Labor abuse in the name of “cultural exchange,” courtesy of the J-1 visa program (again)
On March 6, 2013, student guestworkers from around the world held a surprise strike to expose severe exploitation at McDonald’s restaurants near Harrisburg, PA. The students guestworkers, who came from Argentina, Peru, Chile, Malaysia, among other Asian and Latin American countries, each paid $3000 to participate in the U.S. State Department’s J-1 “cultural exchange” program. They were expecting to come to the United States to experience cultural exchange and decent...
Read MoreThe Celebrification of Human Trafficking, Part 1 (in a Six Part Series)
Celebrities, people “known for [their] well-knownness,”[1] now regularly engage in and effect human trafficking policy and practice. As a result, celebrities are not only raising public awareness about the existence of these problems, but influencing people, policy objectives, and ameliorative schemes in the public and private sectors. While criticizing people purporting to help other people can sound like sour grapes, it is important to critique one-dimensional, oversimplified,...
Read More“Where’s the Accountability?”
Since the implementation of the Human Trafficking Protocol in 2003 the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that the numbers of States with dedicated national anti-trafficking legislation has doubled (Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, UNODC, 2009, p. 8); 143 States are now parties to the Protocol. Alongside governmental policy development in this field civil society has also entered the arena, including celebrities, major media operations, NGOs and often competing inter-governmental...
Read MoreCongratulations to Anne Gallagher, AO!
Congratulations to Dr. Anne Gallagher, who was recently honored for her pathbreaking work on human trafficking. On June 11, 2012, Dr. Gallagher was named an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list, in recognition of Dr. Gallagher’s “distinguished service to the law and to human rights as a practitioner, teacher and scholar, particularly in the areas of human trafficking responses and criminal justice.” Earlier this...
Read MoreThe Eye of the Beholder: How Bad Data, Scrambles for Funding and Professional Bias Shape Human Trafficking Law and Policy, Dina Francesca Haynes
Following is a portion of a draft chapter entitled The Eye of the Beholder: How Bad Data, Scrambles for Funding and Professional Bias Shape Human Trafficking Law and Policy Human trafficking is not unique in having attracted multiple and conflicting points of view on everything from the extent of the problem, the definition of what the problem is precisely, and who are its victims to how to best to support them. Like “sexy” and “of the moment” human rights issues of...
Read MorePrabha Kotiswaran Reviews the UNODC Report on South Asia
Responses to Human Trafficking in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka Legal and Policy Review UNODC, Regional Office for South Asia Principal Author Dr. Sarasu Esther Thomas International law has witnessed considerable activity around the issue of trafficking in the past decade. Particularly significant is the adoption by the UN of the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking Against Persons, Especially Women and Children (“UN Protocol”)[1] supplementing...
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