Speaker Theresa Jones addressed the club last week about the unfortunate reality of human trafficking. Below are excerpts from Theresa's presentation that help define, explain, and address this awful activity.
Human Trafficking Defined
The Trafficking in Persons Report defines human trafficking as the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud, or coercion.
- An estimated 45.8 million people are enslaved by human trafficking
- More than 1.2 million children are trafficked for sex
- Modern day slavery prevalent in 167 countries
- Generates approximately $150 billion in illegal revenues annually
Types of Human Trafficking
Forced Labor - a person is forced to work with little or no pay
- Examples include sweatshops, agricultural labor, factories, hospitality/restaurant industry, construction, and nail salons.
Bonded Labor - known as debt bondage, traffickers or "recruiters" unlawfully exploit a debt the worker owes, forcing them to pay off an inflated debt beyond what is humanly possibly to pay.
Involuntary Domestic Servitude - a person is forced to work in the same location with little or no pay.
- Traffickers recruit victims through fraudulent advertisements that promise legitimate jobs as housekeepers, cleaners or other forms of domestic labor.
Sex Trafficking - when a person is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution or maintained in prostitution through coercion, fraud, or deceit.
- Commercial sex trade can include street prostitution, massage parlors, escort services, strip clubs, and brothels.
- Commercial sexual exploitation of children - as many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global sex trade. A child under 18 is a minor and is automatically considered a victim of sex trafficking in any of the above scenarios.
Child Soldiers - The unlawful recruitment or abduction and use of children as combatants, porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, spies or for sexual exploitation by armed forces.
Local Impact
- An estimated 14,500-17,500 number of people are trafficked into the United States each year - 50% are children (US Dept. of HHS).
- An estimated 300,000 children are at risk of being trafficked in the U.S. alone (US Dept. of Justice).
- Additionally, almost 4% of the world's slave population are in the Americas (Global Slavery Index).
- Slavery is actually at a historical high. Slaves are now considered cheaper, more disposable, and sadly, more profitable than in any time in human history.
- Runaways, orphans, children in foster care, minorities and "impoverished people" are considered at the highest risk for victimization.
- A child will be approached by traffickers within 48 hours of running away.
- Average age of a trafficked victim is 13-14 years old.
- Some members in the foster care community actually feed into and profit from this heinous activity.
What Can We Do?
We can combat this criminal activity in the following manner:
- Awareness - create awareness through the use of conversation, social and print media, pictures and any other form of communication.
- Education - educate through schools and communities - children are at a particularly high risk of victimization.
- Safety Skills - teach safe words victims can use if in an abusive relationship or trafficking situation. Also, self defense education, including recognizing warning signs, is incredibly important
- Community Development - combat locally through community education, job creation, vocational skills training, micro-financing, and through the creation of family well-being initiatives.
- Involvement - Align yourself with one of the following Anti-Human Trafficking Organizations, or better yet, create one yourself!
- Anti-Slavery International
- Polaris Project
- International Justice Mission
- Free the Slaves
- A21
- End It
- Global Alliance Against Trafficking
- Not for Sale
- Stop the Traffik
Conclusion
We must ALL participate in combating this heinous crime. Theresa Jones mentioned that "We must teach our children the importance of treating all humans as a deserving population, not a disposable one. We need to teach our children how to respect each other and themselves." Additionally, she requested that we keep victims of human trafficking, those that are at most at risk for victimization, and those individuals and organizations currently working to combat this criminal activity in our prayers.
