This should be the UN’s responsibility, not the USA’s. We cannot continue to be the world’s police.

We are a super power in terms of weapons, but not in terms of international leadership and respect thanks to Pres. Bush, Gitmo, Iraq … and we are now the super debtor.

I praise this program for exposing listeners to such brutalities. It is important to note that countries like Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala are facing similar sex slavery problems as Cambodia and India, although not as brutal, but nonetheless with the potential of becoming so.

Im confident Pres. Obama will tackle this problem head-on. It’d be virtually impossible without international support.

Just an FYI (didn’t see a link to send an email) – the You Tube link leads to a ‘we’re sorry, this video is no longer available’.

On another note, I wonder if we can really say that there is more slavery today then there was in the early days of US history or if there is just more access globally to information and ability to travel and document this sort of activity?

Certainly not an excuse for it, but this is something that I often wonder about when we hear comments about incidents of war/murder/slavery today being greater then those in the past.

Of course it is a concern for the President of the US, & he can make certain statements regarding such issues. However, the President is one man, incapable of saving the world. Unless we change Mr. Obama’s name to Flash Gordon, I think we need to stop saying we want him to fix “this” & “that” & “that over there” as well. Sometimes it is the role of the people (meaning state & local governments as well as “joe-6-pack”) & NGO’s to get this & other like issues to a point where the President actually HAS something he CAN do, then when there IS something he can do, present him with a plan of action.
Mr. Obama has no red cape. I do not understand why the world seems to expect him to fix every problem there is in the world. What action, specifically, do you expect from him?
Thanks.
~Betsy~

Although this program topic is certainly worthwhile, the treatment is simplistically moralistic. First, we get another example of Western imperialism. By focusing on Cambodia and other foreign countries, we get to feel morally superior. There is no need to travel to Cambodia to find prostitution. There is plenty of prostitution here in the US. It is also important to note that we have evangelical Christians going to Buddhist countries while not paying much attention to the US. Second, there is not enough emphasis in tying this problem to our global corporate economic system. This system gives few options to young women. Is working long hours for little pay and great physical hardships such a great option? The global sex trade is a child of global corporate capitalism. We are not innocent in this system.

This should be the UN and the US and every major government’s responsibility. America might be struggling right now, but that pales in relation to the situation of many nations in the world. We should be doing exactly this kind of pro-active, peaceful intervention and advocacy, instead of waging war, and using force and violence in the world. This is a great opportunity for a new president, and is a well overdue public awareness issue around the world and here, in our communities.

Can we get statistics for US by state and city? Town?

Andrea Wilder

I think we should become involved in this world wide effort. But we should start at home first. All those ASIAN MASSAGE parlors are not habituated with volunteers from Asia. They are stocked with Sex Slaves. And many women from Eastern Europe and even some from the US are lured to the US or Mexico and forced into prostitution. This is organized crime, not some small business owner.

So, let’s start at home with our effort as an example to the world.

The “contact us” address provided for On Point does not work.

I believe we need to expose the men who frequent these brothels. Their faces need to be all over the media – the internet, billboards, newspapers – everywhere! They need to be arrested, jailed, exposed and shamed. Get rid of the customers and we can help eliminate this horrific problem.

This is not a new problem. I learned about this almost 30 years ago in college reading Female Sexual Slavery. This has gone on far too long……This must be ended!

Please address the responsibility that the men who are the “customers” of these enslaved children bear. Is anything being done to make them aware of their role in this horror?

There would be no prostitution, therefore sex slavery, if men did not frequent these places. Let’s put the blame squarely where it belongs. The women who run these places, perform the cruelty, etc. would be out of business without men. It is a moral question that our religions should be addressing forcefully all over the world.

I resent Tom Ashbrook’s attempts to make this topic “controversial” by inviting disagreement as to whether or not the current sex slavery is bigger/smaller/same as 19th century slavery. That is utterly irrelevant and detracts from the urgency of this issue. This is unequivocally a horrific worldwide problem and clearly needs the attention of governments, the UN, NGO’s, and individuals around the world. Let’s not try to pit interests against one another. Let us respect and greatly appreciate the tremendous work done by Nicholas Kristof on this issue, which should be mobilizing anyone with a heart and/or brain.

Nicholas Kristof , Thank you so much for the work you have been doing about sex slavery . I think that men who frequent these places , should have their pictures published all over the world .

