[…] Pastor David Brown and his wife, Julie Brown, of the French Protestant Church have worked tirelessly for the past three and a half years, often at great personal risk, to assist sub-Saharan trafficking victims and clandestine migrants in Morocco. The Browns see 150 to 500 new migrant cases each month in Casablanca and Rabat, 25 percent of whom are women, and most are believed to be trafficking victims who were forced into prostitution.

[…] A reporter with an independent Ghanaian newspaper, Anas Aremeyaw Anas was responsible for breaking two major trafficking rings in Accra in a year’s time. He worked undercover for eight months, exposing the ring’s methods of transportation and the identities of immigration officials who were accepting bribes in return for overlooking fake visas and passports. Anas made recordings of his interactions, which allowed him to collect evidence that could be used by the police to prosecute the traffickers who were sending girls to Europe for prostitution.

[…] Good morning. As many of you know, combating human trafficking is a top priority for the Bush Administration. Human traffickers prey on the most vulnerable of our society, particularly women and children, and they use that vulnerability to enslave them. We began issuing the Trafficking in Persons Report eight years ago, when President Bush first came to office.

[…] Italy is a destination and transit country for women, children, and men trafficked transnationally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Women and children are traf-ficked mainly from Nigeria, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Albania, and Ukraine but also from Russia, South America, North and East Africa, the Middle East, China, and Uzbekistan. Chinese men and women are trafficked to Italy for the purpose of forced labor.

[…] She cited one “disturbing discovery” in particular: “Although more countries are addressing sex trafficking through prosecution and convictions, the petty tyrants who exploit their laborers rarely receive serious punishment. We see this as a serious shortcoming, and as we move our efforts forward, we and our allies must remember that a robust law enforcement response is essential. “

[…] After recruiters painted a beautiful picture of foreign job prospects, Aye Aye Win, a Burmese national, and some 800 Burmese migrants willingly traveled to a shrimp-farming and -processing factory and were forced to work day and night, were never paid and were forbidden to leave the remote barbed-wire-fenced compound. When she tried to escape, she was tied to a pole in a courtyard, beaten and denied food or water. She was freed by Thai police in 2006.

[…] Early this summer reports emerged of over one thousand farmers, teenagers and children, including some who were mentally handicapped, forced to work for little or no pay in scorching brick kilns, enduring beatings and confinement in worse than prison-like conditions. This was a form of modern day slavery that shocked not only the international community, but prompted an outcry among Chinese citizens and a forceful reaction from the authorities.

[…] “There is a growing movement of trafficking for labor,” according to Mark Taylor, the senior coordinator for the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The global value of trafficked labor is estimated at $9.5 billion, he said. Taylor spoke July 19 at the State Department during a three-day conference called “Defending the Defenders,” designed for government and nongovernmental organization personnel dealing with issues on democracy, human rights and labor.

[…] U.S. efforts to raise awareness of trafficking in persons are paying off, and now millions more people know about the global problem, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In introducing the State Department’s seventh annual Trafficking in Persons Report on June 12, Rice said human trafficking until recently was “akin to a global family secret. It was known but not often discussed publicly.” Rice said that in her travels around the world, she has noticed “a greater desire by our partners to fight this crime and protect its victims.”

[…] According to the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, human trafficking involves forced or coercive methods of transporting individuals, including children, for purposes that include sexual exploitation and forced labor.