Trafficked: Three survivors of human trafficking share their stories
Date: Monday, 29 July 2019
This story was originally published on Medium.com/@UN_Women
Across the world, millions of women and girls live in the long shadows of human trafficking. Whether ensnared by force, coercion, or deception, they live in limbo, in fear, in pain.
Because human trafficking operates in darkness, it’s difficult to get exact numbers of victims. However, the vast majority of detected trafficking victims are women and girls, and three out of four are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation .
Wherever there is poverty, conflict and gender inequality, women’s and girls’ lives are at-risk for exploitation. Human trafficking is a heinous crime that shatters lives, families and dreams.
On World Day against Trafficking in Persons, three women survivors tell us their stories. Their words are testament to their incredible resilience and point toward the urgency for action to prosecute perpetrators and support survivors along their journeys to restored dignity, health and hope.
Karimova comes full circle.
When she was 22 years old, Luiza Karimova left her home in Uzbekistan and travelled to Osh, Kyrgyzstan with the hopes of finding work. However, without a Kyrgyz ID or university degree, Karimova struggled to find employment. When a woman offered her a waitressing job in Bishkek, the capital city in the north of Kyrgyzstan, she welcomed the opportunity.
But things took a turn for the worse after arriving in Bishkek. Karimova recalls that, “They held us in an apartment and took away our passports. They told us that we’d be photographed again for our new employment documents, to be registered as waitresses. It felt strange, but we believed them.”
Then, Karimova and the other women were put on a plane to Dubai, handed fake passports instead of their real ones, and shepherded to an apartment after landing. “We were to be sex slaves and do whatever the clients wanted. The next day I was sent to a nightclub and told that I would have to earn at least 10,000 USD by the end of the month,” says Karimova.
For 18 months, her life was consumed by the nightclub work. Upon leaving the club one evening, Karimova saw a police car approaching, and instead of running away, she stayed to let the police arrest her.
“I was deported back to Osh, and since my ID was fake, I spent a year in jail. I filed a police report, and three of the traffickers were captured”.
However, after being released from prison, Karimova was left to live on the streets, ashamed and unemployed. She went back to work in the sex industry until she was approached by Podruga, an organization that assists women subjected to sex and drug trafficking. “They offered me work. I wasn’t sure that I would fit in, but slowly I began to trust them,” she says.
Now, Karimova works to prevent the exact situation in which she found herself. As an outreach worker with Podruga, she visits saunas and other places where sex workers may be. “I often meet girls who dream of going to Turkey and Dubai, to earn more. I tell them, ‘please don’t go...There is nothing good for you there.’”
To prevent their futures from unfolding as hers did, Karimova provides the women with health and safety resources and information about legal aid. “To stop trafficking of women and girls, we have to inform people about the full consequences of human trafficking and how to detect the signs. It is critical to start raising awareness about this in schools, starting young, so that they do not become victims.”
To read more of Karimova’s story and her work to prevent human trafficking in Kyrgyzstan, see her full interview .
Life in limbo.
In the Lake Chad region of West Africa, the Boko Haram insurgency has taken a drastic toll on millions of families. Thousands of people leave home every day, putting their lives in the hands of smugglers in search of a better life.
At 17 years old, Mary did just that. She felt there was no future for her in her home of Benin City, Nigeria, so she sought opportunities elsewhere. She was put into contact with a man, Ben, who promised to pay her way to Italy and use his connections to find her a restaurant job.
Soon after meeting Ben, Mary was called to his house and made to swear that she wouldn’t try to run away. In March 2016, she, along with a group of boys and girls, left for Libya—a stop along their route to Europe.
In Libya, Mary found herself in peril. “Ben took two of us girls one night. He gave the other girl to another man, and he said to me if I didn't sleep with him, he would give me to another man and not bring me to Europe. He raped me,” Mary says.
She wanted out but had no means of contacting anyone back home. “I had to stay there for months until they called me to go on the boat,” she says.
When she was finally put on a boat to Italy, Mary was informed she would be living in a camp and work as a prostitute—unjust conditions that she had never agreed to and couldn’t escape.
“I can't go stand on the side of the road in the name of money," she says, her voice rising. "I have a future. Standing there, selling myself, would destroy my life. My dignity. Everything.”
