Is It Not An Emergency?

This post is regarding modern slavery and children.  It is one of the most difficult aspects of human trafficking for me that children are involved.  The reprehensible fact that they are bought and sold with no regard to their inherent humanity is appalling.  They are treated as mere property with no respect for their innocence, their potential, or their right to become what they will.  This problem is massive.  It is impossible to pin down exact numbers due to the illicit and nebulous nature of human trafficking, but of the estimated 30 million people in slavery in the world today, around 13 million are children. There are currently more children in slavery than there has been at any other point in history.

This post is specifically about the troubling facts regarding children exploited in the commercial sex industry.

Here are just a few disturbing facts on children being exploited by the commercial sex industry from Rescue Her.     ( http://www.rescueher.org/get-the-facts)

* Commercial sexual exploitation of children occurs when individuals buy, trade, or sell sexual acts with a child. It is estimated that there are currently nearly 2.5 million children worldwide exploited in the commercial sex industry.

*The US Department of Justice has reported that the average age of entry into pornography and prostitution in the United States is 12.

* An estimated 14,500-17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the US each year.  The trafficking of citizens within the country is much larger with about 100,000 US children trafficked and exploited in the commercial sex industry yearly.

The scope and scale of this industry is difficult to fathom and it is personally overwhelming to me.  Fed by greed it brings in BILLIONS of dollars every year.  Consider this shocking quote:

“It’s all about the money. Human trafficking is insanely profitable. If you really think about it, you can sell a kilo of Heroin once; you can sell a 13-year-old girl 20 times a night, 365 days a year.” And you should feel a little outraged about this. You should feel upset about this. And that’s great – but it’s not good enough.” ~ Tony Talbott

Whenever I think about what these children go through I am filled with dismay.  There are no easy answers that would quickly solve this issue. Abolishing the abuse of child in the commercial sex industry will require a strong multifaceted approach as there is no single silver bullet that can take down the evil perpetrating it.  It will take a large movement of passionate people to fight for justice for these children.  What will it take to awaken the majority of people and motivate them to move on this issue?  I recently came across this quote from Francis Chan addressing just that:

      "My wife and I recently decided to give all of the royalties from my previous book, Crazy Love, to a fund called the Isaiah 58 Fund. All of the money goes to the needy in the world—the starving, sick, impoverished, and to those in the sex slave trade.... I was a bit shocked and discouraged by some of the responses we received.
      People told us that we were being foolish and irresponsible with the gifts that God gave us. They said we should have at least put some away in case of an emergency.  My response back was,
“Is it not an emergency that children in Cambodia and Thailand and even the U.S. are being raped every single day of their lives?  Why is that not an emergency?” I think the church often inadvertently teaches that this is not an emergency. And this, I believe is sin. Is an emergency only an emergency if it affects me and my immediate family?"

When will this become an emergency to us?  How close do we have to come to it before it is an emergency?  When it is a child that lives in our area?  When it is a child that our kids go to school with?  When it is a child in our neighborhood?  When it is a child in our own family?...

 How close does it have to get before it becomes so real in our minds that we can no longer close our eyes and pretend it doesn't exist?
 How close until we feel a so compelled to do something that we are unable to go on living our daily lives as though the children being brutalized don't exist?
 How close does it have to get until we are impassioned enough to shake off the shackles of apathy and we go no holds barred to end this scourge?

The time for action is now.  The enslaved children cannot wait for someday to happen.  They need us to respond to their emergency today.

With an issue so dark, and so massive it is easy to become overwhelmed by it.  If we allow ourselves to think of the millions currently exploited, it can be a paralyzing thought.  It seems hopeless.  But we must not let our inability to save everyone at once stop us from doing what we can to start.  A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and ending the blight of children exploited in the commercial sex trade has to begin where we are at.  Here are some "first steps" to take:

1.  Become aware, and then spread awareness.  Bring this shadowy evil into the light.

2.  Know the signs to watch for so that you can recognize a victim if you see them.  Here is a link to list of signs

http://www.rescueher.org/indicators-of-trafficking

3.  Partner with existing organizations working towards rescuing children in slavery and protecting children who are at risk for trafficking.  Here is a link to Destiny Rescue's 26 second challenge, one of the many organizations out there fighting for justice.  

http://www.destinyrescue.org/us/get-involved/programs/26-second-challenge/

Once you begin, don't let it end with first steps. There will always be more to learn and more awareness to spread.  Remember when you are taking the time to decide what you will do with what you have learned that you have the freedom to choose your course of action, the victims of slavery are given no such liberty.  Then steel yourself for the long haul for abolishing the modern slave trade is a colossal mountain to conquer.

"The victims of injustice in our world do not need our spasms of passion;

 they need our long obedience in the same direction - 

our legs and lungs of endurance; and we need sturdy stores of joy."

- Gary Haugen, IJM

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Awareness is the First Step

The month of January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and today, January 11, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.  I wanted to write a quick blog post with some basic facts on trafficking for today, and then explore each point more in depth over the rest of the month.

What is Human Trafficking?  Human Trafficking is the trade in humans, modern slavery.  The purposes are most commonly for sexual slavery and exploitation, forced labor, or extraction of organs and tissues.  The people oppressed by the slave trade are completely controlled by another person. The control is maintained by using violence or threatening violence, the enslaved person is exploited and is unable to walk away from the situation.

