More than 100 teens rescued in weekend sex-trafficking raids:  More than 100 teenagers — many of them children from broken homes — were rescued over the weekend in a sex-trafficking crackdown that swept more than 70 cities, the FBI said. 

See the video here

National Human Trafficking Resource Center:   Call 1-888-373-7888 or text BeFree (233733). The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) is a national, toll-free hotline, available to answer calls and texts from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.

International Religious Freedom Reports describe the status of religious freedom, government policies violating religious belief and practices of groups, religious denominations and individuals, and U.S. policies promoting religious freedom.  From the US Dept of State.

The annual Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom – the International Religious Freedom Report – describes the status of religious freedom in every country. The report covers government policies violating religious belief and practices of groups, religious denominations and individuals, and U.S. policies to promote religious freedom around the world. The U.S. Department of State submits the reports in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

See more here

Do the products you buy support slavery and labor abuses?  Learn how your favorite brands relate to trafficking and other labor abuses. Free2Work provides consumers with information on forced and child labor for the brands and products they love.  Access the system here

Not For Sale is at the forefront of creating innovative, replicable, and sustainable solutions to fight modern-day slavery. Not For Sale believes that trafficking can be stopped up.  Read about their international projects.

Go to the site here

Recent international news posts from the Not For Sale campaign to support modern solutions to modern-day slavery.

View the news here

TeachUNICEF is a portfolio of global education teacher resources designed and collected by the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s Education Department for teachers, afterschool instructors, and parents. The units, lesson plans, stories, videos and multimedia cover topics ranging from the Millennium Development Goals to poverty and water and sanitation.

Click here to go to the site

U.S. Senator Jeff Chiesa (R-NJ) used his first speech on the Senate floor to shine the light on the issue of human trafficking, what he deems, “modern-day slavery".   See the full speech and other articles of interest on opportunity for women worldwide. 

View the site here

“We see it as fundamental to our own interests to support a just peace around the world—one in which individuals, and not just nations, are granted the fundamental rights that they deserve.”  – May 2010 National Security Strategy

The annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – the Human Rights Reports – cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. The U.S. Department of State submits reports on all countries receiving assistance and all United Nations member states to the U.S. Congress in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974.

Click here to see more

Local woman helps fight human trafficking:  Sarah Symons, 48, and her husband, John Berger, 46, founded and operate Made By Survivors, a nonprofit group that offers survivors of trafficking the education and training to restart and improve their lives.

See the full article here

Modern-day slavery: a global forum.  Announcing the launch of a project on modern-day slavery, investigating root causes and potential solutions.  Over the next twelve months, the Guardian, in partnership with Humanity United, a US-based foundation dedicated to building peace and advancing freedom, will shine a light on the phenomenon of modern-day slavery.

See the forum here

Why Slave Labor Still Plagues The Global Food System.  When the State Department released its annual report on human trafficking Wednesday, we got a chilling reminder that even in 2013, slave labor is still embedded in the global food system.

As many as 27 million men, women and children are estimated to be trafficking victims at any given time, according to the report. And some of those victims, the State Department says, are later forced to work in agriculture and food processing (though no one has a good idea how many).

See the full article here on npr.org

Does the media do enough for human rights? Shaming government leaders into doing the right thing.  View the video on YouTube

Hawaii Gov. Abercrombie Signs Human Trafficking Bills:  three new bills combating human trafficking in Hawaii and increasing services for victims.

The most important of these measures is SB 192, which mints the offense of solicitation of a minor (a person under the age of eighteen) for prostitution, graded as a class C felony that carries a minimum $2,000 fine, while extending the civil statute of limitations for coerced prostitution to six years, expanding asset forfeiture laws to cover an increased range of solicitation offenses, and adding solicitation of a minor to the state's list of crimes subject to the sex offender registry.

View the full article here

Resources for locating jobs relating to human rights, United Nations and NGOs.

Click here to see more

There are numerous ways for you to get involved. Take action and push for a cause that matters to you. Check out the Human Rights Watch traveling film festival and learn the difference that someone with a vision and a camera can make. Sign up for our newsletter – staying informed about human rights issues is the first step towards making change. And see what our supporter committees are doing in 17 cities worldwide.

Human Rights Watch partners with organizations around the world to increase the pressure for change and maximize our impact. Check out our resource guide for local activists. Read about the winners of this year’s Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism, including the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Together, we will promote human rights and justice around the world.

See here

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. We work tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep rooted change and fight to bring greater justice and security to people around the world. Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of the lens to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference. The film festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people.

In selecting films for the festival, Human Rights Watch concentrates equally on artistic merit and human rights content. The festival encourages filmmakers around the world to address human rights subject matter in their work and presents films from both new and established international filmmakers.

Each year, the festival's programming committee screens more than 500 films and videos to create a program that represents a range of countries and issues. Once a film is nominated for a place in the program, staff of the relevant division of Human Rights Watch also view the work to confirm its accuracy in the portrayal of human rights concerns. Though the festival rules out films that contain unacceptable inaccuracies of fact, we do not bar any films on the basis of a particular point of view,

See more here

An Introduction to
Human Rights Education

What is Human Rights Education?

Simply put, human rights education is all learning that develops the knowledge, skills, and values of human rights.

The United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004) has defined Human Rights Education as "training, dissemination, and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights through the imparting of knowledge and skills and the molding of attitudes which are directed to:

(a) The strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms;

(b) The full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity;

(c) The promotion of understanding, respect, gender equality, and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples and racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups;

(d) The enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free society;

(e) The furtherance of the activities of the United Nations for the Maintenance of Peace." (Adapted from the Plan of Action of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), paragraph 2)

During this Decade, the UN is urging and supporting all member states to make knowledge about human rights available to everyone through both the formal school system and through popular and adult education.

click here to see more

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected. 

This website contains any available UDHR translations with no distinction between languages and dialects since all of them serve the purpose of global dissemination. At present, there are 409 different languages of UDHR, available in HTML and/or PDF format. 

OHCHR also maintains a worldwide collection of materials on the UDHR which is permanently based in the OHCHR Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. To know more about the collection, click on UDHR materials in the left-hand column.

The goal of this website is to disseminate UDHR broadly.

See more here

Online Tools and Manuals for Human Rights Defenders - a resource of numerous and varied manuals and tools for defenders.

The purpose of this manual is to provide human rights defenders with additional knowledge and some tools that may be useful for improving their understanding of security and protection. It is hoped that the manual will support training on security and protection and will help defenders to undertake their own risk assessments and define security rules and procedures which suit their particular situation.

See more here