Melanie Dillon, 34, and Ariel Pace, 10, play at Ariel’s special education school in Columbus, Ohio. Ariel is bipolar like her mother, a sex trafficking survivor. While Melanie was battling with heroin addiction and being trafficked, Ariel often performed like a mother, Melanie said. She would undress her, clean her and put her to bed.
Stamili Hamidi, 33, an HIV positive heroin addict, stands in “Sheraton Campâ€, a corner of the Temeke neighborhood of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where addicts get together. Dar is a port city and heroin use started growing exponentially about 20 years ago.
A crack addict walks by police officers in Cracolândia, São Paulo, Brazil. With over one million users, Brazil has the dubious distinction of having the highest number of crack-cocaine users in the world. Cracolândia, in São Paulo, Brazil, is the symbolic epicenter of the battle against crack.
A street in Moradabad, India.
An undocumented Mexican immigrant shows the business cards of the Chinese employment agencies that smuggled him from the U.S.-Mexico border to New York City.
A Maasai warrior outside Mkuru, northern Tanzania.
Raquel (named changed to protect anonymity) had an illegal abortion with Cytotec pills in Teresina, Brazil. It is estimated that nearly a million abortions take place a year in Brazil, the country with the largest Roman Catholic population in the world. Since most abortions are performed in clandestine settings, they lead to at least 200,000 medical complications and an unknown number of deaths.
Grace Mbawala, 27, dozes off at a Medicins du Monde training for heroin addicts in Temeke, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Mbawala is addicted to heroin, cheap in Dar Es Salaam because Tanzania’s harbors are a main port of entrance for drugs from Pakistan and Afganistan on the way to Europe.
A brick workers camp outside Moradabad, India
James Cooke, 64, holds a piece of paper with a metaphor he often uses to explain his neurological disorder, called prosopagnosia, in his home in Islip, Long Island. He “reads†faces like people may read the sentence in the picture: without punctuation. It would make sense if it was punctuated: “That, that it is, is. That, that is not, is not.â€
Paulo Papalay, 27, a Maasai warrior, with his 3-year-old son outside his home outside Mkuru, a sub-village in northern Tanzania.
A mother and her daughter smile at each other in a hospital for malnourished children in Monrovia, Liberia.
A post-it in the living room of Melanie Dillon, 34, a sex trafficking survivor in Columbus, Ohio, reads “Make a new futureâ€. Melanie's daughter, Ariel Pace, 10, wrote post-its and put them around their home to encourage her mother as she recovered from heroin addiction and sex trafficking.
Teresia Ngulupa, 60, a Maasai woman, sits outside a “boma†(house) in Mkuru, northern Tanzania.
A bible cover property of Rafaela Lozano, a Dominican immigrant in New York who has had several relatives deported.
A family prepares to leave the Towero Clinic in the Morogoro region of Tanzania. They come for regular check-ups on the weight of their baby.
A woman who had an illegal abortion in Teresina, Brazil, ties her hair in a coffee shop. It is estimated that nearly a million abortions take place a year in Brazil, the country with the largest Roman Catholic population in the world. Since most abortions are performed in clandestine settings, they lead to at least 200,000 medical complications and an unknown number of deaths.
Benigno, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, attends a protest for immigration reform in New York.
Isabelly Santana, 23, a transgender prostitute part of an innovative harm reduction program called Bracos Abertos (Open Arms) in Cracolandia, Sao Paulo, became a shemale at 16. She got this tattoo to celebrate being able to call herself a woman. Isabelly is one of the many addict women who speak effusively about gender violence. Being transgender here is an extra layer of danger. “If you live here, you cannot be afraid of dying. My dream is to leave Cracolandia. No one has dignity in this placeâ€.
A Maasai kid runs to the dining room during break at Losinoni School in northern Tanzania. Losinoni School is a public school with over 600 Maasai students.
Melanie Dillon, 34, a sex trafficking survivor in Columbus, Ohio, is reflected in a window. Dillon was tattooed by her trafficker with his name. Thanks to a new local grassroots project created by another sex trafficking survivor, he had her chest tattoo covered with butterflies, her symbol of hope and recovery.
Dori Frame greets some neighbors in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY. Frame suffers from a neurological disorder called “prosopagnosia†or “faceblindnessâ€.
Kwesi Okyere, an immigrant from Ghana applying for asylum in the U.S., lies in the grass at Central Park, NY, days after being released from an immigration detention center.
