In 2006 with $5m dollars of funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation IJM launched Project Lantern with a view to combating sex trafficking and slavery in Cebu.
Were they successful ? Did Bill & Melinda get value for money ? Why did Bill and Melinda give $5m to IJM ? Lets have a look.....
On The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (TBAMGF) website, the press release regarding the £5m endowment is listed in the HIV section of “What we do”. There is no section that relates to Human Trafficking. You can see the press release here.
The line “Where trafficking flourishes, victims are at greater risk of infection with the HIV/AIDS virus” begs the obvious question of whether TBAMGF gave their money expecting IJM to at least do something to battle HIV and help AIDS victims.
I have read nothing in any of the IJM press releases regarding The Philippines that mentions HIV. Indeed, a search of the term “HIV” on the IJM site yields just a handful of results, none of which mention the word prevention.
We all know that IJM read these boards and inevitably the trip reports from those proud “bare backers”. Surely one of them must be alarmed at how many girls are prepared to fuck without condoms ? Surely someone at IJM can see how sex education should be a huge part of their mission ? And to the IJM workers who reading this....I'm sure you know that the best way to avoid contracting HIV whilst having sex is to wear a condom. Why are you not educating these girls? Saving their lives? I think Bill & Melinda must have asked the same question and maybe that is why IJM received no further grant.
Project Lantern ran from 2006 to 2010, so lets see what $1m dollars a year in the hands of a christian NGO fighting Human Trafficking in one small city in the Philippines gets you.....
One of the things it gets you is a 79% reduction in minors being trafficked. They're very proud of that as you can see here.
79% Sounds impressive. But it's not really. Not when you read the report of the project that they had commisioned here.
The report was prepared by external consultants whose honesty actually exposes IJMs ineptitude and total lack of understanding.
The United Nations defines human trafficking as :
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the
threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the
abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
.
Wikipedia defines human trafficking as :
Human trafficking is the trade in humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others or for the extraction of organs or tissues, including surrogacy and ova removal or for providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage
Dictionary.com defines Human Trafficking as :
The illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation.
One common word in those three definitions is “forced”. The word forced is only used once in the IJM report. And even then not in this context. I fail to see where in the report of their achievements they stopped any forced prostitution.
A massive failure of Operation Lantern was the inability to find any victims under the age of 16. None. Nada. Hindi.
“In none of the studies were the researchers who were trained in age estimation and able to accurately distinguish between minors and adults with between 75% and 85% accuracy able to locate pre teen children. In all three studies, nearly all minors located were estimated to be around 16 or 17 years old”
“Trained in age estimation” – That would be the oh so very scientific teeth thing I suppose ?
“between 75% and 85% accuracy” - Proof !
“nearly all minors located were estimated to be around 16 or 17 years old”
“unable to locate pre teen children” - wtf ?
Five years & $5m dollars later they didn't rescue a single 5,6,7.8 or nine year old forced to have sex ? Five years & $5m dollars later they didn't arrest at least one child rapist ?
In five years ? Really ?
Shame on you IJM. You failed.
You failed the truly trafficked children of Cebu. You failed Bill & Melinda. You failed the people of the Philippines.You failed your god.
................to be continued
Maybe they are more successful with other projects in other parts of the world. I'm sure they mean well. But this report exposes them for the misguided fools that they are.
The report is actually quite cleverly written. It manages to both impress the ignorant target audience and yet ridicule the IJM for their shortcomings at the same time.
I urge you to read it and laugh at the irony.of it all.
Oh, and Gary Haugen earns $249,000 annually. His number two earns $214,000
(I apologize if Project Lantern has been discussed before. I did do a search but nothing came up)