In case you didn't know, today (January 11) is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. And what does all that mean? It means today we are trying to make people more aware of the slavery going on in the world.
You may think I'm nuts. You're probably thinking that slavery was ended a while ago; that was what the 13th amendment was for, right? Well, it may surprise you that there are actually more slaves in the world today than there were back before the 13th amendment was established. In fact, there are approximately 27 million victims of human trafficking in the world. That's 27 million slaves, and over a million of them are being sexually exploited. Only 1-2 percent of victims are ever saved and even worse, only 1 in every 100,000 Europeans involved in trafficking are ever convicted. In Asia, 20-25 percent of women freed from the industry are retrafficked, and in Eastern Europe, 80% of survivors are retrafficked.
The A21 Campaign has their updated 21 Ways to Help and I strongly encourage you to look into it. You can commit to one of those actions here at the BECAUSE survey. Read through all the options and choose one you feel led to commit to. And after you've done that, you could even try a few others!
This subject is not discussed very often, and people really have no idea how serious this problem is! Human trafficking is the 3rd largest industry in the world. It generates over 31 billion dollars every year. We need to educate the public and be voices for those who can't speak out.
Now I'm gonna list a bunch of resources. I'll try not overwhelm you, but look at what you can!
Thank you for sharing this and posting all those resources! I was actually thinking about making a post on human trafficking. I agree, it is not talked about enough, even though it happens everywhere in the world and people worldwide are involved. It's really saddening. Another really good and informative website is http://onechild.ca/ (it focuses more on children and the sex trade)
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