Global & Disaster Medicine

Archive for the ‘Trafficking’ Category

United States officials calls on all nations to stop using Cuba’s medical missions, which send doctors around the world, saying that Cuba refused to pay the medical staff and held them against their will.

Thomson Reuters

“……The Caribbean island nation has a respected health service and generates major export earnings by sending more than 50,000 health workers to more than 60 countries.

But it came under criticism in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro last year called the Cuban doctors “slave labor” and Cuba recalled its 8,300 medical workers stationed there.

Ramona Matos, a Cuban doctor, said she worked with medical missions in Bolivia and Brazil where Cuban security agents took away the doctors’ passports and other identification.

“We were undocumented,” she said at the State Department’s news conference. “If anything happened to us, we got hurt, we died … nobody would know our identity.”

Nearly all of the doctors’ earnings were sent back to Cuba where they were frozen in accounts that they could not access until they completed their missions, she said.

“We were basically being trafficked, and we were victims and exploited by the Cuban government,” she said……”


Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Fighters Against Sexual Slavery

NYT

…..Dr. Mukwege campaigned relentlessly to shine a spotlight on the plight of Congolese women, even after nearly being assassinated a few years ago. Ms. Murad, who was enslaved by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has told and retold her story of suffering to organizations around the world, helping to persuade the United States State Department to recognize the genocide of her people at the hands of the terrorist group…..”


Nepal: Orphanage trafficking

Bright

“…..There is a demand for orphans, as institutions need to be filled with children to be profitable for their operators and staff. In absence of enough “real” orphans, many times orphanages turn to traffickers to supply children. They also actively look for poor children in their vicinity and convince the parents that their kids would be better off in the orphanage. …..”

 


A spoon in underwear: How does that help protect against forced marriages?

Thomas Reuters Foundation

“……”The spoon will trigger metal detectors when you go through security checks…..You will be taken aside and you can then talk to staff in private.”…..”


Sex trafficking in Nepal

Diplomat

“…..12,000 to 15,000 girls each year are trafficked from Nepal across the border where they are sold into Indian brothels and forced to become prostitutes…..UNICEF reports that as many as 7,000 women and girls are trafficked out of Nepal to India every year, and around 200,000 are now working in Indian brothels………”

 


The bodies of 26 Nigerian women were recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, and Italian prosecutors are probing whether their deaths are linked to sex trafficking.

NPR

“…From January to November of this year, some 111,552 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea, according to the International Organization for Migration, and 2,639 migrants have died along that route…..”

 


The world’s most dangerous megacity for women

Thomas Reuters

“…..The Thomson Reuters Foundation survey asked experts in women’s issues in 19 megacities how well women are protected from sexual violence, and from harmful cultural practices, and whether they have access to good healthcare, finance and education……”

The worst:

  • Cairo (#1)
  • Karachi
  • Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • New Delhi

The best: 

  • London (#1)
  • Tokyo
  • Paris

“…..Delhi and Sao Paulo emerged as the worst cities when respondents were asked if women could live there without the risk of sexual violence, including rape, attacks or harassment…”

“….Authorities recorded four rapes every hour in India in 2015….”

 

The poll


India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a decades-old clause in the country’s rape laws permitting a man to have sex with his wife if she is aged 15 to 18 – ruling that it was rape, and therefore a criminal offence.

Thomas Reuters

‘…..”For the longest time, traffickers have been using marriage with minors as an alibi to rape girls in the first instance, to break them, before selling them to pimps and brothel owners,” said Adrian Phillips, an advocate from Justice and Care, which fights trafficking…..Almost 20,000 women and children were victims of human trafficking in India in 2016, a rise of nearly 25 percent from the previous year, according to government data…….’

 


The modern slave trade is 25-30 times more profitable than it was hundreds of years ago with sex trafficking making up nearly 50% of illegal profits.

The Guardian

 


Human Trafficking: The 147 people rescued in Veracruz — whose ranks included 48 minors, including 14 unaccompanied children

US News

LA Times

 

 


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