Human Trafficking

How much do any of you know about human trafficking? The most simplest definition is the trade of human beings. Well did you know that it is second only to drug trafficking and that it is the most profitable and organised crime? I'm sure that the first thing that popped into your head when I said “human trafficking” was sex traficking or something along those lines, but there are actually quite a few different types of human traficking. There is forced labour, where men, women and children of any age are tricked or kidnapped and forced to work for little or no money in sweat shops. They are often there because of a debt that they need to pay off and end up getting trapped in the industry. There is also the rather gruesome trafficking of organs where people are taken and kept alive long enough for their traffickers to extract and sell their organs on the black market where they can make huge amounts of money. But as you probably know, the most profitable, and in my opinion, the most serious form of human trafficking is sex trafficking.

Young girls and women are tricked and/or taken against their will and forced into becoming sex slaves. Others are recruited into it as a way of paying off a debt (these women will often at a later time become traffickers themselves.) Then there are the cases where poverty striken families sell their daughters for approximately $100 or less to traffickers. There have even been cases where these parents have purposefully have a countless number of daughters and when they reach about 7 years old, sell them to traffickers as a means of income.

Sex trafficking is the exploitation of the vulnerable. How many of you think that traffickers are predominantly male? Of course there is no correct answer as there are no true statistics when it comes to trafficking as it is highly organised. You may or may not know this but traffickers are often women, especially women who have been trafficked themselves. It's no real secret that young girls would trust a woman over a man any day, which is why they are such good traffickers. As I said before, it is the exploitation of the vulnerable, which means that if a young women is in desperate need of work or money, they are more likely to be tricked by a female trafficker than a male trafficker because of their trust towards a woman.