Sex Trafficking and Early Marriage

Hello to everyone from…our very own New York City!

I started my internship at the international human rights organization, Equality Now, on June 1^st and immediately saw how much this organization does, and how quickly! Equality Now focuses its work on international women’s issues like sex trafficking, FGM, early marriage, discriminatory laws, among so many other issues and topics that concern women around the world. For example, just on my second day of work, I traveled to Brooklyn to attend a press conference by the Brooklyn D.A. The Kings County District Attorney’s Office announced their new Sex Trafficking Unit that will work to combat the exploitation of victims in Brooklyn. A link to the District Attorney’s press release may be found at: http://www.brooklynda.org/press_releases/pr_jun_10.htm#01.

The creation of this new unit is a wonderful step towards combating sex trafficking here in New York City, and one of my projects for the summer is to create a preliminary curriculum for teaching the basics of sex trafficking to students in New York City secondary schools. The creation of such a curriculum depends not only on researching the basics of how to create a curriculum guide for schools, but also how it will fit into the structure of the general health education of students. Trafficking can be defined as the selling and buying of human beings for the purpose of labor and sexual servitude. According to the United Nations, an estimated 4 million people are trafficked every year, and the U.S. State Department cites an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 individuals trafficked into the United States from foreign countries. Sex trafficking is, therefore, a growing concern for the world, our nation, and such major cities like New York. This project is a wonderful first step to combating sex trafficking on the ground level, and it will educate young adults on warning signs of trafficked persons and what they can do as students and community members to also fight sex trafficking. The aim of the curriculum guide is to be about two to three hours in length that will be conducted over a week or two weeks time. It will be introductory and will describe the warning signs of trafficking, the laws both international and domestic, and will be accompanied by survivor testimony.

Another of my earlier projects was to compile a database of the legal age of marriage in countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) both contain provisions against early marriage and support marriage as the consensual agreement between two adults. Many countries, however, allow for child marriages. In addition, several countries also have a disparity in the legal age of marriage for men and women, allowing one age, almost always an older age, for men and a younger age for women. For example, with parental consent, the legal age of marriage is 12 years for women and 14 years for men in Colombia. By compiling the legal age of marriage in such countries, Equality Now may use these minimum ages as a resource, which may be used for one of their current actions or future action. Their current action against early marriage highlights several harmful instances of child marriages in Yemen. This action encourages Yemen to enact and enforce a minimum age of marriage as they highlight six instances of child marriages. For example, Equality Now cites the marriage between a 13 year old girl to a 70 year old man, as well as a successful suicide by a 12 year old after being forced into marriage by her father. Further information on this early marriage action in Yemen may be found at: http://www.equalitynow.org/english/actions/action_3402_en.html.

Finally, one of my current projects is researching reproductive rights in Mexico, as Equality Now is considering taking action against an instance of a rape of a child who was not properly informed, or given the option, of her legal right to an abortion as a survivor of rape. I look forward to posting more on this as my research continues! Happy 4^th of July to everyone home and abroad!