The Human Trafficking Truth
By Alex May
Human sex trafficking is a very large international problem; there is not one country in this world that is not affected by it. Did you know that there are 30 million women and young women that are being taken in as sex slaves in the world today? Can you imagine being forced, coerced and manipulated into this non ethical practice, or as some call it an industry. These young women are promised legal jobs, they are lied to. Who they had previously believed were to be their employers begin threatening them and forcing them into modern day slavery. A scary fact about modern day slavery is that a large portion of these victims are young children who have been picked up after running away from home or just don’t have a home. Here is a story from the FBI website that gives a specific example of how this can happen, “Four Central American women agreed to pay $5,000—half up front—to be smuggled
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into the U.S. They were taken across the border into Texas, but the gang then demanded more money. When they didn't pay, the women were forced into lives of total servitude. By day, they worked as unpaid domestic servants. At night, they became the gang's sex slaves. All the while, their families were extorted for more money” (“Enforcing Civil Rights”).
On the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime website is where I found the story of Memey, a 28 year old from Indonesia. She herself had been a victim of human trafficking. Luckily she was rescued after four months, but not before she contracted HIV. It has made a big impact on her life, yet she is still yearning to help others. She started the group SmilePlus. It is a support group for people with HIV, it allows them to share their experiences as well as get more information about the disease. This quote from Memey really intrigued me, "From my experience, women who become victims of human trafficking usually do not understand what human trafficking is, or that they are being trafficked" (“Put yourself in my shoes”). This worries me. This worries me because, women around the world are not aware of these potential risks when taking a new job, especially abroad as Memey did.
It may seem that Memey is one of the few unfortunate cases when in reality this is a much more prevalent problem than most believe. It is the quickest growing criminal industry in the world, second only to the drug industry. “According to the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. More than 70 percent are female and half are children.” (11 Facts About Human Trafficking”). Although those numbers represent all human trafficking, not just sex trafficking; eighty percent of that is sexual exploitation. Not to mention the extremely large amount of children that are involved. Often children are picked up from places like schools, youth centers, theme parks, and neighborhoods. There is no question that this is not okay and that something must be done to stop it for the obvious reasons; one of them being the 32 billion dollars that this industry produces a year. This money is recycled back into the drug trade and other criminal acts. Everybody should know and care about human trafficking, this industry creates so much money for other illegal activities; so many negative things come from it for all of society. Our President Barack Obama said it best, “It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts out markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name-modern slavery” (“Slavery”).
On the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime website is where I found the story of Memey, a 28 year old from Indonesia. She herself had been a victim of human trafficking. Luckily she was rescued after four months, but not before she contracted HIV. It has made a big impact on her life, yet she is still yearning to help others. She started the group SmilePlus. It is a support group for people with HIV, it allows them to share their experiences as well as get more information about the disease. This quote from Memey really intrigued me, "From my experience, women who become victims of human trafficking usually do not understand what human trafficking is, or that they are being trafficked" (“Put yourself in my shoes”). This worries me. This worries me because, women around the world are not aware of these potential risks when taking a new job, especially abroad as Memey did.
It may seem that Memey is one of the few unfortunate cases when in reality this is a much more prevalent problem than most believe. It is the quickest growing criminal industry in the world, second only to the drug industry. “According to the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. More than 70 percent are female and half are children.” (11 Facts About Human Trafficking”). Although those numbers represent all human trafficking, not just sex trafficking; eighty percent of that is sexual exploitation. Not to mention the extremely large amount of children that are involved. Often children are picked up from places like schools, youth centers, theme parks, and neighborhoods. There is no question that this is not okay and that something must be done to stop it for the obvious reasons; one of them being the 32 billion dollars that this industry produces a year. This money is recycled back into the drug trade and other criminal acts. Everybody should know and care about human trafficking, this industry creates so much money for other illegal activities; so many negative things come from it for all of society. Our President Barack Obama said it best, “It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts out markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name-modern slavery” (“Slavery”).
Some positive things have happened recently in Congress. It has been called the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. It has passed the Senate as well as the House of Representatives and has now been sent for President Obama to sign. This amendment to the Violence against Women Act will do a number of things. It enhances judicial and law enforcement tools to combat violence against women, improves services for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking, provides services, protections and justice for young victims of violence. That is a step in the right direction, but we can’t stop there.
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According to Nancy Rivard the president of Airline Ambassadors, there are currently no U.S. Airlines that mention human trafficking in their employee training (Mohn, Tanya). The multitude of traffickers that use airports and airplanes to relocate their modern day slaves creates a very great opportunity for us to intercept and rescue these people from their life of horror. I think this could easily be done if we encourage our airlines to incorporate just basic human trafficking training into their training schedules. This would just be yet another small step towards a much better human trafficking prevention system in the United States.