Here in Rhode Island prostitution is legal. An attempt to outlaw it last year died when the bill was opposed by our now-senate-president Theresa Paiva-Weed.
She said that since most of the women were brought here illegally via human trafficking, if prostitution were to be outlawed these women would be convicted and sent back to their own country – and that they were better off here as prostitutes! A real enlightened human rights position! That might be part of why R.I. is in such great financial condition.

Ted

I spent some time in Cambodia working with girls who have been trafficked. I think that the dire poverty that girls and families face is also a critical and contributing factor. In some communities I have visited, community members are well aware that girls have been trafficked–but what they do not understand are the dangers and violence that many of these girls face.

I think that providing education for girls, their families, and communities about the realities of trafficking while also providing livelihood opportunities for at-risk girls and their families are critical components to preventing girls from being trafficked.

My organization, World Education, is working to educate communities and provide livelihoods options for girls from sewing to pig raising. It is an approach that is working to help keep girls in their communities.

Hello. Thanks for the heads-up on the YouTube link. However it seems to be working fine in our browsers here. We’re not seeing the “no longer available” message.

Regarding the “Contact Us” email, can you describe what happens when you send an email to that address? It should be functional. Many thanks.

It is good to know that WBUR is choosing better topics for 2009.
Penalties for slavery are still very light. Immigration laws in America are so antiquated that many will not report any type of activity for fear of being deported.
60% of girl are HIV infected within 6 months.

Thank you for the show today. It is so sad that people treat each other in this way. Why women would not put themselves in the mindsets of their slaves, and not have them is incomprehensible. On the other hand money drives a lot of evil in the world.

Who are these monsters that are the clients?
You got that right, Emily, money and evil go hand and hand.

I’m with Katy Elle’s comment. Give prostitutes — and Wal-Mart employees and neighborhood drug dealers — some better options for living, if not getting ahead in life. I appreciate the incentive capitalism offers but as we see here, it can be pretty brutal. Capitalism bites the hand that feeds.

Thank you to everyone for their work on this important matter.Education of the public is key. Those that wish to make money by promoting pornography, “legal” prostitution, etc. as something normal desensitize the public to this horrible problem. If people realized this they may see pornography and the general sexualization of media for what it is: manipulation of the public into thinking this is normal thus increasing their profits.

Honduras has a terrible problem with this. 100 children a day disappear. Honduras has about the same population as Atlanta GA — imagine the uproar and action if 100 children a day disappeared from the Atlanta metro area. Sadly, Atlanta is a top destination for sex traders.

On the subject of Trafficking of Girls;
There is a small NGO — Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation — in Nepal which has taken a different approach and has been very successful with their Indentured Daughters Program.

Rather than attempting to intervene at the end of the chain, NYOF goes to the source, ie. the homes of the girls, with a counter opportunity offer. In remote areas of Nepal there is a wide-spread custom of selling daughters as young as 10 to agents from the city. The income of the family is so low that this is considered a necessary way to add to family income and the girls go off into virtual slavery, possibly including sexual abuse. This practice is against national law but is widely practiced in remote areas.

NYOF also goes to the source and offers the family a piglet to be raised for future income on condition that the girl remains at home and attends school for which NYOF provides the expense of tuition, books, etc. Over the last five years over 2500 girls have been ransomed. These graduates are now taking over publicizing the program and recruiting more girls to stay home and be educated. The most qualified school graduates are eligible to apply for scholarships to Nursing School or University Study.

Check it out at http://www.nyof.org.

When my grandmother left home, the one thing her mother told her was to be careful: there were certain stores in Montreal, her mother explained, where if my grandmother went into them to buy a dress, she would not come out again.

The problem isn’t new, but it is very real, and I thank you for helping to spread some light on it. A friend of mine told me about your show a few minutes ago, because it made them think of my book.

“River of Innocents” is a novel I wrote to help publicize modern-day slavery and to provoke action against it. The story is based on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in order to provoke a reaction similar to that which UTC provoked against slavery prior to the civil war, but follows the life of a seventeen-year-old Albanian girl–Majlinda–as she’s trafficked into transnational sex slavery.

Each of us–no matter how far away from the problem of trafficking we seem to be in our daily lives–can do something to help end slavery.

(http://riverofinnocents.com)

Thanks to On Point for devoting some time to this important topic, and I guess a begrudging thanks to Kristof for giving voice to it– but hey, this IS the same Nicholas Kristof who was one of the biggest cheerleaders of the US invasion of Iraq, and indeed continued to support the Iraqi occupation long after most people had realized it was a huge mistake. Is it too much of a stretch to say that without exuberant cheerleaders like Kristof that Iraq might have been spared the deaths of innocent Iraqi women and girls? Kristof already has blood on his hands– why should we give him air time, when there are plenty of other spokespeople for this cause? The Newton, MA group Minga, formed by a group of junior high school students, is a great local example, and no doubt there are plenty of others.

