FAQs for Human Trafficking Victims, But No Answers

Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, and it’s got me thinking and reading about the issue more than usual.  I found an excellent site with FAQs about Human Trafficking, and it’s worth checking out.  However, I had another thought regarding the FAQs of a trafficking victim.  I don’t know because I’m not a victim of human trafficking, but I strongly suspect that the frequently asked questions of slavery victims are quite different than the questions from most of us seeking information about this topic.  My intent is not to be disrespectful to victims in my ignorance, or even overly dramatic. But I do hope to provoke thought.  Naturally, I don’t attempt to offer answers at this point.

These are my guesses, and please click here to add your own guesses at victim FAQs:

• Will I be beaten (by the men who rape me) tonight?
• Will my children ever be able to go to school?
• How come God never seems to hear me?
• If I try to escape, will they kill my family?
• How can I get enough johns to avoid getting beaten by <insert pimp’s name>?
• Am I going to get AIDS from this guy?

As I mentioned above, here is a link for the site that prompted my post

• Polaris Project Human Trafficking FAQs

Please leave a comment with your reactions or your own guesses at victim FAQs.

Human Trafficking Awareness Day (Don’t Tell the Victims)

Today, January 11th, 2012, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the U.S. Many organizations are sponsoring events to mark the day, hosting speakers, prayer vigils, fundraisers, etc. There is even an international group of remarkable women climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro as part of The Freedom Climb.  I was thinking last night about how I might want to observe Human Trafficking Awareness Day so that I could be aware throughout the day that slavery still exists not only around the world, but in Silicon Valley where I live.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to attend one of the public events in my area, so I’m going to have to participate online, and in my own private way.  I plan to make a couple of posts here in the blog, partly to keep the issue in front of me, and also to spread awareness to readers.  I’m currently reading A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner, so I’ll spend some time reading and thinking about the issue tonight before bed.  I’m also going to be talking with one of my kids tonight, and the topic will come up, if only briefly.

But it occurred to me as I was considering options for helping raise awareness of human trafficking, that there’s one group of people that don’t need to be made aware of the problem — the victims.  A man in India who works in a brick factory because of bonded debt slavery, and can’t protect his wife or send his children to school, doesn’t need to be told that slavery exists.  A girl kidnapped from Mexico and smuggled to San Diego to be commercially raped multiple times a night until she is either rescued, or becomes too old, sick, and unattractive to be profitable to her pimp, doesn’t need to be reminded about human trafficking.

So don’t bother to tell the victims of modern slavery that today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, because they don’t need to know.  They are aware every moment of every day that they don’t have the freedom to go where they want and live as they choose.  Someone more powerful than them is exploiting them for profit, and it’s going to take someone else more powerful — you and me — to not only rescue them, but to help them with the rehabilitation that will be required to give them new hope.

Please click here (or on the speech bubbled next to the title of the post) to leave a comment with your choices and observations about National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day – What will you do?

January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the U.S. by act of the Congress.  President Obama has declared January to be Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention month.

What are you going to do to build awareness for you and others?  Click on the speech bubble symbol above this post (or here) to leave a comment and share your plan for observing National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Here are some ideas on how to observe it:

Attend a public event or prayer vigil – http://www.ipjc.org/events/humantraffickingawarenessday.html

Get one of these books on human trafficking to educate yourself

Get one of these movies on human trafficking, or watch one on Netflix

Donate to an organization that fights human trafficking, such as the Not for Sale Campaign, Polaris Project or one of the organizations listed on the left bar of this page

Volunteer with an organization that assists victims of human trafficking such as GEMS-Girls or one of the organizations listed on the left bar of this page

Buy a product that is Fair Trade Certified or Made by Survivors

Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with The Freedom Climb.  (If you can’t make it to Tanzania by Wednesday, perhaps just sponsor a climber or one of their causes. )

Please click on the speech bubble icon above this post (or here) to leave a comment with your thoughts, ideas, plans for National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Buy a human being for the price of cab fare to JFK

I’m reading A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner.  Skinner visited Haiti to investigate human trafficking.  He wrote that one could ”successfully bargain a human being down to the price of cab fare to JFK.”  The seller was offering to find him a 13 year old girl, maybe younger, to take back to the US for housecleaning work, and even as a sex partner. 

On one hand, I would prefer not to know that kids are able to be bought, and so cheaply.  But this is stuff I’m choosing to find out.  Why? As I’m learning more about human trafficking, I’m realizing that my consumer choices have an impact on slavery in places like Haiti.  My chocolate, my clothing, my coffee, my smart phone, my computer, the cleaning service, and more.  When I spend based on price and brand alone, without regard to the labor and raw material purchasing policies of the companies that produce my stuff, I give those companies an incentive to use slave labor to keep their prices low.  At the very least, those companies don’t have an incentive to carefully monitor the sources of labor and raw materials for their products. Reading a book like Skinner’s helps me be a more responsible consumer and a more compassionate person.

Skinner’s book and others related to human trafficking are listed on the Non-fiction books page.

