Human trafficking around the world is reaching horrific proportions.
With an estimated 12 million people worldwide living in slavery, human
trafficking is the third most profitable criminal activity after drugs
and arms trafficking. 80% of trafficking victims are women, and an
estimated 2 million children are bought and sold each year. 80% of
trafficking involves sexual exploitation of vulnerable women, usually
under the age of 18. With $4 billion attributed to the brothel industry
worldwide, sex trafficking is big business, with very few people ever
arrested or convicted of trafficking. Under-reported and
under-prosecuted, these girls and women are the silent victims of
poverty and war. Many were living in horrific conditions and some were as young as
five, depending on older children for their survival. Today, human trafficking is approximately a $31.6 billion global
industry, making it the third most lucrative criminal activity in the
world after illegal drugs and black-market guns. It's about time we opened our eyes to this grim reality. We are very far from an ideal world, and no one should ever
be immune from justice.
In the U.S., as many as 40,000 kids are trafficked within their own borders each year.
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Hundreds of human trafficking victims are estimated to pass through
Finland annually. But for many victims, Finland is the final
destination. However in Finland, a large number of suspected human trafficking victims are men who are used for labour. Finland is used as a transit point to other EU countries.
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France is a destination country for women trafficked for
the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude,
primarily from Eastern and Central Europe and Africa. The government estimates that there are 10,000 to 12,000
trafficking victims in France, 3,000-8,000 of whom are children forced
into prostitution and labor.
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Over 5,000 women and children have been trafficked from the Philippines,
Russia and Eastern Europe and are forced into prostitution in bars
servicing the U.S. Military in South Korea.
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British police estimate that up to 4,000 human trafficking victims,
mostly women, are being exploited in the UK at any given time.
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Trudie Styler (UNICEF UK) :
One of my most vivid memories is visiting a woman called Angelina,
who was dedicating her life to helping the young girls who had been set
to work on the streets as prostitutes. I went to meet many of the young
girls myself, the oldest of whom was no more than 17. Nervous at first,
each began their own personal account of what had happened to them --
and they had all thought they were coming to the city to earn money as
domestic servants or waitresses, that they would be able to send an
income back to their families in rural Ecuador, and that this was their
chance of a lifetime. A trusted male family member or friend had in each
case persuaded the families to hand over their children for the promise
of a better life. Their freedom taken, these girls had entered a life
of abuse far from home, kept to all intents and purposes as slaves.
"It wasn't too bad... as long as I brought in my quota every night."
"I mean, if I made $2,000 for my pimp he was happy."
If I didn't make that much... that's when he would start beating me."
Sharon was all alone, a 19-year-old runaway taking a trip to nowhere on a New York City subway when he approached. "You're pretty," he told her. "And I bet you're hungry. Let me buy you some food and some clean clothes." As the child of two drug-addicted parents... a child who was sent to
live with her grandmother, only to be raped by her grandmother's
boyfriend... a young woman who had spent way too many of her 19 years on
the streets... this was the best offer she had heard in her brief,
tragic life. "Then he took me to his apartment and beat me," she said.
Sharon's pimp enslaved her and forced her to sell her body in cities all across the United States.
"We would work the streets for about a week at a time in each city,
until he thought he made as much as he could," Sharon said. "Then we
moved on. One girl tried to escape. He beat her and we never saw her
again."
Where is the outrage that our children are being bought and sold? Why
isn't rescuing the thousands and thousands of children being enslaved a priority?