“A flight attendant noticed something odd: a young American girl, who said she had never flown before, traveling by herself in first class from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The girl said the seat was a gift from a man she “met” online. The attendant checked the records, and learned that someone with an unusual e-mail address bought the ticket, but she did not know what to do. A few days later, the attendant contacted Ms. Rivard, who is also a flight attendant. She recounted the attendant saying, “‘I can’t sleep at night because I am so worried about the girl.’ She went to the airline for help, but no one knew what to do” (Mohn, Tanya). Situations like these are far too common. If we do nothing to fight or inform people about this issue that is already one of the quickest growing criminal industries, it will only continue to get worse very quickly. We need people to start noticing, and not only noticing but acting on what they see. If something like this is spotted by a flight attendant or any other employee something it should be reported to the hotline immediately. A lot of the time our instincts will tell us when something is wrong. It is our responsibility to listen to what our instincts are telling us.
“A flight attendant noticed something odd: a young American girl, who said she had never flown before, traveling by herself in first class from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The girl said the seat was a gift from a man she “met” online. The attendant checked the records, and learned that someone with an unusual e-mail address bought the ticket, but she did not know what to do. A few days later, the attendant contacted Ms. Rivard, who is also a flight attendant. She recounted the attendant saying, “‘I can’t sleep at night because I am so worried about the girl.’ She went to the airline for help, but no one knew what to do” (Mohn, Tanya). Situations like these are far too common. If we do nothing to fight or inform people about this issue that is already one of the quickest growing criminal industries, it will only continue to get worse very quickly. We need people to start noticing, and not only noticing but acting on what they see. If something like this is spotted by a flight attendant or any other employee something it should be reported to the hotline immediately. A lot of the time our instincts will tell us when something is wrong. It is our responsibility to listen to what our instincts are telling us.
If a flight attendant or any airline employee notices that something does not seem right, they should know exactly what to do. It should be a part of every employees training. Even something as simple as knowing who to call, that is better than not knowing what to do at all. So many youth and women could be saved if the airlines took just a small amount of their training time to inform their employees about what is going on. If airline employees are not aware of the surprisingly large amount of women and children that are trafficked through the airlines, they are much less likely to notice them. Nothing but improvement could come from more awareness for airline employees.
Airlines need to step up and incorporate at least minimum training on how to deal with a human trafficking situation. The minimum training would be making sure that the employees know who to contact if they do notice something that does not seem right, as well as making it clear how important that it is for the report to be done immediately. Of course I encourage the airlines to do more. They could train their employees the basics of how to spot a victim of human trafficking. Here is an example of some basic training that would not take more than ten or fifteen minutes to go over, it also has the hotline to call with any tips. http://wwwff.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/blue-campaign/ht-blue-campaign-coffee-break-training.pdf (“Human Trafficking Awareness Training”). This would cost the airlines a very small amount. |
It would cost them an extra half an hour of training per employee. The number of people that this potentially could help, by far outweighs the small cost of training to the airline companies.
I am going to start with Delta, one of the biggest worldwide carriers. Delta has more than 80,000 employees, which is a big opportunity. An opportunity for 80,000 people to be on the lookout for human trafficking victims amongst the more than 160 million people that fly with Delta each year (“Stats and Facts”). The first step is writing to them. Address: 730 Delta Blvd. Atlanta, GA. 30320 I challenge and encourage everybody to write into Delta, or any airline of their choosing. The more mail that they receive the more attention they must give this subject. Another method is through telephone. The telephone number to the Delta Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta Georgia is 404-715-2600. Call that number and ask to be transferred to Human Resources. There you can voice our opinion about their need to incorporate human trafficking information into their training sessions. Tell them what you now know about human trafficking and how appreciated and important this is not only to you, but all of society. We can make our stand on this issue known. We can be the change that is needed to begin the unraveling of this industry. Take twenty minutes out of your day to write a letter, or phone Human Resources. Your twenty minutes could mean a lifetime of freedom to somebody else.
I believe that if we do not take this opportunity to encourage our airlines to make this change to their training that we will soon live in a world with far more than 30 million modern day slaves. If we do not take this opportunity, we may not see the consequence, but millions of other will.
I am going to start with Delta, one of the biggest worldwide carriers. Delta has more than 80,000 employees, which is a big opportunity. An opportunity for 80,000 people to be on the lookout for human trafficking victims amongst the more than 160 million people that fly with Delta each year (“Stats and Facts”). The first step is writing to them. Address: 730 Delta Blvd. Atlanta, GA. 30320 I challenge and encourage everybody to write into Delta, or any airline of their choosing. The more mail that they receive the more attention they must give this subject. Another method is through telephone. The telephone number to the Delta Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta Georgia is 404-715-2600. Call that number and ask to be transferred to Human Resources. There you can voice our opinion about their need to incorporate human trafficking information into their training sessions. Tell them what you now know about human trafficking and how appreciated and important this is not only to you, but all of society. We can make our stand on this issue known. We can be the change that is needed to begin the unraveling of this industry. Take twenty minutes out of your day to write a letter, or phone Human Resources. Your twenty minutes could mean a lifetime of freedom to somebody else.
I believe that if we do not take this opportunity to encourage our airlines to make this change to their training that we will soon live in a world with far more than 30 million modern day slaves. If we do not take this opportunity, we may not see the consequence, but millions of other will.