You might have thought the slavery was age-old and no longer happening particularly in Western countries. Yet, as reported by the International Labour Organisation, in 2016, there was an estimated 40.3 million people enslaved; modern slavery does exist, unfortunately. Out of the 40.3 million people in slavery, 24.9 million are in slave labour equating to 81% and 15.4 million in forced marriages. In sex slavery, approximately 4.8 million people are enslaved in this awful practice according to the International Labour Organisation for 2016 and 75% of the 40.3 million victims are women and girls. One of the worst aspects of human trafficking is child trafficking with one in four in slavery today being children equating to 25%. The International Labour Organisation considers that human trafficking and slave labour is worth a $150 billion industry globally.
Polaris reported that traffickers are prevalent in the United States and engage in violence, threats and other coercion tactics to force people into slavery. You might not think that a Western country like the United States has this occurring but is a very real thing for millions of people facing a life of slave labour or sex slavery and human trafficking unless they are rescued. That is why foundations like Evie Grace Foundation exist: to emancipate people from human trafficking, specifically child trafficking. If it isn’t harsh enough thinking of men and women in slavery, it is worse to think of young children treated brutally and suffering from child trafficking. This is a common occurrence in Africa and children are beaten and abused as slave labour and girls are forced into child marriage and sex slavery.
On July 29th, 2019, Cara Kelly reported for USA Today that ‘there are more than 4 million victims of sex trafficking globally’ (Kelly, 2019, np). Almost 100% of the sex slavery victims are women and young girls and according to Cara Kelly, the top three nations for sex human trafficking are the United States, Mexico and the Philippines. It was reported that in 2018, Polaris received 5,147 cases of human trafficking reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline and of these, 3,718 was sex trafficking. Cara Kelly for USA Today reported that in the United States, one in seven runaway children in 2018 have probably fallen victim to human trafficking for sex slavery.
A sad state of affairs is that human trafficking still persists to be a global issue in the modern world and unfortunately, victims of human trafficking including for sex slavery are prosecuted for crimes which they were forced to commit. The overall physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing of victims of human trafficking is profound and life-long; freeing people from this abomination is a highly-important issue to tackle today. Children are forced into slave labour and sex slavery and child trafficking is rampant. Evie Grace Foundation partners with reputable organisations in Kenya to save boys and girls from child trafficking and this is important work to be done even in modern times. It’s time to put an end to human trafficking including child trafficking globally.
References
- International Labour Organisation (2017). Forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking. https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang–en/index.htm. Accessed 31/07/2019.
- Polaris (2016). The Facts. https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/facts. Accessed 31/07/2019.
- Cara Kelly. (2019). 13 sex trafficking statistics that explain the enormity of the global sex trade. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/07/29/12-trafficking-statistics-enormity-global-sex-trade/1755192001/. Accessed 31/072019.
Written by: Andrea Manno
