Janice Raymond is Professor Emerita of Women's Studies and Medical Ethics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She has been Visiting Professor at the University of Linkoping in Sweden, Visiting Research Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Lecturer at the State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN Sunan Kalijaga), Center for Women Studies, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
A longtime feminist activist against violence against women and sexual exploitation, as well as against the medical abuse of women, Janice Raymond is also Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), an international NGO having Category II Consultative Status with ECOSOC, and with branches in many world regions. Under Raymond's leadership, CATW has expanded its regional networks and partners in many parts of the globe, most recently in the Baltics, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe and supported prevention of human trafficking projects in the Philippines, Venezuela, Mexico, Mali and the Republic of Georgia. CATW has also helped provide services for Nigerian women trafficked to Italy.
Raymond has been the recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Information Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), and UNESCO. In 2000, she co-published one of the first studies on trafficking in the United States entitled, Sex Trafficking in the United States: Links Between International and Domestic Sex Industries, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Justice. In 2002, she directed and co-authored a multi-country project in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States, entitled Women in the International Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation.
In January 2004, Dr. Raymond testified before the European Parliament on "The Impact of the Sex Industry in the EU." In 2003, Raymond testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. Congress on "The Ongoing Tragedy of International Slavery and Human Trafficking." In March, 2000, she was an NGO member of the Official U.S. Delegation to the Asian Regional Initiative Against the Trafficking of Women and Children (ARIAT), Manila, the Philippines, hosted by the governments of the Philippines and the United States. In 1999-2000, she was the main representative of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women to the UN Transnational Crime Committee, Vienna, Austria, where she helped define the recent UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. In advocating for new international legislation on trafficking, she organized the International Human Rights Network of over 140 NGOs in support of a new UN definition of trafficking that protects all victims of trafficking. Janice Raymond has also also served as an expert witness at criminal trials involving a challenge to the illegality of brothels.
Raymond is the author of five books and multiple articles, translated into several languages, on issues ranging from violence against women, women's health, feminist theory and bio-medicine, the most recent which is Women as Wombs: Reproductive Freedom and the Battle Over Women's Bodies (Harper San Francisco, 1994). She has published numerous articles on prostitution and sex trafficking, many which can be found at www.catwinternational.org. She lectures internationally on all these topics.
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