AALS Private Screening on Human Trafficking

LexisNexis has announced that it will host an exclusive private screening of the film Holly at the January American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting in San Diego. By showing the film, Lexis Nexis hopes to raise awareness about human trafficking and to show its support of efforts to combat and raise awareness of this global problem.

LexisNexis' promotion of the private screening of Holly estimates that one million people, mostly women and children, are trafficked around the world each year. The gross and unjust economic exploitation of vulnerable people is a direct result of absence of Rule of Law - an accessible, independent and transparent legal system, along with a set of laws that everyone, including the government, follows - in the countries where this traffic thrives.

Article Three of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines trafficking as the "recruitment, transportation, harboring or receipt of persons by threatening, force, or coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the receiving and giving of paymen to a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation". The International Organization for Migration says as many as 800,000 people may be trafficked across international borders annually, with many more trafficked within the borders of their own countries.

A 2005 report called "Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report" issued by the US State Department , estimates that of the 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year, about 80% are women and girls. Most traffickers are people with close ties to their victims who use the promise of employment, marriage, and a better life to lure the victims into a life of slavery. Weak legislation and the absence of effective deterrent penalties against this crime contibute to the growth of the problem.

Here is the trailer for Holly which is due to be released in April 2009.

For reading material in the BLS Library collection, see SARA, the library catalog, for a recent acquisition: Trafficking in Humans: Social, Cultural and Political Dimnsions edited by Sally Cameron and Edward Newman (Call # HQ281 .T717 2008).