Human Trafficking

(Modern Slavery)

There are more than 27 million slaves in the world today Every captive is a person; every survivor has a story. It’s time to show the world that slaves exist among us. Restaurants and fields, construction sites and brothels, suburbs and cities: all are home to victims of trafficking in the United States and abroad. Twenty- seven million slaves in the world, and we want to find them.

(Not For Sale)

Falsehood: “My loan helped these people in an emergency.” Truth: While the initial loan may have brought immediate relief, forced labor puts them in a far more vulnerable position. Because the victims are paid very low wages and are often charged high interest rates, they are never able to repay the lender and may suffer a lifetime for a single loan.

Falsehood: “If it weren’t for me, these people would be homeless.” Truth: The provision of housing, which is often substandard, does not mitigate the injustice of enslaving victims. Moreover, relevant law states that freed laborers are not to be evicted from their homes.

Falsehood: “If you release these people, they’ll be jobless.” Truth: In addition to the rehabilitation to which victims are entitled upon release, they are freed from debt, removed from an abusive labor situation, and allowed to find a better source of income.

Young boys and girls in every city on the globe today are forced to serve as sex slaves. Sex traffickers target year old children as their choice candidates. The johns who pay regular visits to brothels prefer adolescents above any other age group. Looked at from the cold perspective of a slaveholder, adolescents also have a longer shelf life. Any older and they start to lose their youthful appeal. Any younger and they may draw the attention of law enforcement authorities.

Because sex trafficking masks itself as prostitution, the general public does not feel outraged. The children are perceived to be criminals or sexual deviants or at best victims of their environment: desperate for survival, the kids “choose” to sell their bodies for profit.

Recruitment- Traffickers target children most commonly from communities that lack social power, at times with the consent of the victims parents. Extraction- Traffickers remove recruits from their home community and shift them to a destination where they are unlikely to get support from law enforcement bodies or the general citizenry. Control- Slaveholders seek control over every aspect of the child’s life so that escape becomes unthinkable. Violence- Slaveholders exercise violence as a means to reinforce their control and ensure compliance. Exploitation- Slaveholders show slight regard for the physical or emotional health of the child in their pursuit of financial gain.

Thailand, in particular, has been branded internationally as a Disneyland for sexual escapades. A Bangkok-based children’s rights group has tracked the country’s boom in sexual tourism over the past two decades. Its research shows that 2 million foreigners visited the country in 1984, 4 million in 1988, and more than 11 million in 2003

Male clients from Japan, China, Korea, and Taiwan drive the demand for young girls who are virgins. In these Asian cultures, sex with a virgin is thought to bring good luck to a new business venture. Moreover, virgin girls pose less threat of exposure to sexually transmitted disease.

The growing demand for virgins has created a niche market outside the usual channels for commercial sex– the bars, karaoke clubs, and brothels. A growing number of parents market their daughter’s virginity like an independent talent agent, selling her to the highest bidder for a one-time sexual experience once she reaches the age of twelve or thirteen. As a matter of propriety, the daughter will be sent away “to visit relatives” for a couple of weeks. After a fixed period of sexual exploitation, the girl will return to her normal life at school or work at home.

Japanese and Chinese men are known to pay parents years in advance to “sponsor” a young child. The families receive a regular payment to raise a healthy daughter, and when the sponsor is ready, he will come and use her for sex.

SlaveryMap exists to record and display instances of human trafficking across the globe. Whether you find them hidden in your hometown or covered in The New York Times, report the incidents onto this map for people everywhere to see