WGST 314 CONCEPTUALIZING TRAFFICKING

Media Misinformation
Analyzing Al Jazeera Englishs Coverage of Sex Trafficking
Mary Elizabeth Kenefake 12/13/2012
1

Al Jazeera Logo. Photograph. Al Jazeera English to Be Available in India. IBN Live, 17 Nov. 2011.

Media Misinformation: Analyzing Al Jazeera Englishs Coverage of Sex Trafficking Sex trafficking has been on the radar of international media organizations for several years now. Brought to the forefront by NGOs and international government studies, media has helped bring the issue of sex trafficking to the attention of the public. However, many scholars have critiqued media outlets for creating sensationalist, inaccurate representations of situations on the ground. The title of this paper, Media Misinformation, comes from British journalist Nick Davies. He authored the piece Prostitution and Trafficking: the Anatomy of a Moral Panic in 2009 where he stated that the sex trafficking story is a model of misinformation2 and that news organizations are creating a cycle of misleading stories. Are media organizations creating a cycle of misinformation about sex trafficking? In order to determine if this claim is true, I will analyze one news organizations coverage of sex trafficking for one year (November 2011- December 2012). While analyzing one news organizations coverage will not gauge the coverage of the entire global media network, it is worthwhile to see what issues arise as problematic. I have decided to address television news rather than print news due to the visual component that video cameras add. As Kleinman and Kleinman state, video cameras take us into the intimate details of pain and misfortune.3 By looking in detail at one organizations coverage, I seek to answer several questions: 1) Is the media coverage really sensationalist? 2) If so, what about it is sensationalized? 3) In relationship to scholarly theory, what is good about the coverage? What is problematic about the coverage? 4) What could improve 2013s coverage?

2 3

Davies, Nick. Trafficking: The Anatomy of a Moral Panic, 2009. Kleinman and Kleinman, p. 1.

I have decided to study the coverage of Al Jazeera English (AJE). AJE was founded in 2006, and is a branch of Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab 24 hour a day, 7 days per week news channel launched in 1996. Funding for the network is provided by the Emir of Qatar. From its 300 original staff members, it has now grown to 3,000 employees spread among 65 bureaus in 60 countries. The organization has been banned from many countries in the Arab world due to its discussion of taboo topics. AJE has 29 bureaus independent of Al Jazeera Arabic.4 AJE has attracted many world class journalists, many of them former BBC employees. AJE has been internationally recognized as a quality journalistic institution, providing unbiased and balanced coverage. In 2012, it was awarded the Royal Television Society News Channel for the Year award, beating out BBC and Sky News.5 In addition to its reputation for providing excellent coverage, I have decided to analyze AJE because it is a non-Western news organization. This is significant because many scholars claim it does not fall into Orientalist and otherized patterns of news coverage like some Western news organizations have done in the past. While AJE is non-Western, it reaches many Western countries and their citizens daily, with the exception of the United States, where it is not broadcast. I have decided to study the coverage of sex trafficking rather than the larger field of trafficking for several reasons. Firstly, it narrows the field of research. In total, AJE published thirty two stories on the subject of trafficking from November 2011-December 2012. Ten of them covered sex trafficking, fifteen covered drug trafficking, and seven covered human trafficking. By researching only the sex trade component of trafficking, I am able to analyze

4 5

Al Jazeera. "Corporate Profile - About Us - Al Jazeera English." AJE - Al Jazeera English. Conlan, Tara. "Al-Jazeera English Wins RTS News Channel of the Year." The Guardian.

specific coverage for its efficacy. Figure one shows the ratio of AJE trafficking stories divided by drugs, sex, and humans.

Trafficking Stories by Al Jazeera, Nov. 2011- Dec. 2012

7 10 Sex Drugs Humans 15

Figure 1 Secondly, because sex work is highly stigmatized, this influences how news stories are written about the subjects, in particular, women and girls. Carol Vance, author of Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality discusses the social construction of sexuality and the difficulty that comes with writing about sex. She says when we come to sex, our minds grind to a halt: normal distinctions become incomprehensible, and ordinary logic flies out the window.6 Journalists, like academics, are not immune to letting personal feelings and morals overtake objectivity. Cultural differences about the acceptability of behavior surrounding the female body can percolate news stories; just as it can in academic research.