Now, the people who paid Mary’s way to Italy are demanding money and threatening her mother back in Nigeria. Her voice falters as she explains that, “they said they would do something very bad to her if I don't send money.”
She waits in anguish until her documents are processed. “I'm so sad. I'm under so much pressure. I don't know what to do… I just want to be free. I want it to be over, even for just one day.”
Despite the immense suffering she’s experienced as a victim of human trafficking, Mary’s dream of a better life holds strong. “One day I will have my documents, I will have an education, I will have work,” she says with hope. She wants to become a lawyer and serve those who’ve been trafficked like she has. “I want to give justice to the girls that have to use their bodies for work.”
For more of Mary’s story and UNICEF’s efforts to end the trafficking of children, read the full article .
“I no longer feel alone.”
Khawng Nu, now 24 years old, is from Kachin, a conflict affected and impoverished state in northern Myanmar. There are few job opportunities, so when a woman from her village offered her work in a Chinese factory, Khawng Nu accepted the offer. However, upon arriving in China, Khawng Nu quickly learned that she had been deceived. The situation wasn’t at all what she was told it would be.
Khawng Nu had been trafficked to birth babies, a type of trafficking that accounts for 20 per cent of the trafficking of women in Myanmar . Khawng Nu recalls seeing more than 40 women on the floor of the building where she was kept, some as young as 16.
“They give pills to women and inject them with sperm for them to carry babies for Chinese men,” explains Khawng Nu. They were beaten and bullied at any sign of resistance.
Once the baby was born, the women would supposedly receive 1 million MMK (USD 632).
Khawng Nu managed to send a message home to her family, and, with the help of community leaders, the trafficking broker in her village was arrested, although he refused to disclose Khawng Nu’s location.
Eventually, Khawng Nu’s family was able to gather enough money from neighbors to pay the ransom for her return. When she came home to her village, Khawng Nu shared the names of other girls she had met in China with local authorities, and five were rescued and brought back.
Through the help of a local organization that partners with UN Women, Htoi Gender and Development Foundation, Khawng Nu is working toward a brighter future. “At first, when I returned, I felt ashamed and I didn’t want to show my face,” she recalls. “Now, after meeting with other women trafficking survivors through the peer group organized by Htoi, I no longer feel alone and seeing that there are other women who went through the same experience gave me courage.”
Read the full article for more of Khawng Nu’s story and how UN Women is working to end human trafficking in Myanmar.
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COMMENTS
Human trafficking is a heinous crime that shatters lives, families and dreams. On World Day against Trafficking in Persons, three women survivors tell us their stories. Their words are testament to their incredible resilience and point toward the urgency for action to prosecute perpetrators and support survivors along their journeys to restored ...
Over time, as her own understanding grew and as the effects of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000—the first comprehensive federal law to address human trafficking—filtered down to the clinic, Chang redefined these patients as victims, forced by poverty or isolation into a life of servitude, often trading sex for money or drugs.
Our study reiterates the importance of psychological outcomes resulting from violence in cases of human trafficking, which has been identified in many other site-specific studies (Ottisova et al., 2016). Yet, despite these common findings, and the world's commitment to eradicate human trafficking in the Sustainable Development Goal 8.7, to date ...
10 Case Studies in Human Trafficking. by Migrant Rights • February 28, 2018. Full guide here. العربية. Below we profile 10 stories of trafficking and forced labor common throughout the countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, which includes the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
Human trafficking is the trapping and exploitation of a person using deception, violence, or coercion. It generally takes three main forms: forced labor (which includes sex trafficking), forced marriage, and forced organ removal. Forced labor—any work or service done involuntarily—is the most common form of human trafficking.
Multiple studies in this issue highlight the strengths of the public health approach to human trafficking. In their topical review, Schroeder et al 8 compare public health methods of estimating the prevalence of hard-to-reach populations (eg, sex workers, undocumented migrant workers) and discuss implications for human trafficking research. They acknowledge the inherent difficulties in ...
