Human Trafficking Report Issued, and For Good Reason!

Today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued the ninth annual Department of State Trafficking Persons Report. The document is over 300 pages of action initiatives and narratives from 175 countries worldwide. This document gives the reader a true sense of what people experience who are thrown into human trafficking. Full of personal and heart breaking experiences, the report is over 300 pages long!

The sex trade is a multi billion dollar industry, full of coercion, torture, rape and violence against women and children. President Bill Clinton issued the first US government policy concerning human trafficking in 1998. In the late 1990's to 2002 The Penguin Atlas was able to better understand the documented flows of sex trafficking through research and survivors stories. At that time, main originating countries of sex trafficking included China, Indonesia, Brazil, Peru, Algeria, Niger, and Ethiopia. From the 2009 Report, a personal story from a Nigerian woman named Anita who was trafficked through Ghana into Italy was almost unrealistic. She was carted between Milan, Rome, and Turin and raped nearly 25 times a day. Anita survived to tell her story but few do. The horror stories that come from around the world seem to be distant to those of us who live in the US, in actuality, it is just hidden. The clues of human trafficking can be found all around the US.

In fact, the US and Canada were considered main destinations and transit countries in 2002. An estimated 50,000 women are trafficked into the US every year, yet go undetected. It is important to understand that these women are being held against their will. They are often coerced and tricked into slavery, believing they are entering some sort of workforce. Or in some cases, tricked and sold by their own friends and family. They are constantly beaten, threatened, raped, and scared for their lives. According to UNICEF, as many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade. While sex trafficking is definitely one of the larger forms there is also involuntary domestic servitude, child labor, bonded labor, and child soldiers.

Child soldiers is a relatively untouched and uneducated issue for youth of America. That is until 3 Southern Californian filmmakers created a documentary and then the non profit organization Invisible Children. The film brought light to the war in Northern Uganda, and how children are kidnapped turned into child soldiers and used as weapons. Since 2003, Invisible Children has worked to bring light about this war and these children to mainstream America and to help in the change and process toward peace in Africa.