I can’t believe this is actually going on, one thing if it is someone’s choice, but to go against these girls rights, to kidnap,torture,and degrade them they should be arrested and have done to them what they have been doing, their is truly something wrong with them think about this, could you hurt another human being like this, maybe we should put back into place mental institutes and commit these monsters who are committing these crimes, these poor girls, they will never feel love after being degraded and hurt so badly.

HOW TO REALLY GET THIS ON THE TABLE
In order to really get attention to the slavery aspect of this, it needs to be decoupled from the extreme anti-prostitution concept. No one will argue that any kind of coercive, abusive, kidnapping, or violent action associated with prostitution is a horrible crime, and that when combined this is indeed slavery.

However, when the conversation takes an extreme tone, associating the concept of selling sex automatically, in every case, as slavery, well, it will be treated with less importance.

Face it, not everybody will agree about that. There are plenty of happy women in Amsterdam making good money, willingly, who turn down other options for jobs, without any pressure. This may be the minority, but as long as you lump all prostitution with the horrible acts of slavery and violence, you are watering down the latter.

I agree with those who advocate an economic model for abolishing slavery in all its forms, including sexual slavery. When the penalties increase and the likelihood of being caught increases and the likelihood of being convicted increases, the risk/reward ratio is altered to the point that people decide to make money in other ways.
Slavery is an international crime, and we indeed have it in the US, just as every other country has it, from Japan to Saudi Arabia to South Africa to Israel to Denmark to Brazil. A friend of mine found a slave in his neighborhood, a half mile from our city hall in Newton, MA.
Bravo to Nick Kristof for his work! But let us not forget that there is also agricultural slavery, domestic slavery and industrial slavery, as well, and all of them rely on physical, psychological and emotional brutality. All of them steal the lives of their victims one day at a time for pecuniary gain. All of them exploit their victims until their economic utility is finished, then turn them out to die alone. This crime demands that all governments around the world join in the fight in order to defeat the enslavers.

(I couldn’t get the audio player to go, so this is based on what I could read here–WBUR’s sum up/intro and the comments which followed)

I’d like to add my thought that the more ‘power over’ scenarios that get acted out in the world, the more
there are people who want to act out on others they can act out on.

So, a slick deal in one part of the world, where someone less slick, or with less power to leverage, loses while the other rakes it in, well, there’s some residual feelings about that, isn’t there?

Not to forget that when profit adds up to ridiculous consumption, and blocks earnings for needed consumption, well, does that advance the thriving of the world? What kind of energy does that create?

One More:
(I do value & sometimes read the NY Times): To the author, Nick, of the article: Let’s start ‘at home’–I mean–the media, all of it, which reports on things–why NOT get yourselves involved in problems which are contributed to by world media?

What about engaging media around the world (and here in the US) in forums to connect with them–get to know them, what they are thinking, make friends, meet with them?

And all of us–we can start at home too, can’t we? Isn’t that our responsibility?

PS–go to change.org and vote for empathy to be one of the top objectives for the new US administration.

(and I am so happy this topic has come up–and I’ve enjoyed reading the comments and learning!)

The Obama administration should be effective against this and all evils because it can.

“O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, How long shall the wicked triumph?”

You and I should be effective against evils too, because we can!
Mr.Kristof demonstrates what one man can do.

“Because every man sometimes errs, that’s no reason whatever not to praise (and take example worthy of following) from the good things he may also do,” seems like a good response to my fellow poster here who challenged the virtue of Mr. Kristof’s implementation of the sacred directive: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

… and, in celebrating exemplars of action, let us not forget, let us not fail to follow(!), the costly example of the immediate heroine in this crisis-matter, young Long Pross herself, who looks us right in our collective millions of unfeeling unseeing eyes with her one eye like a window from many lives looking out on a very large world otherwise needlessly & deliberately deaf.

Arn Moore in Boston

As most will know President Obama was a member of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee until recently. 2 years ago, this committee received and have responded to a strategy paper described as a ‘Marshall Plan’ to eliminate poverty in a country where many young girls have no future other than a life of street prostitution or being trafficked, to catalyse Europe’s greatest HIV epidemic.

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

So far, the influence has been the creation of a new USAID foundation for community enterprise and Ukraine’s policy decision to update childcare provision.