Vance, Carol. Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality, p. 30.

Thirdly, the subset of sex trafficking brings up the topic of victimization. In order for the viewer of a television program to feel sympathy, Nicholas Lainez suggests that the subjects of interviews must be a good victim meaning innocent, un-consenting, and virginal. These victims are also most times from the global South. Kamala Kempadoo states that The dominant image in the West of the trafficked, victimized sex worker is of a young Brown, Asian, or Black woman, an image refracted through mainstream television programs and newspaper reports.7With AJE reports originating from Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, this statement by Kempadoo rings true. Lainez discusses the good girl/bad girl dichotomy of victimization in his piece Representing Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia: The Victim Staged. Lainez states that virgins and young girls are prioritized by NGOs and governments, therefore these people become the sources journalists often speak to. Journalists often times obtain sources through NGOs and governmental organizations. Lainez states that the conception that prevails is the Madonna or the good and innocent women deserving help, which is an expressed opposition to the whore or the bad girls who deliberately choose to migrate illegally for the purpose of prostitution.8 Researchers Kleinman and Kleinman call this phenomenon casting. Due to casting, women and girls who voluntarily entered the sex trade are not interviewed on television, even if they experienced trafficking in some form. 9 Data Collection from AJE Stories

7 8

Kempadoo, Kamala, p. 32. Lainez, Nicolas. p. 143. 9 Kleinman, Arthur, and Joan Kleinman.) p. 7.

The data collected from AJE from November 2011 to December 2012 contains ten stories about sex trafficking. These sex trafficking stories span fifteen countries and four continents. Figure two shows the country distribution of AJEs coverage of sex trafficking.

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Figure 2

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Figure 3(shows the distribution of AJEs coverage of drug and human trafficking)

10 11

"Google Map Generator: 29travels." 29travels. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. "Google Map Generator: 29travels." 29travels. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Twenty one countries and five continents are featured in figure 3. In total, thirty four countries and five continents were covered under the umbrella of trafficking by AJE from November 2011-December 2012. It is important to note that while AJE is based in Qatar, its coverage of the Middle East region is minimal. One story mentions in passing Turkey, Syria, and Israel as a destination for trafficked women. Other than that, the region is largely ignored. Al Jazeera has been criticized in the past for not tackling stories that are culturally taboo in Islam, so this may be partially why the Middle East has not been widely covered. North America and Australia are also not covered by sex trafficking stories. This is possibly due to the fact that AJE viewers are not from these countries, where as AJE does reach countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. Figure four is a comprehensive overview of the ten stories written by AJE in the past year. (page break, full page figure on next page)

Stories published by Al Jazeera English from November 2011-December 2012 about Sex Trafficking (in order of date)
Date Title Countries Total Number of Sources Number of Percentage "trafficked" of sources sources trafficked individuals Length of story/video

11/15/2011 Bridal Slaves (part of a series called Slavery: a 21st century evil) 11/27/2011 A mental and physical hell: the majority of the world's trafficked people are in Southeast Asia 3/25/2012 Sex Slaves (part of a series called Slavery: a 21st Century Evil)

India

11

4 0.363636364 25 minutes

Thailand, Philippines

1 0.142857143 No video component, 1800 words 1 0.076923077 25 minutes

4/5/2012 Argentine mothers fight sex trafficking 5/10/2012 Men Jailed in UK over underage sex ring

Moldova, Bulgaria, Poland, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Netherlands Argentina United Kingdom

13

3 4

0 1

0 2 minutes 0.25 5 minutes

5/12/2012 Women's voices must be heard: Young, vulnerable girls were groomed by a sex ring yet much of the media focuses only on ethnicity of the convicted men. 5/15/2012 Lover Boys 5/15/2012 Battling a new brand of pimp: New trends in forced prostitution, media-fuelled moral panic and antiimmigrant sentiment combine in the Netherlands. 6/11/2012 The Nigerian Connection: An investigation into the plight of African women caught in a web of organized crime, prostitution, and trafficking 13/12/2012 Outrage over Argentina sex slave trial

