TRAFFICKING FAQs

IT'S REAL     IT'S TRUE     IT'S REALITY

It’s real -There are adults who force children to have sex.

It’s true - There are people who trick children, abduct children, and then sell children for profit. They become Human Merchandise.

It’s reality - Children are held against their will, beaten and raped into submission then daily forced to have sex with people willing to pay to use their bodies.

Our goal is to raise awareness relating to the crisis of sex trafficking. It is a world wide problem with global consequences. There are many organizations fighting this battle including Thin Blue Line Ministries International and Phoenix Operation. One of the most comprehensive sources of information is the Trafficking in Persons Report. Covering 170 countries, the eighth annual Trafficking in Persons Report is the most comprehensive to date. The report brings to account each nation’s efforts to discover the perpetrators, prosecute the criminals, protect the victims, and ultimately abolish the egregious crime of human trafficking.

1.  Sex Trafficking Defined

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines “severe forms of trafficking” as:

a. sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or

b. 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

2.  How Many Victims Globally

According to the U.S. Government, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Eighty percent of them are female. Some one-half of them are minors. And these figures don't include the millions more who are trafficked for the purposes of labor and sexual exploitation within the national borders of their own countries.

In virtually every country around the world, including the United States, men, women and children are held in servitude. They're exploited for commercial sex, and coerced to work in factories and in sweatshops. In some countries, children are forcibly recruited as soldiers. These are forms of human trafficking, but more aptly put, these are forms of modern-day slavery. Estimates of the number of victims worldwide vary widely.

Exact numbers of trafficked children are hard to pinpoint since child trafficking is mostly hidden, and victims often fearful of coming forward. One estimate is that 50 percent of trafficking victims are children.

Children are smuggled across international borders or trafficked within their home countries, usually from rural to urban settings. They are sold like commodities and suffer brutal assaults on their dignity and safety.

Children who are poor, who have minimal education, lack vocational skills or have few prospects for job opportunities are most at risk for trafficking.

http://www.unicef.org/protection/files/ipuglobaltrafficking.pdf

There are a number of common patterns for sex trafficking around the world. In many places, particularly developing nations, women are lured into trafficking by the promise of a good job in another country. Having no better options in her home country, the woman decides to move away, unaware of the torture that lies ahead. Arrangements are made for her departure and she is appointed an escort. Upon arrival at her destination the woman is taken directly to her employer. At this point she has absolutely no control over the conditions of her employment. After discovering the true nature of her employment it is too late and escape is impossible and dangerous if attempted.  Besides being lured with promises of a good job, there are other situations in which women can fall into sex trafficking. Sometimes women receive false marriage proposals from men who plan to sell them into bondage. There are also instances when young girls are sold into the sex trade by their parents who are trying to earn some money. And, of course, many times the women are simply kidnapped.

* Sex trafficking is 90% women and girls.
* Over 50,000 women are trafficked into the United States every year.
* 2 million children are forced into prostitution every year.
www.webster.edu/~woolflm/trafficking.html

3.  How Much Money is Raised Annually

Child trafficking is driven by demand within the sex industry, for exploitable labor and for brides or concubines. As a result, human trafficking has become the third biggest criminal business worldwide, after trafficking of drugs and weapons, generating approximately $7 to $10 billion annually for traffickers.
http://www.unicef.org.uk/unicefuk/policies/policy_detail.asp?policy=30

Sex tourism is an estimated $1 billion per year business worldwide. The exposure of trafficked people to abuse, deprivation and disease, including HIV, is unconscionable.

Trafficking in persons is often linked to organized crime, and the profits from trafficking enterprises help fuel other illegal activities. The growth of vast transnational criminal networks supported in part by trafficking in persons fosters official corruption and threatens the rule of law.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030225.html

4.  How Many Victims in Central America, Honduras

In Honduras alone, between 8,000 and 10,000 girls and boys are the victims of sexual exploitation, according to a still unpublished Casa Alianza study conducted last year in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. These girls, boys and teenagers are offered up as "merchandise" in brothels, photographed nude for Internet websites, or forced to perform in live sex shows. Most are poor, and all are utterly denied their right to a safe and happy childhood.
http://gvnet.com/childprostitution/Honduras.htm

Honduras is a country of origin, destination, and transit for trafficking in women and children. Young girls are trafficked to other Central American countries, such as Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala; to cities in southern Mexico, such as Tapachula; and to the United States. Honduran boys are reportedly trafficked to Canada in drug trafficking operations. 

Women and children from El Salvador and Nicaragua are trafficked to Honduras, and Nicaraguans are trafficked through Honduras to other countries.  Honduran children are also trafficked internally.  Traffickers move children from rural to urban areas and from the interior points of the country toward cities on the northern coast, such as San Pedro Sula, Puerto Cortes, Tela, and La Ceiba.

5.  A Believers Response

The last people that should get caught off guard by injustice in the world should be bible believing Christians.  Scripture tells us the kind of world God sends his disciples into.
They cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes; they sold girls for wine that they might drink (joel 3:3)

The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice. (Ezekiel 22:29)

The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy. (Psalm 37:14)


6.  References/Resources

The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation was compiled from media, non-governmental organization and government reports. It is an initial effort to collect facts, statistics and known cases on global sexual exploitation. Information is organized into four categories: Trafficking, Prostitution, Pornography, and Organized and Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation and Violence.
www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/factbook.htm

Factors contributing to sex trafficking
http://www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/modern_bondage_oct07.pdf

Human Rights Reports Honduras
http://www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/honduras.doc

An undercover journey deep into the world of sex trafficking, following one man determined to rescue his wife -- kidnapped and sold into the global sex trade.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/slaves/


See Ashley Judd, Julia ormand, and others as they discuss this issue.
http://traffickingproject.blogspot.com/2008/07/music-slavery.html
http://callandresponse.com/

Excellent website –largest network of foreign policy blogs
http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com/
http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com/category/child-trafficking/
 

Nicaragua is a principle “supplier” of trafficked children to destinations throughout Central America as documents are falsified with relative ease. Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico are all meeting points where deceived children are sent to later be transported elsewhere – usually north to the US and Canada.