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Francophone Festival
Features the film “Game Night,” March 9, 7 p.m., Alliance Française, Barrio Amón.

Theater at Noon
The Denkiem Percussion Group, March 9, 12:10 p.m., National Theater.

Martes por la Noche Concerts
Features Double bassist Milton Masciadri and pianist Laura Castro, March 9, 7 p.m., Room 107, Faculty of Music, UCR, San Pedro.

The United Nations estimates that more than 250,000 people from Latin America are forced into labor as a result of human trafficking at any given time.

Though the extent of trafficking in Costa Rica is not known, the country has been recognized as both a feeder country and a destination for forced labor. A March, 2009 report issued by the United States said that Costa Rica fell short of the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Girls from Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Russia and Eastern Europe have been identified here as victims of forced prostitution. Officials are also aware of trafficking going the other way. According to the United States, Costa Rica needs to intensify efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses and improve data collection regarding trafficking crimes, among other changes.

To help Costa Rica meet minimum benchmarks, the United States government announced Monday that it would be backing two initiatives with a collective $350,000 grant.

“Make no mistake, human trafficking is a real example of modern-day slavery,” said U.S. Ambassador Anne Andrew. “That is why the United States Government is intent on supporting the fight against human trafficking.”

Part of the grant will go to Fundaci­ón Rahab to promote prevention as well as protection of adults and adolescents who are victims of trafficking. The other piece will go to the country's Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) to improve investigation and response to forced labor.

“Trafficking of persons is a phenomenon that has no place in the 21st century; not in Costa Rica, not in the U.S. and not in our world,” Andrew continued. “It is our duty as human beings to fight against this evil.”

According to Andrew, Costa Rica has taken steps towards addressing the problem by changing some of its laws and improving the tools used to fight illicit trafficking. She said that traffickers frequently recruit people through fraudulent advertisements, promising legitimate jobs as models, hostesses, or work in the agricultural industry. When they accept, they find themselves trapped in jobs in a foreign country.

One way Public Security Minister Janina DelVecchio plans to confront the issue of trafficking is by “putting police where we have people” so that cases of forced labor are better detected.

The Pan-American Life Insurance Group, an international insurance provider and financial planning service based in New Orleans, Louisiana, has been officially welcomed into the Costa Rican market. The company, which will operate through a local corporation as the “Pan American Life Insurance de Costa Rica, S.A.,” is the sixth insurance organization to be approved to compete in the Costa Rican insurance market, which opened to competition in 2009 after the passing of the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). Prior to the passing of CAFTA, the National Insurance Insitute (INS) had been Costa Rica's sole insurance provider for 84 years, with the exception of Seguros del Magisterio, a company that provides life insurance to teachers.

Pan American Life Insurance of Costa Rica will join Seguros del Magisterio, Mundial-MAFRE, Alico Costa Rica, Assa Compañía de Seguros and INS as the only approved providers of insurance coverage in the country. According to Javier Escalante, who oversees the insurance superintendency (SUGESE), a regulatory agency, these companies will begin selling their products within the next few months.

“We are very satisfied with the performance of the insurance market in our country,” Cascante said. “Since the opening…the progress in the sector has been successful and in a very short time we will have a large diversity of products and services, which will without a doubt provide benefit to consumers.”

The Pan-American Life Insurance Group was established in New Orleans in 1911 and now has operations in 47 U.S. states, as well Puerto Rico, Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras and the Cayman Islands. In Costa Rica, the company will offer term life insurance, universal life insurance, health and medical expense insurance and accident insurance.

As the world celebrated International Women's Day on Monday, Costa Rica took stock in how far Costa Rican women – the “Ticas” – have come, but also eyed the stretch of road to equality that still lies ahead.

Ticas are taking jobs outside the home and climbing the labor ladder like never before. A Tica, Laura Chinchilla, will become the country's first female president on May 8.

“On a macro level I think women in Costa Rica have come a long way in a number of areas,” said Simone Bunse, a former lecturer at INCAE Business School in Costa Rica who has researched women in leadership. She cited Ticas' literacy and education levels as both being above those of males.

“However, we are far from a picture of ‘the empowered woman' we may want to see,” she said.

This year's International Women's Day came under the United Nations' theme “Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all.”

According to Mabel Figueroa, coordinator for public policy for gender equality at the National Women's Institute (INAMU), progress for Ticas continues to be unnecessarily stifled.

Studies have shown that the earnings of Costa Rican women are trailing those of men. In 1996, females earned 15 percent less than their male counterparts in a similar job. By 2008, the salary gap had risen to 26 percent, according to an October 2009 report by the government-run INAMU and the independent research group State of the Nation.

“One of the most powerful reasons (for the wage gap) is that the society believes that a woman's salary is a household's secondary rather than its principal income,” said Figueroa.

Despite women's gains in society, many Ticos still view a woman's role to be in the home, when that's increasingly not the reality, said Figueroa. According to official statistics, a considerable number of women are their household's primary breadwinner.

For Raquel Herrera, programs specialist at the United Nations Development Program's Costa Rica office, Ticas face difficult choices around their career and family.

For more on this story, see the March 12 print or digital edition of The Tico Times.