United Kingdom

0 No video component. 1,000 words

Netherlands Netherlands

6 3

2 0.333333333 25 minutes 0 0 No video component. 1,146 words

Italy, Ghana, Nigeria,

14

0.5 50 minutes

Argentina Total:
Figure 4

2 64

0 16

0 2 minutes

Of the ten stories written on sex trafficking, nine discussed adult women, and two discussed children (one discussed both adult women and female children). No stories discussed the trafficking of men or boys for sex. The stories did not mention anyone outside of traditional gender binaries, such as transsexuals. Nine of the stories focused on trafficking women for commercial sex work. One story discussed trafficking women for sex, but in the form of marriage not commercial sex work. Interview Sources by AJE

Interview Sources
1 8 16 Trafficked Women 9 Trafficking Community NGO Representatives Government Officials Community Members 10 Academics

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Figure 5 describes the distribution of interview sources for the 10 stories. In the 10 stories, reporters did a total of 64 interviews. NGOs Not surprisingly, the number of interviews with NGO affiliated individuals was the largest, with 21/64 interviews. Of those NGOs, thirteen of them were local to the communities the story focused on, and eight were outside or international NGOs operating within the country the story was focused on. For both journalists and social scientists, it is better to get information

from local NGOs in communities rather than international organizations that may be sporadically involved. The local NGO knows the history of the place, the culture, and has built up trust with the community. The outside NGO does not necessarily have trust built up within the community to access the best sources to ascertain the situation. An additional problem with NGOs is that they can propagate inaccurate statistics. The cycle of unconfirmed facts and statistics circulating among these groups does more to confuse the average citizen than to inform them. The news stories based on these facts therefore do not reflect the realities of those involved in trafficking or working to help those who have been trafficked. For example, the story Lover Boys claims that 25% of trafficked women in the European Union are Dutch-born.
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However, the story Sex Slaves, published just two months

before Lover Boys, claimed that the majority of trafficked women in the European Union were from Eastern Europe.
13

This error of fact checking, done by the same organization, is clearly

confusing to the viewer. If someone saw both programs, they wouldnt know who these supposed women were or where they came from. Trafficked Sources The second largest source, with 16/64 interviews were trafficked women. I found this overall trend surprising. While the total average number of interviews was high for trafficked women giving their personal accounts, some stories had many more interviews than others. Some only interviewed one woman and generalized her story to equate the whole experience of

12 13

Rooke, Julia. "Lover Boys." Witness - Al Jazeera English. 15 May 2012. Omaar, Rageh. "Sex Slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil." Sex Slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Al Jazeera English.

women trafficked from a particular country to another. Other, better-done stories had multiple interviews with multiple trafficked women. For example, the story Mental and Physical Hell featured only one interview with a sexual trafficking survivor. Liza, from the Phillipines, had been trafficked to Thailand. She was able to escape, and was contacted through an NGO: the Coalition against Trafficking in Women Asia-Pacific. Out of seven interviews in the whole 1800 word piece, only one interview was an actual participant in the industry. The remaining six interviews were with officials from international NGOs. Her story was the only first-hand interview in a story that claimed to describe the entire Southeast Asian sex-trafficking climate. 14This is most certainly sensationalist journalism, and the most poorly crafted AJE article from the time period being researched. The problem of lack of sources for Physical and Mental Hell could be that there was a lack of sources willing to share their stories. Denise Brennan shared her difficulties as a researcher trying to find interviews with women in her piece Methodological Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons: Tales from the Field. The demand for trafficking victims to speak at events and in the press far outpaces the number of ex-captives who are ready to do so. In some ways, this creates an environment in which the same stories get retold while many go untold, since even when ex-captives do take the podium, they cannot possibly give voice to the myriad experiences and viewpoints of all ex-captives.15 The longest and most in-depth piece AJE featured on sex trafficking was a two part series called The Nigerian Connection. The videos totaled 50 minutes of coverage. The first 25 minutes featured a community in Southern Italy where the Nigerian and Italian mobs were facing off, with Nigerian prostitutes (who had been trafficked there under false pretenses) stuck in the
14 15

Al Jazeera and Agencies. "A Mental and Physical Hell." Features. 27 Nov. 2011. Brennan, Denise. "Methodological Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons: Tales from the Field." International Migration 43.1 (2005): p. 44.

middle of the turf war. The second part focused on why Nigerian women wanted to migrate, and how remittances from sex work fueled the economy of Benin City. Out of the fourteen total interviews, seven were with victims of sex trafficking. 16This goes far and above any other story AJE produced. By interviewing so many women, it offers a diversity of perspectives on the trafficking experience. One womans experience is not applied as representative of all from that country. While there were seven different women, they al l had similar stories. Academic Kamala Kempadoo discusses this phenomenon in her article Women of Color and the Global Sex Trade: Transnational Feminist Perspectives. The representation of women from Third World or postcolonial countries as Trafficked victims combines with descriptions of conditions of excessive force and violence. Debt-bondage, where sums of up to $20,000 are loaned to families and paid back by women and girls through work in underground or informal sectors; indentureship, where women are forced into prostitution, domestic work, or sweatshops and are required to pay the trafficker for travel and documents; and slavery-like conditions, where women are locked into rooms or a building, chained up, or otherwise held against their will, forced to have sex both with clients and their protectors or traffickers, are raped and abused by their managers and are starved or not allowed freedom of movement, are most commonly linked to the Third World and non-western womens experiences in the global sex trade. 17 The experience Kempadoo describes is almost universally the experience described by the Nigerian women interviewed by AJE for the piece The Nigerian Connection. While one interview reflecting this experience would have been effective, seven drives home the point that these womens experiences are representative and legitimizes the journalists coverage of the situation. Trafficking Community Sources

16

Ruhfus, Juliana. "The Nigerian Connection." People and Power. Al Jazeera English. 11 June 2012. 17 Kempadoo, Kamala, p. 32.

Ten of the 64 interviews were from members of the trafficking community. I am defining this as people involved in the trafficking of women for sex, but excluding the trafficked women. Those interviewed included middlemen, agents, advertisers, pimps, and lover boys. A lover boy is a term defined by filmmaker Julia Rooke in the film with the same name. She states they are young men who pose as boyfriends to lure women into the sex trade. A lover boy is interviewed by the filmmakers for the documentary. In other pieces, pimps, agents, and advertisers are also interviewed. The piece Bridal Slaves interviews three traffickers involved in various stages of movement of women across India. The piece Sex Slaves interviews an advertiser, recruiter, and three pimps who are involved in purchasing women who are lured by false advertisements, then trafficking them to Western Europe. The piece The Nigerian Connection had amazing interviews with trafficked women, and also featured two interviews with agents. The first agent lied after being caught, and said she had only applied for bulk passports once. The second agent, caught on hidden camera, stated bluntly I like inexperienced girls who have just been taken from home. All of these other businesses is just a cover. This is where the real money is. I have many girls there [Italy] and they are all slaves there.18 Whiles these interviews are extremely valuable, certain pieces lack them. The two stories covering Argentina focus on trafficking networks, yet fail to interview anyone involved (even a so-called survivor). 19 Mental and Physical Hell also lacks an interview with anyone involved in the trafficking of women. Community Members, Government Officials, and Academics

18 19

Ruhfus, Juliana, The Nigerian Connection. Al Jazeera English. Bo, Teresa. "Argentine Mothers Fight Sex Trafficking." Argentine Mothers Fight Sex Trafficking. Al Jazeera English, 05 Apr. 2012.

The remainders of sources are community members, government officials, and academics. I am defining community members as members of the community where trafficking takes place, yet they are not directly involved. These people included local lawyers, priests, sheikhs, and townspeople who had observed movement of women. Overall, eight community members were interviewed. These interviews are seen as 3rd party witnesses to add a different perspective to that of trafficked victim and trafficker. Next, nine government officials were interviewed. These government officials were featured in almost every story, with the exception of Bridal Slaves and Mental and Physical Hell, both of which relied on NGOs for facts and statistics. Often times, NGOs and government officials present different statistics. Good stories report the statistics that both parties present, and acknowledge that there is a discrepancy. Bridal Slaves did not acknowledge this discrepancy, but Sex Slaves and The Nigerian Connection both acknowledged a discrepancy on statistics between NGOs and governments. Lastly, only one academic was interviewed throughout the ten stories by AJE. He was Frank Bovenkerk, a cultural anthropologist from the University of Amsterdam who had conducted research on the existence of lover boys.20 I found this to be very surprising, considering most journalistic stories about trafficking originate from academic reports that tip them off to certain regions. Key Word Data Other data collected from the ten stories AJE produced on sex trafficking was a study of key words identified by the WGST 314 class at Wellesley College. Having studied trafficking

20

Rooke, Julia. "Lover Boys." Witness - Al Jazeera English. 15 May 2012.

for a semester, they created a list of words they thought would appear frequently in a journalistic publication. The following table is the result.

