May 07 2008
The Countertraffickers: from Moldova to Dubai and back
William Finnegan’s “The Countertraffickers,” is a compelling account, in this week’s New Yorker, of one crusader at the Office of International Migration’s Moldovan office, and what she does to rescue trafficked women.
It’s lengthy, but worth it, especially to gain insight into the utterly chilling world of forced prostitution in the city-state of Dubai (which seems at once both Wonderland and wasteland), where frequently the incredibly wealthy control the incredibly impoverished in some pretty gruesome ways.
This report from Current TV explores prostitution in Dubai further.
(source: Current TV)
Ironic fact: Not sure if it was last year or the year before, but Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business took its annual surprise class trip to Dubai. It is also one of the places that’s part of their global initiatives in management program. I’m curious to know if there have been efforts to put financial pressure on companies (domestic and foreign) who do business in cities and countries where something like prostitution and sex trafficking is so prevalent. It’s interesting that the regions where many of these women in Dubai come from suffer large numbers of poverty, disease and inadequate education. Maybe it’s not enough to stop the trafficking but look at the policies that are setting these type conditions in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe.