Aruba, officially known as the Country of Aruba, is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, situated in the south of the Caribbean Sea. Aruba is located approximately 29 kilometres (18 mi) north of the Venezuelan peninsula of Paraguaná and 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Curaçao.
Joran Andreas Petrus van der Sloot is a Dutch murderer, convicted in the 2010 killing of Stephany Flores Ramírez in Lima, Peru. He was the prime suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway.
Jossy Mehsen Mansur was the editor of the Papiamento-language newspaper Diario in Aruba. He wrote two dictionaries for the Papiamento language and a history of Aruba among other books.
Natalee Ann Holloway was an 18-year-old American high school graduate whose disappearance made international news after she vanished on May 30, 2005, in Aruba. Holloway lived in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and graduated from Mountain Brook High School on May 24, 2005, days before the trip. Her disappearance resulted in a media sensation in the United States. The prime suspect, Joran van der Sloot, has made conflicting statements over the years about his involvement, including a confession to killing her. Her remains have not been found.
Prajwala is a non-governmental organization based in Hyderabad, India, devoted exclusively to eradicating prostitution and sex trafficking. Founded in 1996 by Ms. Sunitha Krishnan and Brother Jose Vetticatil, the organization actively works in the areas of prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, re-integration, and advocacy to combat trafficking in every dimension and restore dignity to victims of commercial sexual exploitation.
Ansar Burney is a Pakistani human and civil rights activist and former Federal Minister for human rights in Pakistan’s cabinet from 2007 to 2008. He graduated with Masters in Law from Karachi University. He is widely credited as being one of the first people to introduce the concept of human rights in Pakistan since 1980.
Jamaica is a source, transit, and destination country for adults and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor.
Sunitha Krishnan is an Indian social activist and chief functionary and co-founder of Prajwala, a non-governmental organization that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates sex-trafficked victims into society. She was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2016.
Polaris is a nonprofit non-governmental organization that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America. The organization's 10-year strategy is built around the understanding that human trafficking does not happen in vacuum but rather is the predictable end result of a range of other persistent injustices and inequities in our society and our economy. Knowing that, and leveraging data available from more than a dozen years operating the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline, Polaris is focused on three major areas of work: building power for migrant workers who are at risk of trafficking in U.S. agricultural and other industries; leveraging the reach and expertise of financial systems to disrupt trafficking, creating accountability for perpetrators of violence against people in the sex trade and expanding services and supports to vulnerable people to prevent trafficking before it happens.
The Aruba Police Force is the main law enforcement agency of Aruba. The force operates under the authority of the Minister of Justice and Social Affairs.
Kathryn Bolkovac is a human rights advocate, consultant, former police investigator with the Lincoln Police Department, and former monitor with United Nations International Police Task Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She came to prominence when she sued her employers for unfair dismissal after she lost her job following her attempts to expose sex trafficking in Bosnia. Her story was shown in the film The Whistleblower and told in the nonfiction book, The Whistleblower.
Anne Therese Gallagher is the current (2019-) Director-General of the Commonwealth Foundation. She is also a former President (2018-2022) of the International Catholic Migration Commission, Co-Chair of the International Bar Association’s Presidential Task Force on Human Trafficking, and member of the Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration. An Australian born lawyer, practitioner and scholar, she is considered to be an international authority on transnational criminal law, migration and human rights and, according to the 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report prepared by the United States Department of State, is 'the leading global expert on the international law on human trafficking’.
The National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking is a four-year action plan that was established by the Government of Canada on June 6, 2012 to oppose human trafficking in Canada. In 2004, the government's Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons was mandated to create a national anti-human-trafficking plan, but the mandate went unfulfilled despite reminders from politicians and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Member of Parliament (MP) Joy Smith put forward motion C-153 in February 2007 to put a plan in place, and the House of Commons passed it unanimously. Smith began developing a proposal and released it in September 2010 under the title "Connecting the Dots". University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin helped guide Smith's writing of the proposal. Before the establishment of the NAP-CHT, a variety of people and organizations—including the 2009 and 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Reports of the United States Department of State—criticized Canada for failing to have such a plan.
The Trafficking in Persons Report, or the TIP Report, is an annual report issued since 2001 by the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. It ranks governments based on their perceived efforts to acknowledge and combat human trafficking.
Beatrice Jedy-Agba is a Nigerian lawyer and anti-human trafficking advocate. She is the first Nigerian to be honored by the U.S. Department of State with the Trafficking in Persons Heroes Award 2014. She was Director-General of National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) between 2011 and 2016.
Nydia Ecury was an Aruban-Dutch writer, translator and actress. She published five collections of poetry and translated plays of major European and American playwrights into the Papiamentu language, helping to develop the native dialect into a cultural language. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Chapi di Plata literary prize, Ecury was honored as a knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
Azezet Habtezghi Kidane is an Eritrean-born British nun and human trafficking activist working in Israel.
Prostitution in the Dutch Caribbean is legal and regulated. At least 500 foreign women are reportedly working in prostitution throughout the islands. Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Curaçao are sex tourism destinations.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Aruba was a part of the ongoing global viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was documented for the first time in Aruba on 13 March 2020. As of 29 May, all cases recovered. On 29 June, two new cases were discovered.
Lieutenant Colonel Karma Rigzin is a former UN peacekeeper, one of the three most senior ranking women in Royal Bhutan Police, and founder of its Woman and Child Protection Division. She was recognized by the US State Department in 2020 for her work to stop human trafficking.
