Combating Human Trafficking: Responses and Strategies

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Combating Human Trafficking Responses and
Strategies

• Presented by
• LaMarco Cable
• Program Associate for Advocacy and Education

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Human Trafficking What Is It?

• Form of modern-day slavery
• Victims of trafficking are exploited for
  commercial sex or labor purposes
• Traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to
  achieve exploitation
• After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied
  with the illegal arms trade as the second largest
  criminal industry in the world, and it is the
  fastest growing

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Compared to Drugs or Arms Sales

• Is more profitable
• Produce continuous profits
• Involves less risk

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Human Trafficking What Is It?

• Sex Trafficking
• Labor Trafficking

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Who Are Victims of Human Trafficking?

• 500,000 to 2 million people trafficked worldwide
  annually
• 800,000 to 900,000 victims annually are
  trafficked across international borders worldwide
• More than half of victims trafficked into United
  States are children
• Victims can be trafficked into the U.S. from
  anywhere in the world.
• Approximately 27 million people held in slavery
  worldwide
• 9 billion dollar business

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Supply of Victims Is Seemingly Endless

• There is a constant source of victims
• Exploited persons are dispensable commodities
• They are typically recruited
• Promises of a better life can make victims
  vulnerable to traffickers

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Difficult to Stop

• Fueled by economically desperate victims and by
  market demands for cheap labor
• Flourishes when end users can purchase slave
  labor without fear of legal consequences
• Effective intervention/prevention requires
  proactive cooperation between law enforcement and
  communities

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Impact of Human Trafficking on the Society

• Fuels organized crime
• Deprives countries of human capital
• Promotes social breakdown
• Undermines public heal
• Subverts government authority
• Imposes enormous economic cost

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Impact of Human Trafficking on Victims

• Loss of support from family and community
• Loss of proper education
• Obstacles in physical development
• Psychological Traumas

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Facts

• The present rate of trafficking in children is
  already 10 times higher than the trans-Atlantic
  slave trade at its peak
• There is a victim of trafficking in the world
  every sixty seconds
• Human trafficking will surpass drug dealing and
  arms trading
• Every 10 minutes, a woman or child is trafficked
  into the United States
• Nearly every country is involved in the web of
  trafficking activities
• Sexual exploitation is the predominate form of
  trafficking
• 80 of the victims are female

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Where is our voice in the midst of this?
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Reasons we dont speak

• Believe we dont know enough
• Sex-industry is well-funded to get out its
  message
• Sounds like a prude
• Denial
• Not ready for what might happen

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What if we dont speak?

• System will continue to provide the language,
  attitude, belief, and justification for its
  existence and self-perpetuation
• Miss an opportunity to proclaim a message of
  redemption and transformation
• People will suffer in silence, not understanding
  the oppression that has gripped them
• Lives of our most vulnerable will continue to be
  shaped by a culture of exploitation

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Stated Theologically

• We are called to stand in the grace of God,
• believing that it is a missional priority to
  proclaim release to the captives of the system of
  exploitation.

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What can we do?

• Advocate policies
• Support research
• Promote social awareness and educate the public
• Provide services to victims

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Department of State Report

• Tier 1
• Tier 2
• Tier 2 Watch List
• Tier 3
• Special Case

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• Bringing hurt to public expression is an
  important first step in the dismantling criticism
  that permits a new reality, theological and
  social, to emerge.
• Walter Brueggeman
• The Prophetic Imagination

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• The task of prophetic imagination and ministry
  is to bring to public expression those very hopes
  and yearnings that have been denied so long and
  suppressed so deeply that we no longer know they
  are there. Hope is the refusal to accept the
  reading of reality which is the majority opinion
  and one does that only at great political risk.
• Walter Brueggeman
• The Prophetic Imagination