Where does this happen?  Slavery is not legal anywhere, but it happens everywhere.  It is most rampant in India and Africa. This is not a problem restricted to third world countries.   It DOES happens here in the United States.  The US Justice Department estimates that 17,500 people are trafficking into the United States every year.  That number could be much higher due to the large number of undocumented immigrants.  As well as people being trafficking into the country, the issue of Americans being exploited in the domestic sex trade is massive.  According to Shared Hope International (sharedhope.org) at least 100,000 American children alone are being exploited through pornography or prostitution every year.

How big of a problem is this?  There are more people currently in slavery in the world than there were throughout the entire run of the Transatlantic slave trade.  Estimages range from 27-29 million people worldwide living in slavery.  There are an estimated 2 million children currently being exploited in the global sex trade.

The trafficking industry generates $32 billion a year.  It is all about money.  Wherever the demand exists there are people who take advantage and gain the supply to fill that demand and feed their own greed.  Consider this shocking quote from Tony Talbott...

“It’s all about the money. Human trafficking is insanely profitable. If you really think about it, you can sell a kilo of Heroin once; you can sell a 13-year-old girl 20 times a night, 365 days a year.” And you should feel a little outraged about this. You should feel upset about this. And that’s great – but it’s not good enough.” ~ Tony Talbott

Awareness is just the first step.  Awareness by itself does not solve the problem, but it is essential to propel people to action.

So what can YOU do about it?

1.  Make yourself aware of the facts about human slavery including how to recognize it. This link to the Polaris Projects page on recognizing the signs of trafficking is a great start.
      http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/recognizing-the-signs

2.  Spread that knowledge, among your family, your friends, you community.  Use social networking tools like Twitter or Facebook for spreading awareness.

3.  Use the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) tip line to report your suspicions if you see signs of human trafficking  1-888-373-7888.  You can also fill out this online form  http://www.polarisproject.org/what-we-do/national-human-trafficking-hotline/report-a-tip

4.  Join up with other people in your area interested in putting an end to this injustice.  You can sign up with IJM Freedom Commons to find other people in your area and ideas of what you can do to join in the fight.  http://freedomcommons.ijm.org/

5.  Partner with existing organizations that are working to end modern slavery.  Here are just three you can look into:
International Justice Mission  http://www.ijm.org/
Polaris Project  http://www.polarisproject.org/
Shared Hope International  http://sharedhope.org/

For the Triumph of Evil...

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"  Edmund Burke

I recently watched "Schindler's List" for the first time.  I had to remind myself while watching it, that it is not just a movie, the events depicted, and thousands more like them, actually occurred.  I watched it play out on the screen and wondered, how could something so atrocious have been allowed to happen?  How could people be so profoundly immoral that they inflict such horror onto other people.  Beyond wondering about the evil people, I wonder how could moral people stand to the side and allow such heinous acts to take place and then escalate.  It was profoundly difficult to watch the portrayal of these events.  However, even in the darkness of such brutality, there are beacons of light working to displace it.  In the event of the holocaust, not all people stepped aside and let it happen; some made a stand.  This movie depicts how the selfless acts of one man changed the tide for thousands.  He made a choice to not turn away, as he could have, but instead held his ground and resisted the evil.  He stood as a bastion of protection for the people in his factory, and instead of continuing its advance, the evil was forced to halt.

The entire movie was brilliantly moving.  A scene near the end spoke to me most intensely.  It was where Oskar starts to see his possessions as people that he could have saved.  "Why did I keep the car, that's ten people".  He lamented that if he had made more money he could have saved more people.  If he had wasted less money on things, he could have saved more people. This man singlehandedly saved the lives of hundreds of people within his sphere of influence. He sacrificed his own comfort and safety to the utmost to help others, and yet, at the end, he wished he go back and do more.

 I watched Liam Neeson's character crumble to the ground in grief over thoughts of what more he could have done, and I wondered if that could be me someday. I wonder if later in my life, as I look back at the choices I have made, the things I have done, the things I neglected to do, will I regret not doing more.  There are people all around the world that are dying preventable deaths.  People are are suffering under the weight of injustices such as slavery, extreme poverty, and violence.  Because of our modern era, they are within my sphere of influence, it IS within my power to do something to relieve their suffering.  Do I really wrestle with the question of where to balance my resources between what I do for myself and my family and what I do for others?  Or do I just accept things as they are given to me and go with the flow of life?  

 I look at past evils like the Holocaust, and I am aghast that it was allowed to happen.  I find the fault not just in the people who committed the crimes, but of the thousands of people who stood by and watched as it happened.  The modern slave trade is just one of the evils of our time.  We have the choice now to turn our eyes and allow it to happen, or take up arms and join in the battle against this evil.  Someday, down the road, when my Grandchildren are learning about the modern day slave trade as I have learned about the holocaust and other past evils, I don't want them to think that I stood by and watched and let it be.  I want them to know I stood against injustice.  Not just that I did not commit injustice, but that I fought it in every sphere of my influence.

"The victims of injustice in our world do not need our spasms of passion, they need our long obedience in the same direction."--Gary Haugen