The 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report marked the first time the U.S. Department of State applied this new provision, finding 12 governments had a "policy or pattern" of trafficking, including: Afghanistan, Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan.
nalyze and contextualize all of the case studies in this collection. The first considers cultural barrie. s to effectively identifying and assisting survivors of trafficking. The list of barriers draws from a framework developed for working with diverse victims of crime in general and was tailored to address th.
Human Trafficking: Applying Research, Theory, and Case Studies is a practical, interdisciplinary text that draws from empirically grounded scholarship, survivor-centered practices, and an ecological perspective to help readers develop an understanding of the meaning and scope of human trafficking. Throughout the book, authors Noël Bridget Busch-Armendariz , Maura Nsonwu, and Laurie Cook ...
She thought maybe she was just stuck in a bad place in her life. Tonya (a pseudonym) was a victim of human trafficking. "He made me feel like I was doing it because I loved him, and in the end, we'd have a really good [financial] reward," Tonya said. When Tonya was 13, she met Eddie (a pseudonym) at the apartment she was living in with ...
Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person to perform labor or a sex act for the profit of a third person. Victims can be adults or children, foreign or domestic born. The trafficking can involve purely labor or purely commercial sex or can be a blend of both.
The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report is an annual publication of the Human Trafficking Institute that provides comprehensive data from every federal criminal and civil human trafficking case that United States courts handle each year. For the first time, the 2020 Report compiles data from every federal human trafficking prosecution since ...
Human Trafficking: Applying Research, Theory, and Case Studies is a hands-on textbook aimed at undergraduate and graduate students from the social sciences and beyond, empowering them to "look bene...
For two decades, counter-trafficking organizations have been operating under the assumption that rural populations are less informed about human trafficking. Based on a public survey of 300 people in Moldova, I found that anti-trafficking organizations operating in Moldova have flawed assumptions about the public knowledge. Findings show that rural people are, in fact, more knowledgeable about ...
Using detailed case studies to illuminate real situations, the book covers national and international anti-trafficking policies, prevention and intervention strategies, promising practices to combat human trafficking, responses of law enforcement and service providers, organizational challenges, and the cost of trafficking to human wellbeing.
Only a small handful of reliable studies provide confirmed examples linking corruption and trafficking and few case studies are available (UNODC, Citation 2011 as cited in The International Bar Association's Presidential Task Force Against Human Trafficking, Citation 2016, pp. 5-6).
think "outside the box" when encountering problems related to evidential issues in human trafficking cases. In the same vein, the Case Digest tries to alert practitioners that patterns which at first glance may appear to be weaknesses in the case, may actually strengthen it. For example, the fact
How to Use Case Studies The case studies included in this collection are designed as tools to reach the more complex and evasive aspects of identifying and assisting survivors of trafficking. There are many advantages to using case studies as a training tool. When used as part of a larger workshop, case studies
In this paper, I seek to find the determinants of international human trafficking by using the US as a case study. Previous studies have drawn primarily from the migration literature, proposing hypotheses that focus on economic factors, the level of democracy and other "push" factors in the countries of origin that create incentives for ...
The following is based on a self-selected sample of 27 federal trafficking cases since 2009 involving the use of social networking sites or online classified advertisements to facilitate trafficking. A search of legal databases, using keywords including "sex trafficking," "labor trafficking," "human trafficking," "minor ...
Familial trafficking is a form of human trafficking that refers to the trafficking being perpetrated by family members. While more research is available on familial sex trafficking, minors have also been exploited in other forms of human trafficking, such as labor trafficking (e.g., in manufacturing, agriculture, domestic servitude, begging, and criminal activities).
Human Trafficking Cases. Human trafficking is a hidden and heartbreaking crime perpetuated by sophisticated criminal networks. Explore how DHS wages war against this form of modern-day slavery and rescues victims. It's perhaps the most memorable seen from the 2006 film but only because it is so viscerally horrifying: a room full of enslaved ...
Access "Peacekeeping Responses to Transnational Organized Crime and Trafficking: A Case Study of MINUSMA" here. Share. Share on Twitter; ... Case Study: The Democratic Republic of the Congo. ... Brief. Applying the UN Human Rights Due Diligence Policy in Peacebuilding. A Snapshot of Practice from the 2024 Peacebuilding Fund Thematic Review. 26 ...