Human Trafficking at a Tipping Point

The issue of human trafficking has reached a tipping point. On the same day that I pass by The Body Shop, and see their request that customers sign a petition to stop “sex trafficking of children and young people,” apparently co-sponsored by UNGIFT and UNICEF, a student admits that until I began introducing him to the existence of the issue, he was utterly unaware that people were being bought, sold and exploited around the world.
While many people remain unaware that men, women and children are subjected to indentured servitude, debt peonage and other forms of human trafficking, celebrities and corporations and even conservative American politicians have embraced the issue, at least aspects of it. Angelina Jolie and Microsoft Corporation, through their co-funded and founded organization KIND (Kids in Need of Defense), fund pro bono legal training for unaccompanied children, including children who are trafficked. In her capacity as YouthAIDS Global Ambassador, Ashley Judd has become an advocate against human trafficking. Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon lend their cultural and legal feminist star power to aspects of the issue. Conservative and moderate politicians such as Olympia Snowe support bills directed towards international violence against women, including human trafficking.
If corporations situated in the Northern Hemisphere; and conservative, moderate and liberal politicians; and celebrities; and law enforcement and all branches of government are lined up in support of aspects of the issue, then why have we failed so miserably to find and then secure assistance to victims of human trafficking and why have we failed to prosecute traffickers? The answer of course is multi-fold, but part of the problem lies in the bifurcation of the issue. The Body Shop wants us to sign a petition to prevent sex trafficking of children. What about the trafficking of Sri Lankan and Nepalese men into Iraq and Afghanistan to provide support services to US troops and their allies? Angelina Jolie and Microsoft will help unaccompanied children. What about agricultural laborers threatened with blacklisting if they complain about non-payment or exploitation? Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon are concerned with the lack of consent inherent in sex work. What about women who agree to sex work but then have their earnings withheld until they “pay back” their traffickers?
The issue is complex (as IntLawGrrls Janie Chuang and Dina Francesca Haynes have regularly articulated here and here), and the interest of celebrities, politicians and the corporate world is not only laudable, it is often rich and deep. The people who elect to become involved in the issue often become very knowledgeable about it, and yet each selects one aspect in which to become involved, further bifurcating the issue, polarizing the debates and alienating victims who do not fit within their funding or client profile. It is likely the interest in human trafficking will remain for some time. Let us work on making that interest as rich, as meaningful and as holistic as possible.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'I don't think we even begin to know what would be possible if we raised just one generation of children without violence.'

-- Author and rights activist Gloria Steinem last Friday, at this year's Penn Law Review symposium, about which we posted here.

Go On! Trafficking in Sex & Labor

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) IntLawGrrls will be well represented at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review symposium to be held November 13 and 14 at the Philadelphia-based law school.
"Trafficking in Sex and Labor: Domestic and International Responses" is the title of the conference, which features a keynote address by Catharine MacKinnon, Michigan Law Professor and Special Gender Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, about whom we've posted. Here're the panels:
Labor Trafficking:

IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes, New England School of Law; James Gray Pope, Rutgers-Newark; Dr. Joel Quirk, University of Hull, England; Ms. founder Gloria Steinem; and Martina Vandenberg, Jenner & Block. Penn's Tobias Barrington Wolff will moderate.

Trafficking and Immigration Policy:

Jennifer Chacón, University of California, Irvine; Jennifer "J.J." Rosenbaum, Southern Poverty Law Center; and Jayashri Srikantiah, Stanford. Penn's Sarah Paoletti will moderate.

International Responses to Trafficking:

IntLawGrrls Diane Marie Amann (yours truly), University of California, Davis, and Janie Chuang, American University, as well as Norma Ramos, Coalition Against Trafficking of Women. Penn's William Burke-White will moderate.

Sex Trafficking:

Dr. Denise Brennan, Georgetown; Michelle Madden Dempsey, Villanova; Dr. Melissa Farley, of the San Francisco nonprofit Prostitution Research and Education; Illinois attorney Kaethe Morris Hoffer; Ann Jordan, American University; and author/activist Christine Stark. Pamela Shifman, UNICEF, will moderate.

Details and registration here. (photo credit)

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

“To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time,” she said, “I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave.”

-- Sarah Palin, quoted in this morning's New York Times
Like Marjorie Florestal, I don't have much in common with Sarah Palin, and I agree with Gloria Steinem that Palin is generally the wrong woman with the wrong message. However, I have to hand it to Sarah on this one, and her decisions to "ease . . . back into work, first stopping by her office in Anchorage for a meeting, bringing not only the baby but also her husband to look after him", "install. . . a travel crib in her Anchorage office and a baby swing in her Juneau one", and to carry "Trig in a sling as she signed bills and sat through hearings, even nursing him unseen during conference calls."

Steinem draws a line

Months ago an IntLawGrrls post expressed discomfort with feminist icon Gloria Steinem's take on the Presidential campaign. Seems only fair to note the 2¢ Steinem's just offered, in her Los Angeles Times op-ed on "[w]rong woman, wrong message."
It's great, Steinem (left) writes, that "[w]omen have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap." But there Steinem draws the line, and proceeds to detail why she finds Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a faux feminist choice.
Check it out.

Is Steinem Wrong?

I grew up with Ms. Magazine and often find myself in agreement with Gloria Steinem, the Ms. Co-Founder pictured below left. That is perhaps what makes her op-ed in Tuesday's NYT so disappointing.
In it, Steinem argues that "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." To make her point, she contrasts the experience of being female with that of being black and suggests that the former constitutes a more formidable obstacle to success in American politics than the latter. She suggests that the historical stereotyping of “black men as more ‘masculine’” works to their advantage in contemporary politics. How quickly Steinem forgets the scores of black men lynched as a response to the racist conception of black men as a hyper-masculinized threat to white women’s sexuality.
Although Steinem asserts that she is not “advocating a competition for who has it toughest,” her op-ed piece does exactly that. Steinem acknowledges that “the caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.” Her piece, however, undermines this important insight and attempts to drive a wedge between the feminist and anti-racist movements, marginalizing women of color in the process.
Perhaps Steinem should take a cue from the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a committee that has, in recent years, embraced an intersectional understanding of race and gender discrimination. In its General Recommendation 25, the CERD Committee explores the ways in which gender and race discrimination are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. This approach reflects the “third wave” of feminism (described here by Amy Schriefer), and has greater potential to combat both racism and sexism than Steinem’s more divisive approach. (photo credit)