Musings from inside, outside, and underneath

This blog mainly focuses on countries I have lived and worked in; however, it is not exclusively about them. I am also including their placement on the 2007 US government Trafficking in Persons Report.  This report ranks countries on a three tier scale (1 being the best, 2 being has problems but is addressing them, 3 is has problems is not addressing them). Here are the main countries I talk about.

Cambodia- a country in south east asia where I worked for 6 months. (Early parts of this blog have been transfered over from http://coming2cambodia.wordpress.com which I wrote while there). Cambodia is a tier 2 watch list country (the watch list part means it is not quite tier two but moving in the right direction).

Chile is where i am currently working.  Along the south western coast of South America, it is fairly developed and economically stable for countries in the region.  It is a tier 2 country.  I also lived here in 1996-1997 and 2000.

Moldova is a country in Eastern Europe where I worked for over 2 years.  About 1/2 the size of Maryland or twice the size of Hawaii (if either of those make sense to you), it is a former part of the USSR and incredibly poor and rural. Is a tier 2 watch list country.

United States does not rank itself, but has huge issues with human trafficking. At least 17,000 people are brought in annually and domestic trafficking of American citizens is only recently being recognized.