NEW YORK, N.Y. (Canadian Press) -- Guy Jacobson says he doesn't know how to stop natural disasters, but knows how to "sabotage businesses" that make money using children for sex.

That was the topic the Israeli native addressed Thursday at a Manhattan gathering of global activists organized by the Cecilia Attias Foundation to tackle pressing problems facing women -- from the HIV-precipitated deaths of African mothers during childbirth to the integration of Muslim women into American life.

The foundation is named after French President Nicolas Sarkozy's ex-wife, now living in New York and married to global events producer Richard Attias.

Her foundation's inaugural "Dialogue for Action" at the Grand Hyatt New York hotel included more than 100 non-governmental organizations and 50 executives from both the public and private sectors.

Jacobson produced a 2009 documentary film about the sexual exploitation of children, "RedLight," for which he spent years tracking them in Cambodian brothels. In the process, he developed a method of damaging such businesses.

"You go after the customers" by using espionage equipment or intercepting them as they try to pick up a child, then file a lawsuit, said Jacobson, a lawyer and former investment banker who lives in New York.

"Without customers, there is no business," he said, adding that he believes there are contracts on his life in countries where he helped damage the sex trade.

Cecilia Attias said her foundation provides a "platform" linking nongovernmental organizations and individuals with business, academic and government experts to generate funding, media exposure and volunteers. Teams will be sent to assess grass-roots progress in the field and offer help where needed, she said.

It may not be as easy as that, said Dr. Prinitha Pillay of Doctors Without Borders, a group awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to provide medical care in crises.

Based in South Africa, Pillay works in sub-Saharan Africa to try to save thousands of HIV-positive women dying each year while giving birth.

"It's an intersecting epidemic of HIV and maternal mortality," said the infectious disease expert. "If a mother is HIV-positive, you have a higher risk of sepsis, infection and hemorrhaging."

In recent years, she said, donors want to link funding with quick, quantifiable results such as saving people with malaria, but treatment for HIV is protracted and expensive. Many clinics across Africa, especially in Uganda, are now turning patients away, she said.

Another problem is closer to home, as described by Sima Quraishi, head of Chicago's not-for-profit Muslim Women Resource Center.

The biggest challenge for immigrant Muslim women in the United States is that they were raised to stay home and bring up children, she said. Suddenly, they're thrown into a culture where both men and women work, and "they have to learn the language and find a job," said Quraishi.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the women have an added burden: Husbands fighting the negative image of Muslim men.

"When any other man beats up his wife, news reports don't say he's a white, Christian or Jewish or even Hindu man, but if it's a Muslim man, it's always, 'a Muslim man did it,'" she said, adding with a wry smile, "Our men are not that bad!"

Copyright The Canadian Press, 2010