Halt Human Trafficking: A Global Fight for Human Rights

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Are you always aware of your surroundings? Do you ever ponder what life would be like if you were abducted? Slavery is still a harsh global reality for too many victims. What we don’t realize is that slavery is not only a piece of history we read about in textbooks. Rather, a realistic element of our world’s current events. The threat of human trafficking endangers citizens of all countries. Victims of modern day slavery comprise a diverse group of men, women, and children of all ages and social classes. These people are trafficked, like drugs, across several borders into a life of sexual exploitation, harsh labor, and severe mental, and verbal abuse. Awareness is imperative to the prevention of human trafficking. The ability to recognize, prevent, and prosecute offenders will aid in the fight against human trafficking.

Statistical data exhibits the reality the threat of human trafficking imposes on our freedom. According the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the U.S Department of State 1.8 out of every 1000 global citizens are currently enslaved via human trafficking (7), with an estimated 56 % comprised of women (34). It is estimated that a staggering 12.3 million adults and children are currently enslaved in forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution around the world (7). Additionally, the U.S Department’s 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report released that “an estimated 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders” annually, excluding the millions of victims trafficked within their own country (8). In November 2000 the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons tagged the crime with the “first internationally agreed definition in trafficking” (Anker 5...

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...ns Convention Against Transitional Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto. United Nations. New York, 2004.

< http://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20Convention/TOCebook-e.pdf>

United States Department of State. Trafficking in Persons Report, 7th ed. Washington GPO, 2007.

< http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/82902.pdf>

United States Department of State. Trafficking in Persons Report, 10th ed. Washington GPO, 2010.

< http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/142979.pdf>

Zimmerman, Cathy, Mazeda Hossain, Kate Yun, Brenda Roche, Linda Morison, and Charlotte Watts. Stolen Smiles: A Summary Report on the Physical and Psychological Health Consequences of Women and Adolescents Trafficked in Europe. [case summary]. The London School of Hygeine & Tropical Medicine, 2008. Web.

< http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/php/ghd/docs/stolensmiles.pdf>

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