Some of the phones will be refurbished and resold, with the  proceeds benefiting women's organizations; others will be programmed to dial 911 and donated to domestic abuse survivors, the elderly, and others at risk for use in emergencies. You'll be doing a double good deed: Recycling AND benefiting women!

Learn more about recycling your cell phone, or send in your old cell phones today!

1000 Words: A Knowing Look

A portrait by photographer Michelle McCarron of Corrine Sain, Program Director at Neighborhood House, North Richmond, California. From the series for Picturing Power & Potential, "The Women of North Richmond."