Last June 3, the US in its annual survey of international human trafficking, accused 14 countries of failing to do enough to stop the modern day slave trade. The list included such close allies of Uncle Sam as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and some of its usual suspects, including Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.

What the report fail to mention, however, was that tens of thousands of undocumented people are entering the US annually, and given the War on Terrorism, the US government now considers human trafficking to be a national security risk. At a congressional hearing held on May 18, 2004, John P. Torres of the Department of Homeland Security said: "We know that these smuggling and trafficking pipelines serve as conduit for undocumented workers and criminals seeking entry into the United States in order to carry out their destructive schemes."

The case of the Likireddy family and the sensational trial that ensued in Berkeley, California, shows that the US is not immune to the modern day slave trade. In June 2003, Prasad Lakireddy was found guilty of importing young Indian girls to the US for the purpose of sex and cheap labour, and received a five year suspended sentence. Earlier, the head of the family, mogul Lakireddy Bali Reddy, who owned a restaurant and extensive real estate holdings, received an eight-year prison sentence.

The case came to light when 17-year old Chanti Prattipati, one of the abused girls, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. "The details of the Lakireddy story were lurid and they shocked many Americans," recalled Ann Jordan, Director of the Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons, Global Rights, a human rights advocacy group based in Washington, DC . "They couldn't believe such a thing could happen in the US."

The US government estimates that the number of trafficking victims entering the US annually is somewhere between 14,000 to as much as 50,000. About half of the victims end up in the sex trade, according to one CIA estimate. "Human trafficking is significant, but it's even larger in those regions were borders are not patrolled and guarded," said Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican legislator from Kansas, who has sponsored anti- human trafficking legislation.

Human trafficking is a complicated issue, wherever it occurs, but the reasons for the criminal activity are easy to discern. Poverty and gender inequity are the key factors. In many poor countries, women and children are marginalised and uneducated, and as society's most vulnerable members, they become prime targets for human traffickers. In Bangladesh, India, and other countries of South Asia, many of the women and child victims come from rural areas and urban slums, and their families expect them to work to supplement the family income.

Some women and children even become eager participants who are willing to go with someone who promises them what seems like a better life. Other victims, looking to escape poverty in their own countries, will accept a phony offer from slick human traffickers for foreign employment in such occupations as restaurant work or child care. Many others are forced into prostitution.

They try to survive in a strange country, but they can't speak the language and are at the mercy of human traffickers, who force them to pay off a trafficking debt that can amount to thousands of dollars. If the victims are young girls working as prostitutes, they are often moved from one brothel to another, where they can contract diseases such as Aids. In Pakistan alone, an estimated 150 to 400 women are being trafficked weekly from Bangladesh, according to a report by the Karachi-based League for Human Rights and Legal Aid.

Many governments refuse to accept that human trafficking is a problem in their country and don't want to address it because of the high and levels of corruption involved. It is not uncommon for corrupt officials to accept bribes in exchange for passports, visas and safe transit across borders. In some countries, the corruption extends to high level foreign officials, according to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Frankly put -- many governments refuse to treat trafficking as a serious problem. As Jordan explained, "Few governments have educated their immigration officials, investigators, prosecutors and other civil servants on how to identify potential and actual victims of trafficking. Nor have governments insisted compliance with international law standards or domestic civil rights laws that ensure protection of the rights of the victims."

While the international community has moved slowly to address the issue, the UN did take an important step to enhance international cooperation on November 15, 2000, when its General Assembly adopted a package of instruments against various forms of transnational organized crime, including the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The protocol relating to human trafficking provides a framework for international cooperation and includes provisions for the extradition of human traffickers and for assistance to victims in the areas of housing, education and health care, although they are not obligatory.

Many countries realise that educating women and children who run a high risk of being trafficked, along with programmes to improve public awareness about the crime, are keys to curbing the trade. Unicef in Bangladesh, for example, has embarked on a project to train some 60,000 young people as potential role models to teach their peers about child trafficking.

"Education should also meet the demand side to teach potential perpetrators who are often adult men -- that trafficking is wrong," said Saisuree Chutikul, Vice Chairwomen of a UN committee on the rights of the child.

In the past few years, the US has made some progress in creating tools that can combat human trafficking. In 2000 congress passed The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which created new laws to fight traffickers and provided for new services for victims. It also created the Office to Monitor and Conduct Trafficking in Persons. In the summer of 2003 the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Predator to protect children from paedophiles and human traffickers by using cyber, intelligence, investigative, and detention tools. Arrests have already been made.

Still, the US needs to do more, according to human rights activists. "The federal government has done a lot in the past few years, but it needs to provide more, resources, particularly money, if we are to get the message out," Jordan said. Michelle Clark, the Washington-based co-director of the Protection Project, a research organisation focusing on trafficking issues, pointed out that only two states (Washington and Texas) have specific anti-trafficking legislation. "States have to do more if we are to curb trafficking within the country," Clark said. The Protection Project is a part of John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Baltimore.

Most importantly, individual Americans can also do their part to curb human trafficking, for many of them have probably come in contact with the trade without realising it. As Jordan explained, the victims of human traffickers are "all around us [Americans]. They cook our food in neighbourhood restaurants or in their own homes, sew our clothes or pick today's fresh vegetables. They could even be the foreign-born "wife" of a co-worker or the women held in isolation in forced prostitution in a quiet neighbourhood.

Seven Key Facts about Human Trafficking
*Human trafficking is a $9 billion a year illicit global industry.
*As a result of human trafficking, an estimated 27 million people are living in slavery today.
*In 1999, the CIA estimated that 45,000 women and children are trafficked annually in the US.
*Men are trafficked, too, and in the US they are forced to labour in agriculture, the restaurants, and other loosely regulated industries.
*Every ten minutes a child or women is trafficked in the US for the purpose of forced labour.
*In 2000, seventy-six human trafficking case were prosecuted in the US. Currently 120 cases are open for investigation.
*There is only shelter to accommodate trafficked persons in the entire US.
-- Source: Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking.

Ron Chepesiuk is a visiting professor of journalism at Chittagong University and Research Associate with the National Defense College in Dhaka.