As we commemorate International Women’s Day today, I invite you to take a moment to consider the heightened vulnerability of women and children in Haiti right now. Please continue to pray and keep Haiti at the forefront of conversation with those in your sphere of influence:

NY Times - With Haitian Schools in Ruins, Children in Limbo

“Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp.”

“‘The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,’ Ms. Thompson said.”

“The government here has recognized the urgency of reopening schools to provide some structure to those picking up the pieces of their lives. But its efforts to do so have faltered. Officials declared schools open in unaffected areas as of Feb. 1; some students have trickled into those schools, but many have not, say education specialists.”

IJM is calling on the international community to immediately implement measures to protect vulnerable children from trafficking risks and other forms of abuse in Haiti. 

Read more...

This week, The Atlantic published an article “Island of Lost Children” by former IJM Chennai Communications Fellow Nicolette Grams.

This timely and thoughtful piece in The Atlantic highlights the multitude of dangers brewing for children in Haiti, calls on people to protect the vulnerable, and features IJM’s work and methodology as a solution to such horrors, wherever they may occur.

Please do share this article with others, especially if they are engaged in relief work in Haiti at this time. Questions are rising about the implications of the Haiti earthquake on the vulnerability of women and children - and the implications are indeed grave.

Please do consider this article to be a resource. We will continue to get other helpful resources into your hands as this crisis continues.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001u/haiti-trafficking

If you have not already heard, Jeff Shinabarger (the creative mind behind the Catalyst Conferences, founder of Gift Card Giver, and strategist for many NGO’s and innovative ventures) recently launch a new community called Plywood People. In their own words, they are “searching for social problems with the hope to match them with entrepreneurial creativity to organize, innovate, and manage ideas that produce change.”

In honor of Human Trafficking Awareness Day, IJM is featured on the Plywood People blog today. We hope you will be encouraged in your own fight against trafficking as you read this story of a city and children redeemed.

Friends, I am so thrilled to let you know that we have experienced an unprecedented breakthrough in our work in one of our South Asia anti-sex trafficking offices. If you were with us at the Global Prayer Gathering last spring, you will remember spending an evening focused on the work of justice in a particularly dark and violent city. This week we have experienced an important victory in that city and we believe your work of prayer has been a great catalyst. One of the major figures in that local trafficking network, a particularly violent criminal accused of murder, gang rape, and other forms of deadly brutality, has been arrested. This particular arrest has now resulted in significant information about other key trafficking figures and we expect it will lead to the rescue of many, many more victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Again, this breakthrough is completely unprecedented for our work in this city.

Please continue to join us in earnest prayer for this situation and this place.
- Pray for wisdom and integrity for the local officials as they proceed in this case. They have been inspirational partners to us in this past week and we are so grateful for their collaboration.
- Pray for healing for those victims who are now in aftercare and for rescue for those who still await it.
- Pray that the trafficking network would begin to crumble and this city would experience significant transformation.
- And pray that God would change the hearts of those who intend great evil and harm.

Again we would love to offer our team in this city your prayers and words of encouragement through the comments below.

Friends, thank you for your continued prayers for the remarkably difficult case one of our South Asia teams has been fighting. There are two key pieces of information to give you by way of an update:

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Friends, the IJM team in South Asia and around the world has been so strengthened and humbled by your joining us in prayer so wholeheartedly over these past 2 days. Thank you for perservering with us in patient, persistant prayer.

Today was an deeply intense day for the staff and our clients. The six families removed from the rice mill have given testimony to the the enormity of abuse they have suffered; however, official release has not yet been granted by the government.

Official release by the government is an absolutely critical step in the rescue process - it secures the long-term safety of former slaves, guarding them from being retrafficked and ensuring they receive economic restitution to begin their new lives of freedom. 

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Note: I am pleased to introduce you to the IJM Institute’s intern for this semester, Tim Hakim. Tim will be guest-blogging for the Institute this week, bringing you news of significant casework victories from the past few days. I’ll look forward to sharing more about who Tim is throughout this week. As always, please feel free to leave your comments and questions and Tim will enjoy the opportunity to dialogue with you on these matters.
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This past week IJM Manila (Philippines) saw the conviction of a pimp accused of sexual abuse and prostitution of minor boys in Paco, Manila. After four years in litigation, Albert Sanchez was found guilty of qualified trafficking and has been sentenced by a Manila court to serve a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison. This case is particularly significant for IJM on several fronts: The charge of qualified trafficking, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years, is a particularly serious charge requiring a more complex standard of proof, and there are only a handful of successful convictions each year on this charge. In addition, this case involved a series of difficulties that threatened to derail the case and prevent this perpetrator from being held accountable for his actions. The case’s success is a testament to God’s grace and the integrity of the Philippine judicial system to administer justice even in difficult cases. This case is also unique in that it marks the first conviction for qualified trafficking of male victims in the Philippines, even outside of IJM’s work.

Read more...

You may be aware that IJM is working to expand and deepen our relationships with local churches throughout the developing world. We have always held the conviction that the Church is God’s ultimate plan for bringing rescue and justice to the oppressed, and every day is a learning process as we seek to grow in fellowship with churches not only here in North America but all throughout the world.

IJM Cambodia has made significant strides over this past week in their work with churches in the capital city of Phnom Penh. Below is an excerpt from a report we received from staff team on the ground:

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At a round table this past week with pastors from one of the largest churches in Cambodia, representatives from IJM’s field office in Phnom Penh opened discussions on launching an expanded initiative to bring the biblical mandate of seeking justice to the attention of Christians throughout Cambodia.