We believe the answer is to treat the cause rather than the symptoms. Obama won’t be able to wave a wand,
it needs business which re-invests in community to work with government, as Bill Gates proposes with creative capitalism.

To the fellow comment posters:

Right on Linda Darman and Betsy Ross – those same thoughts were racing through my mind when I sat frozen in my car unable to leave listening to this story last night.
The more responsibility Mr. Obama takes for all of us the less responsible we all become. I only hope he continues to lead us but put the responsibility where it belongs.
In that regard thank you Eshther for your pro-active approach to this problem. Personally this sounds worse than the 19th Cent. Atlantic Trade – these girls are not only imprisoned but the physical, sexual and emotional trauma seems given to be deadly.

I am so glad that this program has aired because every bit of awareness helps. I learned about trafficking last year and feel that every American needs to know about slavery in all its forms and what we can do to stop it. For instance, most of you probably didn’t know, like me, that the chocolate industry keeps its prices low by using cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast in Africa where young boys are trafficked and enslaved for years. If all of us demanded slave-free chocolate and slave-free everything, the picture would change fast. Educate yourself and others, make ethical choices, pray, and we will see change happen. A great website to check out is notforsalecampaign.org

This was probably the most important hour of radio I have ever listened to. I had no idea so many children were being stolen, mutilated, and tragically abused far away from the lifeline of the friends and families that they have also lost. Some things are worse than death and this must certainly be one of them. It breaks my heat but opens my eyes. Thank you NPR.

A couple of years ago, I went to a local nail salon for a pedicure. The young woman working on me looked very unhappy, didn’t make any eye contact, and I noticed ALL the girls working there had a similar demeanor. It occurred to me some time later that THIS may be a forced-work situation.

Has anyone noticed something like this? There seem to be nail salons cropping up everywhere. Most are legit, but can a nail salon, which I assume is monitored by the state, be a haven for slavery or forced work?

In truth, this is the worst form of slavery. These children are kidnapped or tricked into leaving their families only to be tortured by forced rape several times a day. They are not forced to pick cotton or fruit in the open fresh air. They will endure an array of sexually transmitted diseases, including the excruciatingly painful terminal illness called AIDS, without appropriate medical care or relief. After that, they are left to suffer and die on their own. Talk about a man created hell on earth.

The ONLY way to fight this is to recognize it for the true evil it is and impose a prison sentence on EVERYONE INVOLVED. That means the businessmen, judges, doctors, politicians drug dealers, and endless parade of sexual deviants who stand in line eager to purchase the use of their bodies. Life in prison still gives them a far better life than that of their victims.

Great work, Tom and Micholas!

This was a terrific program and I thank you Tom because this is the second program you have done on 21st century slavery – the last being a program on domestic slavery. That said, I was amazed that Nicholas would say we shouldn’t make this a “male female thing.” We would never analyze and discuss the drug trade and ignore demand, or think African slavery didn’t have something to do with white supremacy! It is incredibly frustrating that a whole program could be devoted to this issue without any discussion of the men who are purchasing these girls. More importantly, no proposed solution will work without keeping those who demand the product in mind. They won’t just disappear.

this is just awful im only seventeen myself.and i could’nt imagine if one of my female friends. were put in this situation.but yeah it does fall back on obama because it also fall onto the american people and he is like or rep. to the world right.it will be an extremly difficult task. but like with communism if we stick with it and never falter course.we will be victorious
and its not a problem the american people can face alone.we must have the support of the UN and other countries.its time for the world as one to say enough we will not tolerate this any longer!

Now we can add context to the news of this tragedy with the story of the recent US madam who shows her list of society fellas who are her clients. (I can’t be sure, but it doesn’t sound like the same situation, of slavery, kidnapping, etc. I don’t want to confuse the two in any way that trivializes the crimes and harm to the women written up in this article)–

Is there a way that these stories, nevertheless, do interplay?

Is it a world where there is so much of this going on–women harmed for the sake of or prosecuted in an economic relationship to their sexuality? (the fellas still getting off, as if it were a gentlemen’s agreement, nudge, nudge–between the forces of justice and the ‘johns,’ the solicitors for sex.)

If lawmakers and other prominent guys are regulars and spending so extravagently with this particular madam’s business, what does that say for their efforts or abilities to relate to women or to give issues of women the priority they deserve?

And around we come again, who makes the laws? How do they get the training and networking to gain office? What if lawmaking wasn’t such a man’s game?