Modern Slaves: The Causes Of Modern-Day Slavery

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Modern-Day Slavery
2,880. That’s how many children are taken away from their families each day. That’s 2,880 eighty children who should be playing outside and enjoying childhood. Instead they are torn from everything they know and forced into slavery, sometimes to never come out. Slavery was not fully abolished in 1865. Over 27 million men, women, and children are enslaved at this very moment (“The Cost of Coercion”). That number is close to the population of Florida and Georgia combined who would be enslaved today. What most people today call “modern-day slavery” is the illegal trade of human beings for forced labor and exploitation; referring to using others for sexual exploitation, organ trafficking, and forced labor. This international crime is happening all around us and little to nothing is being done by governments. “Roughly two hundred thousand slaves are working here in America” (Madox). So the land of the free, well, it might not be so free after all. Coming in second after drug trafficking, “human trafficking generates about 35 billion dollars annually” (“The Covering House”). 35 billion is more than Google makes in a year. In order to better understand human trafficking, it is imperative we look at the history. Then, exploit the underlying problems of this crime that are happening today, at this moment. Finally, find solutions to this global epidemic in order to help the hopeless.
It wasn’t until the early nineteenth century when concerns over “white slavery” erupted in America after it became a political issue, which is the fear of “women and girls being kidnapped or tricked into going overseas and once there forced into prostitution” (Koh). Because women and girls were being kidnapped and transported overseas, t...

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...and education to help them get back on their own feet. Because many of them have some type of addiction to a harmful drug, the government should provide medical care and rehabilitation for these women. Not only should they provide for the medical aspect of recovery but the government should supply living spaces for the girls until they get on their feet again. As for the legal part of this problem; US officials should make the sentence of convicted sex traffickers more severe. All of these solutions are just that, solutions, governments need to implement prevention tactics such as an inspection agency. Their job would be to search establishments, free the women, and arrest the criminals. And most importantly raise awareness. By making the public conscious of what goes on in and around their city, they will be more inclined to lend a helping hand in any way they can.

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