Rate of Appearance of Key Words Across 10 Articles

0 Forced Victim Slave Rape Debt Escape Help Financial Suffer Coersion Freedom Deception Save 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Figure 6 Forced, Victim, and Slave were the top three words, with nearly double any other words mentioned. A word I noticed occurred frequently, but was not included (because it had not been proposed by the class), was Rescue. Additional Problematic Material The two stories by acclaimed reporter Rageh Omaar , Bridal Slaves and Sex Slaves (both part of a series entitled Slavery: a 21st Century Evil) contained broad generalizations and problematic opinions on the part of the journalistic narration. Omaar, a seasoned journalist who served as BBCs Africa correspondent based in both Ethiopia and South Africa, has been an established journalist for more than 15 years. However, in both of these programs he

makes opinionated statements. Firstly in Bridal Slaves, in the conclusion, he provides an anecdote to solving the problem of trafficking women for marriage. The narration states, without attribution to a source, that The real solution lies in India enforcing its own antislavery laws. He does not interview someone who claims that the problem would still not stop, even if there were the risk of punishment by criminalization of prostitution and pimping. 21 The second piece Omaar reports on, Sex Slaves, takes the biased position that legalized prostitution in Holland is the source of the sex trafficking problem in Europe. He states Until the rich Western countries address the demand for prostitution rather than profit from it, there will always be men like Kovali and Barran [convicted of violent crimes towards women and trafficking]. And there will always be sex slaves behind these windows. 22 He goes onto make an even more shocking claim about a woman who had been beaten by a man named Shabban Barran, the convicted leader of a Turkish organized crime unit that had trafficked over 100 women from Eastern Europe to Amsterdam to work as legal prostitutes. He stated This is the true face behind Hollands experiments in legalized prostitution showing a badly beaten womans face, partially blurred.

21 22

Omaar, Rageh. Bridal Slaves, Al Jazeera English. Omaar, Rageh. Sex Slaves. Al Jazeera English.

23

Figure 7, a freezeframe from Sex Slaves To make such a generalized statement, and to essentialize one womans personal story as reflective of a countrys legal policy towards prostitution, is a gross overstepping of a reporters objective boundaries. While the story does demonstrate a good understanding of the trafficking networks that fuel trade between Moldova and the Netherlands, this level of sensationalism is unacceptable. The next two concerns regard terminology. Firstly, the story The Nigerian Connection refers to fully adult women as girls for the entire 50 minutes of its length. Reporter Juliana Ruhfus is also a seasoned journalist. Referring to adult women who work as prostitutes (trafficked or not) as girls infantilizes them. They are reduced to the age of a child, losing their agency. Secondly, the third most common key word found among the ten stories was slaves. It was mentioned 20 times, either by the reporter narrating or by sources being interviewed. The word slave was mentioned three times by trafficked women describing their conditions; the remainders were by NGOs and the reporters themselves. For example,

23

Omaar, Rageh. Sex Slaves. Al Jazeera English.

