What is human trafficking?Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Examples of recent cases of human trafficking in the U.S. include adolescent Mexican girls trafficked to the U.S. for prostitution, Indian men trafficked for forced labor, and African women and children trafficked for domestic servitude, among others.
The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as follows:
Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age, OR
The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
What is the extent of the problem?The U.S. government estimates that approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year; about 14,500-17,500 of them into the United States. Based on estimates by the U.S. government of the numbers of all trafficking victims and comparing those figures with widely cited figures of foreign-born children in the sex trade in the United States, we estimate conservatively about 1/3 of foreign-born trafficking victims are children.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
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To learn more about this crime and what to do to help exterminate it log onto:
http://www.usccb.org/mrs/traffickingweb.shtml
www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/fact_sex.html
www.polarisproject.org
www.notforsalecampaign.org
www.cargoinnocencelost.com
Friday, January 25, 2008
HUMAN TRAFFICKING: THE TRADING OF PEOPLE AS COMMODITIES
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2 comments:
Thank you very much for this information. I am going to present this and share your information at our SOSM community meeting tomorrow.
Fr. Vidal, Javier and I were invited through DePaul to a screening of a movie regarding Human Trafficking. My perspective on my community and community at large not only sharpened but became more alert. Alert with images from the past, in travels especially and alert with images from now, today!... in simple moments of shopping in a store, looking at a magazine, a car driving by.
The movie we saw was Trade. I have attached the link to the trailer. The numbers of people trafficked stated in this movie are much higher than what the USCCB presents but again everyone is working with very raw estimates because nobody really knows. Here is the link: http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/2360940/
Correction the estimated numbers of Human Trafficked victims are not gathered by the USCCB but by the US Government.
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