It’s Time We Do Something…
by Courtney Smith
Did you ever wonder if you could really make a difference in somebody’s life or even change somebody’s life? Well, you can. Keep reading…and don’t stop.
*As many as 27 million people are victims of human trafficking
*No country is immune from human trafficking. Each year, an estimated 600,000-800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders (some international and non-governmental organizations place the number far higher), and the trade is growing. This figure is in addition to a far larger yet indeterminate number of people trafficked within countries. Victims are forced into prostitution, or to work in quarries and sweatshops, on farms, as domestics, as child soldiers, and in many forms of involuntary servitude.
*80 percent of the victims trafficked across international borders are female and 70 percent of those females are trafficked for sexual exploitation
* The International Organization for Migration estimates that each year 500,000 women are sold (trafficked) to local prostitution markets in Europe.
* Sex trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years.
* Traffickers use psychological as well as physical coercion and bondage, and it defines coercion to include: threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
* Victims of sex trafficking can be women or men, girls or boys, but the majority are women and girls. There are a number of common patterns for luring victims into situations of sex trafficking, including:
- A promise of a good job in another country
- A false marriage proposal turned into a bondage situation
- Being sold into the sex trade by parents, husbands, boyfriends
- Being kidnapped by traffickers
* Sex traffickers frequently subject their victims to debt-bondage, an illegal practice in which the traffickers tell their victims that they owe money (often relating to the victims’ living expenses and transport into the country) and that they must pledge their personal services to repay the debt.
* Sex traffickers use a variety of methods to “condition” their victims including starvation, confinement, beatings, physical abuse, rape, gang rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims’ families, forced drug use and the threat of shaming their victims by revealing their activities to their family and their families’ friends.
*information taken from www.theHOMEfoundation.net
Wow. Did you read these facts? This is heartbreaking. But you know what else is heartbreaking? How people don’t help these victims. We can and should help these victims. These victims are people. It may seem like this kind of stuff don’t happen around you, or like it’s too “bad to be true”. Maybe it don’t even feel real to you. This kind of stuff can happen anywhere, to anyone, and it is real. We need to take a stand against this. You know we can. Nothing is impossible. Even if all you can give is prayers, well, prayers are the most powerful thing you can do. We can and NEED to do something about human trafficking…we need to STOP it. One of the ways to learn more about human trafficking and how you can help the victims, you can go to www.theHOMEfoundation.net
“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” – Philippians 4:13
