Human Trafficking Is The Illegal Movement Of People

Every year 10 days before Saint Patrick’s Day the campus of Missouri University of Science and Technology demonstrates a strange tradition known as snake pits. Snake pits typically consist of freshmen fraternity members whacking snakes with huge decorated sticks known as shillelaghs a certain amount of times. The number of times they whack the snake is correlated to how many years it has been since 1908 which is the year snake pits started. Each time they whack the snake they count up screaming “nth best ever Saint Pats”. After they hit their current year they have to answer a question and if they get the question correct they get to keep the head of the snake and if they get the question wrong they have to restart. Though it might seem weird, snake pits are taken very seriously on the Missouri University of Science and Technology campus and it serves a purpose.

When trying to define human trafficking it gets hard because is it slavery or is it some kind of other servitude? The United Nations defined trafficking as it “Involves the movement of people through violence, deception or coercion for the purpose of forced labor, servitude or slavery-like practices.”# This means that the traffickers use violence to coerce the victims to do anything they want. Including controlling all aspects of their lives from where they go, who they talk to, and essentially controlling their freedoms. This new breed of Human Trafficker is “global sophistication, complexity and control of how women and children are trafficked from/to/in all parts of the globe.”#

According to Dictionary.com, human trafficking is a criminal activity in which people are recruited, harboured, transported, bought, or kidnapped to serve an exploitative purpose, such as sexual slavery, forced labor, or child soldiery. There is close to 4.5 billion dollars are profit in the industry and some estimate that there is over 5 million trapped in the trafficking circuit right now. One of the main problems with the fight against human trafficking are the questions of is our government doing enough to stop human trafficking, how easy it is to not get caught, and that everyone believes that all victims are put into the sex Slave industry.

Human Trafficking is defined as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion” (U.S. Department of

Recently I learned about human trafficking and it is where organized criminals smuggle immigrants in and out of different countries for, sex, drugs, forced labor, and people even volunteer themselves to gain legal documentation. Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry and criminals profit from the exploitation of others. The facts are vulnerable people are trafficked in the commercial sex trade and labor industry every day in America. In 2014, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline received multiple reports of human trafficking cases in each of the 50 states and D.C. Stopthetraffik.org say “Our economies are affected by increasing unemployment and the number of working poor.”

Human trafficking is the modernized version of slavery that involves force, fraud, and/or a type of labor in a sexual act. The United States government defines it to be “In which a sex act is forced in which the person induced has not yet been attained eighteen years of age” (National Institute of Justice). Human trafficking is a threat to all nations and promotes breakdown of families and can support organized crime. Trafficking can occur everywhere. Human trafficking and human smuggling are related to one another, but different crimes. The difference between smuggling and trafficking is that smuggling is the illegal movement of someone across a border while trafficking is the illegal exploitation of a person.

What exactly is human trafficking? We have all heard of it, but what actually is it. It’s a modern form of slavery. It involves controlling a person through force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the victim for forced labor, sexual exploitation, or both. It strips victims of their freedom and violates our nation’s promise that every person in the U.S. is guaranteed basic human rights. This is a crime (Beccera). Sadly, the United States is widely regarded as a destination country for human trafficking. According to the federal reports, nearly 14,500 to 17,500 victims are trafficked in the United States annually. That doesn’t even include the number of victims that are trafficked WITHIN the United States. If you are looking for a defined definition of human trafficking, California legislatures states it as being “ALL acts involved in the recruitment, abduction, transport, harboring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons, within national or across international borders, through force, coercion, fraud or deception, to place persons in situations of slavery or slavery like conditions, forced labor or services, such as forced prostitution or sexual services, domestic servitude, bonded sweatshop labor, or other debt bondage.” (Beccera) This is a crime that needs to come to an end.

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Bangladesh is a source, transit, and destination for human trafficking involving women, men, and children (1). Bangladeshi men and women are lured into work under false pretenses within their own country or into neighboring countries (2). A large proportion of cross- border trafficking in Bangladesh is due to migration in search of employment. Most are subjected to forced labor or forced prostitution (3).

Venezuela is a country located at the north of South America, bordering the Caribbean Sea, Brazil and Colombia. Venezuela is a country full of beauties and contrasts where people can find beautiful beaches, plains, mountains, and even the majestic highest waterfall of the world (Angel Falls). During more than four decades, this country lived in full democracy until 1999 when a former military officer, who was involved in a military coup years ago, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias won the presidential elections, and who remained in the government until he died in 2013 from cancer.Hugo Chavez's political discourse based on the Marxist thoughts soon was creating "The Bolivarian Revolution", and since its beginning offered the XXI century socialism, which one was never described specifically to people.

A young African girl, Gracie, was persuaded into having sex with strange men and packaging illegal drugs, all under the watch of child traffickers. Gracie’s family was murdered when she was eleven years old; shortly thereafter, an older man claimed to be a friend of her deceased family. This man brought her to a home where Gracie was forced to engage in sex with men she’d never met; “sometimes it was 3 or 4 men a day” (NSPCC).

Human trafficking, also known as trafficking in persons or modern day slavery, is an affront to the most basic of human freedoms. Human trafficking is a crime that strikes at the very heart of the American promise: freedom. In response to this abhorrent crime, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations have formed strong and growing partnerships aimed at ending this violation of fundamental civil rights and human dignity.

Human Trafficking is a problem within the U.S. and Globally. Human trafficking is the trade of humans, most commonly for sexual slavery, forced labor, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may involve providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the withdrawal of organs or tissues, including for replacement and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim 's rights of movement through coercion and because of their viable corruption. Human trafficking is the trade in people, and does not necessarily involve the undertaking of the person from one place to another.

Human trafficking is a crime. Victims no longer have their rights as human beings. Bill Flores once said, “Imagine having all of your freedoms taken away, being forced to work against your will, and constantly living under the threat of violence - in short, being forced to live as a slave. Sadly, this situation is a reality for millions of children, women, and men each year as part of the global human trafficking

There are many definitions of trafficking in human beings. “The United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime included a Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (hereafter the Trafficking Protocol) in order to create an internationally agreed upon definition

Being of mixed race, African American and white and being raised and exposed to very diverse regions and people, I feel as though I have an advantage when it relates to being culturally competent. I am very proud of and in touch with ethnic background and culture and have established very strong relationships with people from different ethnicities and cultures. I feel very comfortable around them and have grown as a person and an educator by learning more about their cultures, beliefs and specifically their mannerisms and ways of communication. I believe that one can never learn to much when it comes to information and education and therefore, I will be a student, willing and eager to learn for the remainder of my adult life.