The Urgent Need to Become Aware of Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking is the action of illegally transporting people from one country to another through the means of force, fraud, deception. Human trafficking is one of the many illegal activities where man controls other people. This type of trafficking usually forms into sex trafficking as well as forced labor and organ trafficking and can even include forced marriage. A lot of victims are found in legitimate and illegitimate labor industries according to the Blue Campaign victims end up getting lured from their homes with false promises of a well paying job and they end up in sweatshops, massage parlors, restaurants. Human trafficking is the third largest criminal industry in the world next to drug dealing and arms trafficking. According to the International Labor Organization Human trafficking is estimated to be a $150 billion dollar industry as of 2014 and it is estimated that there are 40.3 million victims of human trafficking.

One of the biggest problems with combating human trafficking is the rapid growth of the advancement of technology, especially social media. It has become easier for traffickers to connect with underage victims through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. They look for victims who have psychological or emotional vulnerability and form an instant relationship. Traffickers have immediate access to their victims not only to they see what they look like but a whole plethora of things such as interests, whether they are happy or not, where they live and even who they spend their time with. Traffickers are instantly drawn to children who post about their problems saying things such as “my life sucks, I want to get out of here”. Which then gives traffickers the key to learn everything they need to know about the victim in order to then start manipulating them and they pretend to understand what the child is going through and they say things to give them this false sense of hope that someone understands them by saying things like “ I think you’re beautiful, I can protect you. After they build that trust with them the trafficker will then start to convince the victim into meeting them and even sending them a risky photo and the trafficker easily uses that and beings trafficking the victim online.

It is so simple for traffickers to make fake profiles to communicate with these young children and one way to prevent this from happening is to have parents be more aware of what their child is doing online monitoring who they are talking to. It is difficult to watch what children are doing at all times especially if you work a lot and don’t really have the time to sit down and look at what they are doing. But there are so many ways to make sure your child is safe online such as NetGear Parental Control Router which is a device that helps parents limit daily internet time and also creates filters so the child can’t see anything potentially harmful online. If parents don’t become more aware of what their children are doing online their child can easily become a victim of this heinous crime.

The efforts that are being made to try to end human trafficking like the famous actor Ashton Kutcher who is taking a stand against human trafficking. He made a very emotional speech to Senator Cardin about human trafficking saying “ I’m here today to defend the right to pursue happiness...but that right is stripped away for so many its raped, it's abused, it’s taken by force and coercion. It is sold for monetary happiness of another”. Kutcher developed software called Spotlight that can be used by law enforcement to prioritize their cases. With this software, they were able to identify more than 6,000 victims of trafficking and 2,000 of them were minors. He also goes into how he’s seen the most gruesome video of a seven-year-old girl who was being sexually abused and the video was going around on the Dark Web.

Another issue with human trafficking is that many Americans think that human trafficking doesn’t happen here in the U.S that it only happens in foreign countries. But that is not the case human trafficking is happening in the United States it’s very much alive. According to a graph from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, 14,500- 17,500 number of people are trafficked into the United States each year. 50% of people being trafficked are children. This crime is happening right here in our backyards. Nicole Fisher who is the founder and president of Health and Human rights Strategies wrote an article called Human Trafficking is in Plain sight and she says that we as Americans see, touch and support every day without even knowing it, the general public does not have a real awareness of the gratitude of this problem Trafficking does not take a break it’s happening 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The efforts that are being made to try to end human trafficking like the famous actor Ashton Kutcher who is taking a stand against human trafficking. He made a very emotional speech to Senator Cardin about human trafficking saying “ I’m here today to defend the right to pursue happiness...but that right is stripped away for so many its raped, it's abused, it’s taken by force and coercion. It is sold for monetary happiness of another”. Kutcher developed software called Spotlight that can be used by law enforcement to prioritize their cases. With this software, they were able to identify more than 6,000 victims of trafficking and 2,000 of them were minors.

He also goes into how he’s seen the most gruesome video of a seven-year-old girl who was being sexually abused and the video was going around on the Dark Web. Another issue with human trafficking is that many Americans think that human trafficking doesn’t happen here in the U.S that it only happens in foreign countries. But that is not the case human trafficking is happening in the United States it’s very much alive. According to a graph from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, 14,500- 17,500 number of people are trafficked into the United States each year. 50% of people being trafficked are children.This crime is happening right here in our backyards.

Nicole Fisher who is the founder and president of Health and Human rights Strategies wrote an article called Human Trafficking is in Plain sight and she says that we as Americans see, touch and support every day without even knowing it, the general public does not have a real awareness of the gratitude of this problem Trafficking does not take a break it’s happening 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Even though slavery was abolished in 1865, Human trafficking is now being called Modern Day Slavery because of the fact that people are being forced against their will to go into another country not knowing what lies ahead of them. Researchers and the government need to urgently address this issue at hand.

Human trafficking is very much alive and it needs to end, millions of people are being forced against their will into involuntary sex and forced labor. This is a crime against humanity more and more people will continue to suffer if this doesn’t come to an end. Parents need to be more aware of what and who their children are talking to. There are so many signs and red flags that we have to look out for like if the victim is not free to leave or to go at their own will, they are unpaid or underpaid,very anxious and fearful. If we as a society continue to turn a blind eye to this very big issue the number will only go up from there.