Isoka, a Nigerian woman interviewed in The Nigerian Connection stated I was a modern day slave without prompt from the reporter. 24 The use of the term slave is problematic for several reasons. The word slave recalls the era of the transatlantic slave trade that occurred from West Africa to Europe and the Americas. It was racialized, selling black people to people with light skin. What is happening today is not racialized, but is a result of economic desperation. Kempadoo states that in Asia and Africa sexual slavery is the term chosen by some womens organizations to define and speak out about the exploitation, coercion, and brute force that women from these regions of the world are facing.25 She states that this term is problematic due to the history it recalls worldwide for black people. Aspects of Good Coverage by AJE While there is much to criticize about AJEs coverage of sex trafficking, there are also positive aspects to the coverage. There are a multitude of trafficked women sources, and local NGOs were more prevalent than outside international organizations. This meant there was not a savior aspect to the stories, and there was not a focus on the need for outside aid. Each story also sought to explain the cultural and economic factors leading to the sex trafficking situation in each country. The stories, with the exception of Mental and Physical Hell did not generalize and essentialize the experience of one woman to equate the entire nations trafficking network. Journalists also sought to understand the differences in trafficking networks in each country, and sought to explain the roles people played in each. For example, Rageh Omaar makes a point to explain the differences roles of traffickers in India versus the traffickers in Moldova in his two
24 25

Ruhfus, Juliana, The Nigerian Connection, Al Jazeera English. Kempadoo, Kamala, p. 36.

pieces. The length of the pieces is also extraordinary. For a network to have almost two hours of video coverage on sex trafficking is a valuable asset to the public in an era where news media is often trimmed shorter and shorter. Conclusion According to Kempadoo, in order to move media coverage out of a rut of repetitive coverage, we must force an engagement with the interplay of global relations of power around gender, race, nationality, and the economy. 26 Al Jazeera journalists have begun this dialogue, although not reaching it completely. Rageh Omaars use of the image of the badly beaten woman is an example of how coverage in 2013 should not continue. Kleinman and Kleinman have termed this type of display a commercialization of suffering, the raw spectacle making of violence, abuse, and suffering.27 While many argue that they story of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation has been overdone in media coverage, it is important for journalists to engage in this coverage, so that the public can remain accurately informed about what the situation for trafficked women worldwide is.

26 27

Kempadoo, Kamala, p. 2. Brennan, p. 36.

Works Cited Al Jazeera and Agencies. "A Mental and Physical Hell." Features. 27 Nov. 2011. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. Al Jazeera. "Corporate Profile - About Us - Al Jazeera English." AJE - Al Jazeera English. 5 Dec. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Al Jazeera. "Facts and Figures - About Us - Al Jazeera English." AJE - Al Jazeera English. 18 Dec. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Al Jazeera Logo. Photograph. Al Jazeera English to Be Available in India. IBN Live, 17 Nov. 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2012. Bo, Teresa. "Argentine Mothers Fight Sex Trafficking." Argentine Mothers Fight Sex Trafficking. Al Jazeera English, 05 Apr. 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. Brennan, Denise. "Methodological Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons: Tales from the Field." International Migration 43.1 (2005): 35-48. Web. Conlan, Tara. "Al-Jazeera English Wins RTS News Channel of the Year." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 23 Feb. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2012. Davies, Nick. "Prostitution and Trafficking: The Anatomy of a Moral Panic." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 19 Oct. 2009. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. "Google Map Generator: 29travels." 29travels. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Kempadoo, Kamala. "Women of Color and the Global Sex Trade: Transnational Feminist Perspectives." Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 1.2 (21): 28-51. Print.

Kleinman, Arthur, and Joan Kleinman. "The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times." Social Suffering 125.1 (1996): 1-23. Print. Lainez, Nicolas. "Representing Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia? The Victim Staged." Ed. Tiantian Zheng. Sex Trafficking, Human Rights and Social Justice. London: Routledge, 2010. 134-49. Print. "Men Jailed over UK Underage Sex Ring." Ed. Al Jazeera and Agencies. Al Jazeera English, 10 May 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. Omaar, Rageh. "Bridal Slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil." Bridal Slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Al Jazeera English. Al Jazeera English, 15 Nov. 2011. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. Omaar, Rageh. "Sex Slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil." Sex Slaves - Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Al Jazeera English. Al Jazeera English, 25 Mar. 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. Quinton, Pennie. "Women's Voices Must Be Heard." Opinion - Al Jazeera English. 12 May 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Rooke, Julia. "Battling a New Brand of Pimp: The Broader Problem of International Trafficking." Editorial: Witness. Al Jazeera English, 15 May 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Rooke, Julia. "Lover Boys." Witness - Al Jazeera English. 15 May 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2012. Ruhfus, Juliana. "The Nigerian Connection." People and Power. Al Jazeera English. 11 June 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.