Campus Coalition Against Trafficking (CCAT)

The Campus Coalition Against Trafficking is a student grassroots movement to stop modern-day slavery. CCAT student members and affiliates seek to raise awareness and change perceptions about human trafficking, advocate for strong anti-trafficking laws, and build the anti-trafficking movement. CCAT’s sponsor, Fair Fund, seeks to empower students to act, encourage creative activism, unify student efforts, and work to build a peer-to-peer student network.

The Campus Coalition Against Trafficking is fighting on the frontlines of the anti-trafficking movement. Our main goal is to raise awareness about human trafficking, advocating for strong anti-trafficking laws, fundraising for anti-trafficking organizations, and building that grassroots movement to stop modern-day slavery. We are supported by other student groups, professors, researchers, local non-governmental organizations, government officials, and other anti-trafficking activists.

Approach and Program Activities
CCAT uses a grassroots approach to catalyze social change and channel the passion and energy of students and youth. We value solidarity with student leaders and organizations and strive to work in a spirit of partnership with other initiatives, including women’s rights, human rights, labor rights, and peace organizations. Our program seeks to build emerging leaders who appreciate the interconnectedness of many global social justice and human rights issues.

Program Activities: Through its efforts, CCAT programs engage in the following activities:

Facilitating cross-sectoral training workshops, lectures, and readings for students that discuss human trafficking, women’s rights, labor rights, human rights, intl. migration policies, sexual exploitation, civil society, and beyond.
Catalyzing the creation of anti-trafficking campus student groups and offering suggestions for their activities.
Fostering inter-campus peer-to-peer dialogues between anti-trafficking student groups, as well as with student groups focusing on other social justice issues.
Linking interested students with internship opportunities in a wide variety of agencies, including established anti-trafficking agencies and other types of agencies that work on social justice issues.
Convening national events and workshops that are open to CCAT members across the nation.
Providing a core CCAT training manual with topics that will include, but are not limited to: tools for organizing an anti-trafficking awareness-raising event, identifying victims of trafficking, and conducting research.
Conducting research to identify what student activities are occurring around the country related to trafficking and what professors are teaching about trafficking in their college classes.

CCAT History
Understanding that student action is a critical component to any comprehensive social movement, FAIR Fund and Polaris Project joined together with 20 students in January 2005 to form the Campus Coalition Against Trafficking. The first launch conference, held in October 2005 at the Georgetown University Law School campus was supported in part by the Georgetown Law School Students Against Trafficking.

By Spring 2006, the Campus Coalition Against Trafficking had student and student group members from 81 schools and 12 countries. In April 2006, CCAT co-sponsored, together with the Northwestern University’s Human Rights Conference Series, the first national student conference addressing human trafficking where 200 students from 92 schools attended. In 2006, supported by the Yahoo Employee Foundation, CCAT offered 12 universities and 15 students the chance to realize their creative ideas to raise awareness, promote anti-trafficking conferences, and advocate for better or new state anti-trafficking legislation in their state.

CCAT students have represented the student anti-trafficking movement in national and international conferences including the annual Freedom Network conference.

CCAT’s current sponsor is FAIR Fund and Polaris Project remains an active supporter of student’s actions against trafficking and CCAT’s mission and goals. In 2007 and 2008, CCAT will grow to reach international students and to increase campus support for ending human trafficking, a form of modern day slavery.

NO SLAVERY, NO EXCEPTIONS

60 years ago, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that all human beings, without distinction of any kind, should be free from slavery. Yet there are still more than 12 million people living in slavery and every continent of the world is affected.

Anti-Slavery International believes it is long past the time when every human being – without exception – should be able to live a life free from slavery. This is why we are launching our new No Slavery, No Exceptions campaign. Sign the pledge now.

The campaign focuses attention on discrimination which is one of the root causes of slavery in the 21st century. In order to effectively tackle slavery we need to tackle the discrimination which underpins it.

The evidence of the link between discrimination and slavery can be clearly seen in much of the project work that Anti-Slavery International carries out. For example, the vast majority of bonded labourers in India, Nepal and Pakistan are dalits and those who are considered to be of “low” caste, indigenous people or those from other minority groups, including religious minorities.

Similarly, caste and ethnic status underpins the use of slavery in Niger, Mauritania and Mali, where tens of thousands of people are ascribed a slave status at birth and are then considered to be the property of their “masters” who force them to work without pay.

In the Republic of the Congo, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru it is indigenous groups who are mainly affected by forced labour. The most common mechanism of control is debt bondage.

