Human Trafficking ... aka Slavery

Trafficked people are usually society’s most vulnerable, powerless minorities, often the poorest people with limited opportunities, often ethnic minorities, often displaced people like runaways or refugees.

Although women, men, girls and boys can become victims of trafficking, 80% are women and 50% children. Women are at high risk from sex trafficking because of gender-based discrimination, lack of education or employment opportunities, and the poverty that results. Traffickers lure them with false promises of jobs and education.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the impoverished Eastern bloc countries have been identified as the major trafficking source for women and children. Two-thirds of the women trafficked for prostitution worldwide annually come from this region. [2]

Children are often kidnapped or orphaned, and sometimes they are actually sold by parents living in extreme poverty. In West Africa, trafficked children have often lost one or both parents to AIDS. Thousands of children from Asia, Africa, and South America are sold into the global sex trade every year. The adoption process results in cases of trafficking of babies and pregnant women between the developed and developing world.

“Victims of human trafficking pay a horrible price. Physical and psychological harm, including disease and stunted growth, often has permanent effects, ostracizing trafficking victims from their families and communities. Trafficking victims often miss critical opportunities for social, moral, and spiritual development. In many cases the exploitation of trafficking victims is progressive: a child trafficked into one form of labor may be further abused in another. ...

Victims forced into sex slavery are often subdued with drugs and suffer extreme violence. Victims trafficked for sexual exploitation suffer physical and emotional damage from premature sexual activity, forced substance abuse, and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. Some victims suffer permanent damage to their reproductive organs. Moreover, the victim is typically trafficked to a location where he or she cannot speak or understand the language, compounding the psychological damage from isolation and domination.” [3]

Trafficking violates human rights, the right to life, liberty, and protection, and for children, the right to a healthy environment in which to grow. It results in loss of family, community, cultural knowledge and values.

According to The Future Group [4], human trafficking threatens:

• Border integrity, as millions of people are transported annually across national boundaries under false pretences;
• Human health, through the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STDs to the victims, their clients, their clients’ wives, and so on;
• National and international security, since many of the world’s major sex traffickers are connected to organized crime groups, which may use the proceeds to fund other criminal activities such as terrorism;
• The very health of our global human conscience, since slavery is actually alive and well, right in our own backyards.

“Our research shows that there are at least 27 million people in slavery around the world today. And that's real slavery -- people held against their will, under violence or threat of violence, and paid nothing.” [5]

“People trafficking has reached epidemic proportions over the past decade, with a global annual market of about $42.5 billion.” [6]

Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, on a path to overtake drugs and arms trafficking, with the total annual revenue for trafficking in persons estimated to be between $5 billion and $9 billion. [7]

The main countries of origin are in Central and South-Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Asia, followed by West Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The most common countries of destination are in Western Europe, Asia and North America. [8]

In a 2006 report, the Future Group, a Canadian humanitarian organization dedicated to combatting human trafficking and the child sex trade, ranked eight industrialized nations and gave Canada an F for its abysmal record treating victims. The report concluded that Canada "is an international embarrassment" when it comes to combating this form of slavery. [9]