Field Office intern Karen Genzink has been working for months to lay the groundwork for this initiative and hopes that the meeting last week was the first of many to engage the Cambodian church in ways that are increasingly robust and sustainable.

IJM Cambodia will lead trainings to equip pastors on how to engage issues of sexual exploitation within their communities - enabling churches to serve as a resource to confront this challenge. Genzink also looks forward to sharing more deeply the mission of IJM throughout the body of Christ in Cambodia with the ultimate goal of witnessing the Holy Spirit move this part of the global church to action on behalf of those who are suffering as a result of human trafficking.

“We have to talk about the realities of oppression and the hope of biblical justice if we expect to see real transformation,” she says. “The church will be the lasting change.”

She says as more people advocate for change and justice in their own neighborhoods, the problem of oppression can be combated. The work has just begun for IJM Cambodia, but Genzink is confident that the road ahead is worth it. “This has the potential to be powerful.”

You may have seen coverage of “Operation Twisted Traveler” on many major news outlets this week - this is a significant example of the U.S. Protect Act at work. Evidence provided by IJM investigations was used in the extradition of one of the three American alleged sex tourists arrested in Cambodia and now being brought to trial in the U.S. Below I have copied several examples of the media coverage from the past 2 days - I hope these articles are helpful to you as you learn more deeply and broadly about the nature of sex trafficking, its victims, its perpetrators, and the impact of functioning law systems to overcome this crime:

Washington Post: 3 AMERICANS FACE CHILD-SEX CHARGES

“Authorities in both countries relied on information provided by Action Pour Les Enfants, a nonprofit group, and the International Justice Mission, human rights agency. Their involvement, Rodley said, marked a breakthrough for Cambodia, which historically has had an uneasy relationship with such organizations because of their criticism of the government.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/31/cambodia.sex.tourism/index.html” title="CNN: SEX-TOURISM OPERATION NETS THREE, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SAYS">CNN: SEX-TOURISM OPERATION NETS THREE, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SAYS

“Operation Twisted Traveler is crackdown on U.S. sex tourism in Cambodia. Three men being returned to United States, charged under Protect Act. Suspects convicted of previous sexual offenses in U.S., agency says. They face sentences of 30 years for each alleged victim.

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For IJM, our work of fighting violent injustice and helping broken public justice systems work for the poor could easily be summed up in just one word: 

Story.

Story of deception, story of redemption.
Story of wrong, story of rescue.
Story of paralyzed despair, story of catalyzed hope.
Story of the millions, story of the one.

For us it is critical that abstract statistics and macro systems of injustice be grabbed and translated into a clear, compelling, lazer-focused story of the One. One life that has been transformed. One life held accountable for wrongs. One life redeemed. One life rescued that ripples out to transform millions of lives: your life, my life, and the global neighborhood God has entrusted into our care.

And so, in short, I’m excited to tell you about a ground-breaking event happening in Chicago this October - in partnership with Zondervan, many Chicago-area churches, and phenomenal story-tellers from all over, my long-time friend Ben Arment is launching ”Story. I absolutely cannot wait.

Will you be there?

Friends, we have several critical operations underway today. I cannot yet share details but the violence involved in each location is dire. Please pray for those who are being abused and offered for sale and please pray for our staff as they work around the clock with local authorities. Pray for a breakthrough.

I’m so grateful for your partnership with us in this work…

Today we honor a great hero who lived among us and pointed us to a future that most of us could barely even dare to dream of… and many others fought against. President-Elect Obama, in many ways an embodiment of King’s vision, leads our nation today in honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. by declaring this a day of service toward others. Any Institute readers participating in the MLK Day of Service? The official mlkday.gov website is full of helpful information - not too late to get on board! And if you do… leave us a comment - would love to hear.

Or, in the case that you are home-bound today, as am I with a sick little toddler, I invite you to tune-in with me to CNN at noon - CNN will be airing the rarely televised full-length version of MLK’s 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, known to most of us by its popularly acquired title, “I Have a Dream.” It is not to be missed. Here is a link to watch-it online if you do not get CNN on your television.

Reflections on this day in history? On MLK’s impact on our country, on you personally?

Ran into Kevin Bales today at a meeting with legal and human rights experts in DC. He has been a wonderful friend to our work. If you have not picked up a copy of one of his many groundbreaking books, I would do so today.

Kevin is one of the foremost statisticians compiling the compelling evidence of slavery’s world-wide prevalence today. In many ways, the issue of modern-day slavery is one that has been alive in the public and media’s eye for only a few years, even as the issue itself has been growing in magnitude for centuries. Many of us, myself included, used to believe slavery was a thing of the past, a crime that came to an end with the Civil War here in the U.S. 

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We have three major trials underway in Guatemala right now - all for victims of sexual violence. When we first began operations in Guate, there was a less than 1% conviction rate for sexual violence offenders. We have seen remarkable changes in just 3 years, and each new case provides an opportunity for healing and for structural transformation.

Please pray for our three clients - they have endured great trauma and yet have such beautiful courage. Please pray for our staff and for the government authorities, that justice may be won.

For those of you who have been praying for the major rescue operations this week, I want to let you know that these operations were successful. I cannot give more detail due to security necessities, but if you have questions please contact me directly.