Gayatri Mishra, 28, in Lodhi Gardens, New Delhi, India. She takes public transport every day to her editorial work and takes extra precautions since 2012’s brutal gang rape here.
New Delhi, India.
Graciela Beines was a victim of brutal domestic violence in New York. As an undocumented immigrant from Argentina she qualified for a type of visa called U visa that allowed her to remain in the U.S. after cooperating with the police.
Taj Mahal, India.
Pello Niasaja (left), the oldest man in Mkuru, a sub-village in northern Tanzania, supervises his family’s cows and goats at sunrise helped by his sons and grandsons.
Abraham, a “hero ratâ€, eats a banana prize after correctly sniffling a landmine in Apopo’s training camp in Morogoro, Tanzania.
Erica Cortez, 33, a sex trafficking survivor in Columbus, Ohio, plays with her son Isaiah cortez, 3, in the park near the apartment they live in. Cortez was tattooed by her traffickers and got her tattoos covered thanks to a local grassroots project called Survivors Ink.
A farmer called Gaston, 60, shows a cacao seed in Tocache, Peru. The Alto Huallaga area of the Peruvian jungle has been for decades a drug traffickers and terrorist paradise. Although security in nearby areas is worsening, Tocache has improved tremendously: most farmers including Gaston used to grow coca here. Now many grow cacao.
Rafaela Lozano kisses her granddaughter in her apartment in Washington Heights, NYC. Lozano is a Dominican immigrant who has had several relatives deported from the U.S.
Women wait to fetch water at sunset in Mkuru, Tanzania.
Jennifer Kempton, 32, a human trafficking survivor, travels by car to a tattoo parlor in Lancaster, Ohio, USA, where two Survivors Ink scholarship recipients will have their tattoos covered up today.
One of Jennifer Kempton's re-designed tattoos done to cover trafficking tattoos gets reflected in a window in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Jennifer’s journey into the darkness of human trafficking started, like many of the women she worked alongside on the streets of downtown Columbus, with a chaotic and abusive childhood, a history of violent and destructive relationships and a downwards spiral into street prostitution and drug addiction.
A deportation order received by an undocumented Ecuadorean immigrant in Queens, NY, USA.
Rosa (name changed to protect anonymity), an undocumented Ecuadorean immigran, buys groceries with her son at a Queens, NY, supermarket. Rosa is in deportation proceedings despite being a domestic violence survivor and having a U.S. citizen son.
Cracolandia, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
In the historic city center of São Paulo, Brazil, commuters and families walk through the Cracolândia district. Here, a woman with a baby and schoolchildren pass by a crack addict.
Kristin Waller, a human trafficking survivor in Columbus, Ohio, poses in the hallways of C.A.T.C.H. court, a voluntary program to recover those in the sex trade that she attends every Thursday. Here Waller shows a scar that she was given by her trafficker. Waller has applied to a Survivors Ink scholarship to get the scar covered with tattoo artwork.
A police car patrols The Fluxo, in Cracolandia, Sao Paulo, while commuters walk by it. When officers have enough proof to arrest someone for dealing crack, they’ve learned the lesson to do it a few blocks away from The Fluxo to avoid heavy confrontations with the users.
A police car is stationed right in front of the Fluxo, Cracolandia, Sao Paulo. The area becomes especially tense on nights and weekends.
An immigration reform rally in Washington D.C., 2010.
The Bottoms neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, USA, where Jennifer Kempton was trafficked for many years of her life. Reliable statistics are rare, but those in the field estimate hundreds of thousands of women and girls – the majority of whom are US citizens – are sold for sexual exploitation in America’s $9.5bn human-trafficking industry. According to the US Department of Justice, 300,000 of those at risk are children.
Christina Brooks, 29, had the name of her ex-husband and trafficker tattooed on her foot. He tattooed it himself on her. Recently, recovering from heroin addiction and on track to getting her life back together, Christina had her tattoo covered up by artwork thanks to a Survivors Ink scholarship in Lancaster, Ohio, USA. Christina said she was thankful for the opportunity to move on with her life. “I feel like as long as I had his name on my foot he had a claim on me. I’ve felt so dead inside, but now it’s like a new chapter is starting,†she says. “It’s just overwhelming, all of this. That I get to choose what goes on my body this time. That it’s finally over.†Her divorce papers were recently approved and she reunited with her two baby girls.