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Cynthetiq · 02-25-2007, 07:18 PM

Even investing in infrastructure for the country does not guarantee anything nor does it stop corruption and graft, something many impoverished nations live off of.

My parents have tried desperately to help out their poor brethren in their homeland only to be told that they needed to set aside graft money to make the projects one for water treatment facility and the other for a hospital finacially viable. They decided instead to not do the projects because it would propagate the graft and corruption rife within their homeland, yet hundreds of thousands would have benefitted from their bribes. I sometimes wonder if I would also walk away at that moment or would I besmirch my ownself for the benefit of thousands of more unfortunates.

Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, all have very good foreign investments yet somehow they all seem quite well intertwined in the slave trade and human exploitation.

Again, it is the human condition that is at work here, not governments, nor non-governmental agencies.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that if prostitution is the oldest living profession, slavery is the oldest way of coersion of that profession.

Since I have stated that US soil is also involved in such human trafficking from the State Department:

Quote:

U.S. GOVERNMENT DOMESTIC ANTI-TRAFFICKING EFFORTS

The U.S. Government (USG) in 2005 advanced an aggressive anti-trafficking campaign to address trafficking crimes and victims identified in the United States. This coordinated effort includes several federal agencies and approximately $25 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 for domestic programs to boost anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts, identify and protect victims of trafficking, and raise awareness of trafficking as a means of preventing new incidents. Specifically, this coordinated effort has resulted in the following successes:

In 2005, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 116 individuals with human trafficking, almost doubling the number charged in FY 2004. Approximately 80 percent of those defendants were charged under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. Forty-five traffickers were convicted, of which 35 were implicated in sexual exploitation. These statistics represent federal investigations; law enforcement in states and localities also make significant, indispensable contributions to the fight against trafficking in persons.

As of May 22, 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had certified 1,000 victims of human trafficking since the TVPA was signed into law in October 2000. In FY 2005, HHS certified 230 foreign victims of human trafficking from a remarkably diverse array of countries including: Albania, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Korea, Latvia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Paraguay, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Western Samoa. Certification allows human trafficking survivors to access most services and benefits, comparable to assistance provided by the U.S. to refugees.

In FY 2005, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued 112 T-visas to foreign survivors of human trafficking identified in the United States. T- visas are a special visa category resulting from the TVPA. Through February 2005, DHS issued a total of 616 visas to human trafficking survivors, and another 573 T-visas to members of their family.

In 2005, state law enforcement agencies convicted over 26,000 “johns” for trying to buy sex services.

In FY 2005, HHS launched new antitrafficking coalitions in ten U.S. cities to increase public awareness of human trafficking and to increase the number of trafficking victims identified as part of its Rescue and Restore campaign.