Organ Trafficking & Transplant Tourism

A subset of human trafficking, organ trafficking and transplant tourism are significant concerns around the globe. And while they’re not discussed to the same extent as sexual exploitation and forced child labor, quite a bit’s available on the subject. It initially caught my eye when I noticed Harvard’s Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking had an archived webcast available on their site addressing the issue. You can link to it, along with podcasts, articles, and other resources after the jump.

Best Practices to Combat Human Trafficking

No wrap-up at the sustainability site today (the blog was quiet while I was on the road). Instead, a new offering from the Government Innovator’s Network and the Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking: Best Practices to Combat Human Trafficking–Forced Labor. It will be held November 16th from 10 AM-12 PM (bummer for any of you west of the Mountain time zone). This webinar will focus on the best practices to combat one of the most invisible forms of human trafficking. The discussion will be moderated by E. Benjamin Skinner, Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. If you can’t attend, these guys are usually pretty good about archiving their sessions, so it should be accessible after the fact.

I’m knocking off early and heading to Savannah, GA for some mandatory fun (family-style). Hope you have a good weekend in store, as well.

Trafficking: New Offerings from the Week that Was

Over the past week there have been several new offerings related to human trafficking:

Phil Borges has an interview on his blog with Rachel Lloyd, founder of GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services). “Rachel told me that historically law enforcement in our country has punished the victims of the sex industry—the vulnerable and exploited adolescent girls that are coerced and trafficked into the trade.  She said that labeling and jailing them as ‘teen prostitutes’ instead of what they are–exploited and trafficked children– while ignoring the 30 to 40 year old men that sell and buy these girls has been a crime in itself.”

Listen to the 8+ minute audio file here.

Human Trafficking

UPDATE: The Family Justice Center Alliance is hosting a webinar on human trafficking Thursday, November 5th, from 9-10am, Pacific. Participation is free, but registration is required. Kay Buck from CAST will be the featured speaker.

You can view content from previous FJCA webinars here.

Violence Against Sexually Exploited Women

I am thrilled to announce that AEquitas is offering our first webinar October 21st, 11:30-1pm ET: Prosecutorial Response to Violence Against Prostituted Women. This webinar will help prosecutors and allied professionals understand, identify, and respond to violence against sexually exploited women, i.e., women used in prostitution.  It will discuss the dynamics of sexual exploitation, including the frequency and type of violence sexually exploited women experience.  It will also explore issues, strategies, and defenses relevant to the prosecution of violence against sexually exploited women.

Council of Daughters

With all of the news focusing on Roman Polanski, it seems like a good time to post this:

GEMS, the organization featured in the documentary Very Young Girls (previous post here), has a new initiative: The Council of Daughters. It’s a campaign “to strengthen laws that protect victims, encourage Americans to support girls empowerment initiatives at the local level, increase support for recovery services, and bring this urgent issue into schools, offices, dorms, places of worship and other community spaces.”

Trafficking in Persons

I don’t know how many of you read the Sunday NY Times, but this past weekend the Magazine ran a special series: Saving the World’s Women. There were a few articles that were particularly interesting, including The Women’s Crusade and an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Not surprisingly, trafficking and gender-based violence were discussed repeatedly.

Articles of Note: July Edition

Time once again for a run down of some of the new and noteworthy articles in the current literature. Most of these are from the June/July/August issues. As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. Most links lead to PubMed abstracts (except for one, which goes to Ingenta); from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library;  or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.

Just a warning: it’s a lengthy list this month. There’s all kinds of good stuff being published right now…

Funding Alert

A new funding alert is available from VAWNet for those of you interested in the money-end of things. You can read it in full here (PDF):

Prostitution, Pt. 1

Prostituted women and children present with some significant healthcare challenges for clinicians. Sexually transmitted infections and traumatic injuries are just a couple of the issues.  At only a few of the conferences I attend does this subject come up; at healthcare-specific conferences, the topic is almost nonexistent. In a cursory search of past abstracts from the American Public Health Association annual meeting for instance, I could only find 3 presentations in the last 10 years specifically focused on prostitution.

Best Practices to Combat Human Trafficking

The Ash Institute at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government is hosting a webinar, Best Practices to Combat Human Trafficking: Collecting Data from Official Sources. The session will take place April 29th from 10am-12pm ET. It’s free of charge, but pre-registration is required.

NIJ Journal: Human Trafficking

The current issue of the NIJ Journal is now available, featuring articles on human trafficking, post-conviction DNA testing and critical incidents in schools (at least those were the highlights for me). You can download the full journal here (PDF). The complete TOC includes:

• Sex Trafficking: Identifying Cases and Victims: Robert Moossy, J.D.
• Drugs, Race and Common Ground: Reflections on the High Point Intervention: David Kennedy
• Postconviction DNA Testing Is at Core of Major NIJ Initiatives: Nancy Ritter
• Sleep Deprivation: What Does It Mean for Public Safety Officers? Bryan Vila, Ph.D.
• Protecting America’s Ports: Bruce Taylor, Ph.D., and Pat Kaufman
• Using Technology to Make Prisons and Jails Safer: Philip Bulman
• Preventing, Preparing for Critical Incidents in Schools: Beth Schuster

Human Trafficking Victims in Emergency Departments

Brown Medical School, along with several other organizations, put together an online tutorial for emergency healthcare providers on human trafficking. I’m unsure when the tutorial was created (if someone knows, please pass that along), but it appears to be no older than 2005 based on the materials cited, so info is relatively current. Much of it is text-based, but it is well-linked in many places.

“Very Young Girls”

Have you seen Very Young Girls on Showtime? If you haven’t it’s still possible to see it On Demand through March 3rd and it’s well worth your time. We don’t often think about trafficking victims as being young American teens and pre-teens, but as this documentary clearly shows, the problem is rampant right here in the US.

Preventing Violence Against Women

Prevention Connection, a project of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, has just opened registration for its next webinar, Building the Violence Against Women Primary Prevention Movement. Two sessions are being held March 10th and March 12th, 11AM Pacific Standard Time. Content will be the same for both, but speakers may differ.