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Human Trafficking: It Happens Here, It's Happening Now

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Human Trafficking, it happens here, it’s happening now. Imagine a young girl whose family is struggling and unable to provide her with a good education and a woman arrives and offers this young girl a job and a chance to attend school. Since this opportunity is unlikely to be offered at another time, the girl accepts the offer. When this young girl arrives in this supposed “opportunity of a lifetime” it is a living nightmare. The story you’ve just pictured is true in the case of 12 year old Maria from Vera Cruz, Mexico. When woman named Sandra Bearden from Laredo, Texas wanted a maid, someone to do the house work and help with her four year old son. She drove across the border to the small town where Maria and her family lived. Sandra …show more content…

Victims of involuntary servitude are often migrants and low-skilled workers who are trafficked from under developed communities to more developed places. These victims are often physically and verbally abused, and are held captive (or identify themselves as being held captive). Child Soldiers are abducted children forced to be exploited for their labor or to be used as sex slaves in conflict areas. The people that pull off these unlawful acts may be government forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Majority of child soldiers are between the ages of fifteen to eighteen, some are as young as seven or eight years old. Many of these children are used as combats. Others are forced to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. The young girls are often forced to marry or have sex with male combats and are at high risk of pregnancy. Since the girls are force to have sex with combats, both are at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Some of the children are forced to rape and murder their own families. UNICEF estimates that more than 300,000 children under 18 are being exploited in more than thirty armed conflicts around the world. Every year, more than 1.2 million children are exploited in the global Commercial Sex Trade. Children are treated as sexual objects and as commercial objects. Commercial sexual exploitation of children is a form of coercion

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