Discrimination is a pivotal part of slavery practices because it allows people to disengage their humanity and justify or tolerate the violation of other people’s human rights. Discrimination also limits certain groups’ access to education, jobs and healthcare, leaving them socially excluded and vulnerable to slavery as they look for ways to provide for themselves and their families.

In the coming months we will be taking action on individual countries where discrimination plays a key role in trapping marginalised groups in slavery and urging governments’ to address this alongside measures to prosecute offenders and rehabilitate victims. We will also be promoting the No Slavery, No Exceptions campaign pledge which calls on governments and relevant international organisations to commit to eradicating all forms of slavery by 2015 and to put in place and fully implement national and regional action plans to achieve this.

Anti-Slavery International needs your help in building support for theNo Slavery, No Exceptions campaign. You can do this by
signing the pledge

For more information on the campaign and other ways that you can get involved please join the Campaigns Network

Original Article at:

http://www.antislavery.org/english/campaigns/no_slavery_no_exceptions/no_slavery_no_exceptions.aspx

WHAT IS FORCED LABOUR?

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Forced labour is any work or services which people are forced to do against their will under the threat of some form punishment. Almost all slavery practices, including trafficking in people and bonded labour, contain some element of forced labour.

Forced labour affects millions of men, women and children around the world and is most frequently found in labour intensive and/or under-regulated industries, such as:

Agriculture and fishing
Domestic work
Construction, mining, quarrying and brick kilns
Manufacturing, processing and packaging
Prostitution and sexual exploitation
Market trading and illegal activities

HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 12.3 million people in forced labour worldwide. Children are thought to make up between 40 and 50 per cent of all forced labourers.

Of this total some 2.4 million people are in forced labour as a result of human trafficking. Women and girls account for almost all those trafficked into sexual exploitation and the majority of people trafficked into labour exploitation. This means that some 80 per cent of all people trafficked for both economic and sexual exploitation are women and girls.

WHY IS THERE A PROBLEM?

In around 20 per cent of cases the State or the military is directly responsible for the use of forced labour. Notable examples where this takes place are Burma, North Korea and China. However, in the vast majority of cases forced labour is used by private individuals who are seeking to make profits from the exploitation of other people.

Victims of forced labour are frequently from minority or marginalised groups who face institutionalised discrimination and live on the margins of society where they are vulnerable to slavery practices. Forced labour is usually obtained as a result of trapping the individual in debt bondage or by restricting their freedom of movement. In other cases violence, threats and intimidation are used and/or there is an absence of effective State protection.

WHERE IS THE PROBLEM?

Forced labour is a global problem, although some regions have larger numbers of people affected than others. The regional distribution of forced labour is:

Asia and Pacific: 9,490,000 (77%)
Latin America: 1,320,000 (11%)
Sub-Saharan Africa: 660,000 (5%)
Industrialised countries: 360,000 (3%)
Middle East and North Africa: 260,000 (2%)
Transition countries: 210,000 (2%)

CASE STUDIES

“We were sent to the mountains to carry stones on our backs or heads. Because of the friction, the skin on my back peeled and bled. We had to load the stones onto a truck, which was then taken to a building site. It was such hard work that people fainted. Guards were always yelling and hitting the prisoners. When we worked on this project, we didn’t come home until 11pm. It took us over an hour to walk back to the prison camp.”

A 42-year-old former teacher from Hoeryong described the nature of forced labour at the Onsong labour training camp in North Korea.

“One time while I was sowing, I was so tired that I stopped for a rest. A young guard caught me and grabbed me by my neck. I pleaded with the guard and begged for his forgiveness, but he just cursed at me and kicked me on my back and head. He said how I could dare to be tired when I had been eating so well in China. Because of that beating, I suffer from chronic back pains and headaches still today.”

A 57 year old woman from Kyongsong explains her experience of forced labour at the Hoeryong labour training camp in North Korea

“We must work for the Bantu masters. We cannot refuse to do so because we are likely to be beaten or be victims of insults and threats. Even though we agree to work all day in the fields, we are still asked to work even more, for example, to fetch firewood or go hunting. Most of the time, they pay us in kind, a worn loincloth for 10 workdays. We cannot refuse because we do not have a choice.”

Interview with an indigenous man in the Congo.

LAWS

The ILO defines forced labour as: “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”.

This definition is set out in the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29). This Convention has been ratified by over 170 states and obliges governments to “suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period”.

The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also prohibits the use of forced labour (Article and has been ratified by more than 160 states.

China is the only country in the world which has not ratified either of these international standards. However, many countries have not passed specific laws defining and prohibiting forced labour with adequate punishments for those responsible. Where these laws exist they are often not enforced properly.