Jean M. Geran, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute in London and former Director for Democracy and Human Rights on the National Security Council.

WASHINGTON AND LONDON — We just finished a trip to four cities in Japan, laying the groundwork for increased dialogue between the US, UK, Japan and other industrialized democracies on best practices to attack their human trafficking problems. These are the trafficking-demand and migration-destination developed-world democracies , or the 4 D countries. [Read more →]

Manga (Japanese comics) at a bookstore

TOKYO — I cannot help but to ask one question when examining human trafficking in a country I deeply admire, Japan: What is it about some Japanese men and kids? [Read more →]

Before Polaris Project Japan opened its doors in 2005, we conducted a series of focus groups on various communities’ understandings of human trafficking. When it came to sex trafficking, I was shocked when a number of Japanese male respondents openly talked about their comfort in engaging in commercial sex with children. At first, I hoped those responses were outliers. Unfortunately, as our work began in Japan, I quickly absorbed the reality of how challenging it would be to combat child sex trafficking in a country where the broader commercial sex industry makes up 1 percent of its GNP (equaling Japan’s entire national defense budget!). [Read more →]