View previous stories
	Brazil off-course for World Cup and Olympics by Raquel Rolnik UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing   As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on the right to adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, said she has received many allegations concerning displacement and evictions potentially leading to violations of human rights.   The allegations concern different cities including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Recife, Natal and Fortaleza. “I am particularly worried about what seems to be a pattern of lack of transparency, consultation, dialogue, fair negotiation, and participation of the affected communities in processes concerning evictions undertaken or planned in connection with the World Cup and Olympics,” said the Special Rapporteur.   “I am also concerned about the very limited compensation offered to the communities affected, which is even more striking given the increased value of real estate in locations where building is taking place for these events. Insufficient compensation can result in homelessness and the formation of new informal settlements,” she added.   Ms. Rolnik said numerous evictions have already been executed without the families concerned being given sufficient time to propose and discuss alternatives, and without adequate plans for relocation.   “Insufficient attention is being given to access to infrastructure, services and means of subsistence in relocation sites,” she said.   Illustrative cases include Belo Horizonte, where some 2,600 families are threatened with eviction; Rio de Janeiro, where many communities are under threat from projects linked to both the World Cup and the Olympics, and where many families were already evicted in December 2010; and Sao Paulo, where even more communities are threatened with eviction under city beautification and development projects.   For example, thousands of families have already been evicted in relation to a project known as “Água Espraiada”, with a further ten thousand families facing a similar fate.   “I call on federal, state and municipal authorities involved in World Cup and Olympics projects to engage in a transparent dialogue with Brazilian society, particularly with the sectors of the population directly affected,” the Special Rapporteur said.   “With the current lack of dialogue, negotiation and genuine participation in the design and implementation of World Cup and Olympics projects, the authorities at all levels should put a stop to planned evictions until dialogue and negotiation can be ensured,” she added.   “The Government should adopt a ‘Legacy Plan’ to ensure the holding of the World Cup and Olympic Games has a positive social and environmental impact and avoids violations of human rights, including the right to adequate housing. This is a fundamental requirement to guarantee that these two mega-events promote respect for human rights and leave a positive legacy in Brazil,” she concluded.   * According to Julio Cesar Condaque, an activist opposing the levelling of the favelas, "between now and the 2014 World Cup, 1.5 million families will be removed from their homes across the whole of Brazil." Visit the related web page
	The Face of Modern Slavery by Nicholas Kristof Cambodia   When I write about human trafficking as a modern form of slavery, people sometimes tune out as their eyes glaze over. So, Glazed Eyes, meet Srey Pov.   She’s a tough interview because she breaks down as she recalls her life in a Cambodian brothel, and pretty soon my eyes are welling up, too.   Srey Pov’s family sold her to a brothel when she was 6 years old. She was unaware of sex but soon found out: A Western pedophile purchased her virginity, she said, and the brothel tied her naked and spread-eagled on a bed so that he could rape her.   “I was so scared,” she recalled. “I was crying and asking, ‘Why are you doing this to me?”   After that, the girl was in huge demand because she was so young. Some 20 customers raped her nightly, she remembers. And the brothel twice stitched her vagina closed so that she could be resold as a virgin. This agonizingly painful practice is common in Asian brothels, where customers sometimes pay hundreds of dollars to rape a virgin.   Most girls who have been trafficked, whether in New York or in Cambodia, eventually surrender. They are degraded and terrified, and they doubt their families or society will accept them again. But somehow Srey Pov refused to give in.   Repeatedly, she tried to escape the brothel but she said that each time was caught and brutally punished with beatings and electric shocks. The brothel, like many in Cambodia, also had a punishment cell to break the will of rebellious girls.   As Srey Pov remembers it (and other girls tell similar stories), each time she rebelled she was locked naked in the darkness in a barrel half-full of sewage, replete with vermin and scorpions that stung her regularly. I asked how long she was punished this way, thinking perhaps an hour or two. “The longest?” she remembered. “It was a week.”   Customers are, of course, the reason trafficking continues, and many of them honestly think that the girls are in the brothels voluntarily. Many are, of course. But smiles are not always what they seem. Srey Pov even remembers flirting to avoid being beaten.   “We smile on the outside,” she said, “but inside we are crying.”   Yet this is a story with a triumphant ending. At age 9, Srey Pov was able to dart away from the brothel and outrun the guard. She found her way to a shelter run by Somaly Mam, an anti-trafficking activist who herself was prostituted as a child. Somaly now runs the Somaly Mam Foundation to fight human trafficking in Southeast Asia.   In Somaly’s shelter, Srey Pov learned English and blossomed. Now 19, Srey Pov can even imagine eventually having a boyfriend.   “Before I didn’t like men because they hit me and raped me,” she reflected. “But now I think that not all men are bad. If I find a good man, I can marry him.”   Somaly is creating an army of young women like Srey Pov who have been rescued from the brothels: well-educated and determined to defeat human trafficking. Over the years, I’ve watched these women and girls make a difference, and they’re self-replicating.   In my last column, I described a frightened seventh-grade Vietnamese girl who was rescued in a brothel raid that Somaly and I participated in. That raid in the town of Anlong Veng has already had an impact, for six more brothels in the area have closed because of public attention and fear that they could be next. And the seventh-grade girl is recovering from her trauma at a shelter run by Somaly, where a girl named Lithiya has taken her under her wing.   Lithiya, now 15, is one of my favorites in “Somaly’s army,” perhaps because she wants to be a journalist and has taught herself astoundingly good English. Trafficked at age 9 from Vietnam, Lithiya was locked inside a brothel for years before she climbed over a wall and escaped. Now a ninth grader, she is ranked No. 1 in her class.   Srey Pov, Lithiya and Somaly encountered a form of oppression that echoes 19th-century slavery. But the scale is larger today. By my calculations, at least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.   So for those of you doubtful that “modern slavery” really is an issue for the new international agenda, think of Srey Pov — and multiply her by millions. If what such girls experience isn’t slavery, that word has no meaning. It’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S. and around the world.
	View more stories