Human Trafficking: Present Day Slavery

Human trafficking is the exploitation of humans to make money. There are more slaves today than ever in history. Most times victims are trafficked by people they know, trust and love like friends and family.

You may be asking yourself, what is the real problem before the solution is stated? Sex trafficking is the selling of children and adults for money with them performing prostitution, pornography and sexual performance in return for drugs, shelter, food, money, or clothes. According to Safe Ventures in 2016, every 3 minutes a minor is sexual abused, 10-15 minors sold as sex slaves a day, 5.4 million reports of child exploitation in the US alone. According to the ILO it estimates human trafficking generates $150.2 billion in illegal profits every single year. What most people fail to notice is that sex trafficking is business that is strictly just profit which makes it that much more dangerous of an issue because there is no supply to buy. Traffickers use several tactics to lure their victims with using fear, intimidation, violence, and threats to make their slaves follow their commands. Sex trafficking is pure evil and we need to do something about so it does not happen to those who are possible victims.

Globally, about 20 to 30 million people are involved in the human trafficking system, and of those, 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked in the United States every year. Human trafficking is more prevalent today then ever before. It is the third largest crime internationally. People are abused and taken advantage of. According to the article, “11 Facts About Human Trafficking,” on average, a person is forced into the system around age 9, and the majority of victims are women and girls, with a small percentage of men and boys. In addition, the human trafficking system is a $32 billion dollar industry. Human trafficking can be defined as the selling and trade of human beings, ranging anywhere from children to adults, for the purpose of

I mainly just picked sex trafficking in the United States because this is a ‘Dear America” presentation. I do acknowledge that this is happening every where in the world and that this is a universal crises, I just wanted to focus on the U.S since a lot of people are not aware that this is still happening here, just like over seas. Since 2016, there has been human trafficking has rose to 35.7 percent according to UPI.com. There was a total of more than 26,000 calls on the trafficking hotline. According to UPI, the National Human Trafficking Hotline stated "Left unchecked, human trafficking will continue to flourish in environments where traffickers can reap substantial monetary gains with relatively low risk of getting caught or losing

The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 20.9 million victims of human trafficking globally. 68% of them are trapped in forced labor, 26% of them are children, and 55% are women and girls. Human trafficking, better known as trafficking in persons or modern-day slavery, is a crime that involves the exploitation of a person for the purpose of forced sex or labor. Anyone can be a victim regardless of race, color, national origin, disability, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, education level, or citizenship status. Traffickers commonly prey on individuals who are poor, vulnerable, living in an unsafe environment, or are in search of a better life. These victims are misled by false

Human trafficking has become one of many issues within the borders of the United States as well as other countries. It seems that quite a few people have come to terms with trafficking and other forms of prostitution to be socially acceptable within and outside the realms of their own country. Even though a lot of these individuals see the injustice when it comes to sex trafficking, there are policies and values that tend to take precedence over the morality of the issue. With over hundreds of thousands of men, women, and even young children being purchased and sold into slavery and hard labor without a care in the world for them. It becomes quite clear after seeing this that this topic needs to seriously be addressed and closely examined.

First, we need to make more people aware of the seriousness of human trafficking. Many people know about it, but don't realize how much it actually happens. I learned about human trafficking in eighth grade. The videos I watched still affect me today.

Human trafficking can take many forms, as well as many victims. One form of trafficking is slavery. Slavery is having a worker who is unpaid and who works by force using coercion, fraud or threat of bodily harm. “According to the United Nations, there are between 27 and 30 million modern-day slaves in the world (Jesionka, “Human Trafficking: The Myths and the Realities”).” “By 1860, the nation’s black population had jumped from 400,000 to 4.4 million, of which 3.9 million were slaves.(Henry Louis Gates).” That means there are nearly ten times more slaves today than there were in the late 1800’s.

As addressed there are numerous problems with human/sex trafficking. The impact of trafficking on people and their communities are too important to overlook. Even though there aren’t certain ways of completely stopping it all together, there are ways to solve or shrink human trafficking. In the past there have been policies established to try and hinder human trafficking. Various acts of legislation have been passed to aid victims, prosecute criminals and stop associating with businesses known for using enslaved workers. One of the largest legislation acts passed was the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (Current Federal Laws Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 2015). The TVPA was originally created in the year 2000 and was used to

imagine that you're ripped away off the street, never to see your family again, no more freedom, no more anything. You're kept under control by your new "owner" by the use of threats and violence and often under the need for drugs. This is something that many women across the world go through every year. they are mostly distributed within the sex trade. The leaders of all nations that are capable of ending this horrendous crime should do so by creating a task force to rescue victims, classes about the signs of human trafficking could be given in schools worldwide, and more work could be put into ending this. We could also come together as a community at help donate to organizations that help end this.

On August 11th, 2015 Amnesty International, Humans Right Watch, and the World Health Organization all voted in support of decriminalizing prostitution to help internationally defend human rights (Purtill). In recent years, prostitution is no longer seen as a victimless crime. While there are some laws offering little protection for child sex trafficking victims, currently in the United States there is virtually no protection for adult victims. Sadly, at one point almost all of these adult victims were once child victims and have just never been able to escape the horrors of sex trafficking. The United States is currently doing too little to prevent sex trafficking and by the time they do help a victim it is too late for them to be helped.

Human trafficking is a global epidemic that affect millions of victims that has being trafficked for prostitution and some forms of child labor across international borders. This human illicit trade and inhuman crime produces around $32 billion in profits each year. "A five-year-old chained to a rug loom in India, a domestic servant enslaved and beaten in the Middle East and sex slave trafficked within the United States are among the 21 million men, women and children held in some form of bonded labor, slavery or forced prostitution around the world today." This shows that, human trafficking still exist in today 's world and it 's hard to stop it because of the lack of political will across the world. Therefore, legalizing prostitution and other forms of child labor in America does not going to solve the global crisis affecting millions men and women; the best alternative solution for this will be an international presidential committee to create a campaign to destroy this inhumane crime and illicit trade across the world.

First of all, human trafficking should be ended because it abuses the victims. When I think of human trafficking, the two words that pop in my head are pimps and prostitution. Pimps are men who use manipulation, threats, and violence to keep women from leaving. In the beginning, a pimp will look for a woman who is emotionally fragile, unprotected, and looking for love. The pimp then proceeds to act like he cares for the woman.

“Are you serious? Girls are not just objects, they are human beings just like everyone else.” That disgusts me, are the thoughts I was having when I saw that Thailand has a total of around three million sex workers in their country, and the number is increasing. Prostitution is legal but human trafficking is not. How can we make prostitution legal and then not expect is to lead to more human trafficking around the world.

Slavery is a modern, pervasive problem. Human trafficking has been found in every state in America (humantrafficking.org). It seems that most Americans likely live within a comfortable drive of someone who is being exploited through human trafficking. There is a growing trend in human trafficking toward sexual exploitation (Bennetts, 2011). The Information Age has helped to create new opportunities for sex trafficking to flourish.