My Sister Project – Made by Survivors

Made by Survivors has a way for you to team up with trafficking survivors from around the world by sharing your compassionate heart, your creativity, your time, and even your shopping! The My Sister Project was designed to connect women and girls around the world and help make it a better and safer world.  Share a survivor sister’s story, tell your own sister story, buy a survivor’s products, write a blog, or simply join the Made by Survivors family and learn more about the abolitionist movement.  Click here to learn more.

Why Men Shouldn’t Buy Women and Girls for Sex

Swanee Hunt at Demand Abolition has written a compelling essay making the case against purchasing women and girls for sexual gratification.  Demand Abolition highlights the demand side of human trafficking.  They take the view that focusing on victim rescue & rehabilitation, and trafficker prosecution, will never solve the problem of slavery and commercial rape.  Without addressing the buyers of commercial sex (the demand side of the business transaction), the fight against sex slavery is a losing battle.  Hunt breaks the argument into 14 main points, carefully explaining every point, and summarizes each with a provocative statement, including:

• “Purchasing sex is an assault on the other’s dignity“
• “Buying sex is inhumane“
• “Most modern day prostitution is modern day slavery“

Demand Abolition has a lot of good information about why there needs to be more emphasis on addressing demand in order to effectively fight human trafficking.  Customers of commercial sex (the johns) need to be educated and/or prosecuted in order to curb the winked-at practice of buying people’s bodies for sex.  The article is provocative, and you may not agree with everything you read there, but it’s worth looking at if you’re serious about ending sex trafficking.

I had already been pretty convinced that non-trafficked prostitution, whether legal or illegal, encouraged human trafficking because the market for commercial sex created an economic incentive to supply the sex workers as cheaply as possible.  But now, having read the article at Demand Abolition, I feel as if I can articulate the reasons better, and I have more reasons to consider that I didn’t really think of before.

Slavery Map – Is there Human Trafficking in Your Town?

The Slavery Map shows where documented incidents of human trafficking have occurred: in your town, and around the world.  The Not For Sale Campaign created this map so that you can see where trafficking cases have been confirmed.  I learned about The Slavery Map from the excellent book, Not For Sale by David Batstone. (get more info in my list of non-fiction books)  The goal of the book and the campaign is to equip individuals to become abolitionists who…

• Are aware of human trafficking in their community
• Recognize signs of human trafficking
• Report current situations of suspected bondage to the US Human Trafficking Hotline 1-888-3737-888
• Report documented incidents of human trafficking to The Slavery Map

Chocolate Christmas: Fair Trade and Equal Exchange

At our extended family Christmas gathering, we exchanged a lot of chocolate that was fair trade and/or equal exchange. And delicious! My nephew put Organic Dark Chocolate and Caramel Crunch in my stocking. I loved it. Someone else got Divine Dark Chocolate (which can also be ordered on Amazon by the way) amid many oohs and aahs. And I was delighted to find Green & Black’s Dark Chocolate at my local Walgreen’s Drug Store to give to my brother.  If you enjoy gourmet chocolate, and especially if you like to buy organic and Fair Trade Certified products, I hope you’ll get a chance to try any of these, because our family loved them!

I have 56 slaves working for me!

I found a website called My Slavery Footprint which gathers some basic information about my household, and does an estimated calculation of how many slaves are involved in supporting my lifestyle.  In other words, based on the size of my house and family, the things we use and buy, electronics, clothing, cars, etc, it comes up with a rough estimate of my slavery requirements.

Unfortunately, my estimated number is

56

slaves that are working to support the way I live.   Ouch.  The good news is that it helps bring home the fact that my choices and consumption are directly impacting modern slavery.  The coffee I buy, the chocolate I buy, the clothing I buy, etc.  I have some decisions to make and actions to take.

As a start, I’ve downloaded the “Fair Trade Finder” app for my phone from Fair Trade USA, which will help me find Fair Trade Certified products, and allow me to inform others nearby when I find Fair Trade Products.  Fair Trade products support environmental and labor policies where the raw materials for our consumer goods are grown, raised, and mined.

An additional first step is that I’ve committed to only buy fair trade certified coffee beans, will attempt to find fair trade sources of coffee to drink when I’m out, and will ask for fair trade coffee when ordering coffee at shops and restaurants.

-Carl

Chocolate and Slavery

I love chocolate.  I hate slavery.  But I love chocolate.  I’m struggling with the knowledge that many of the biggest companies that sell chocolate in the US are not doing a very good job of making sure their West African cocoa suppliers don’t use slave labor.  When I buy chocolate from Nestle, Mars, Hershey, and Kraft, there’s a good chance that my enjoyment of cheap chocolate is contributing to the enslavement of workers in Cote d’Ivoire.   Here are a few web sites I found disturbing and informative.  I’m going to start actively looking for fair trade chocolate and chocolate from companies that are transparent about the labor practices of their suppliers.

Chocolate and Child Slavery  http://joannacastlemiller.com/resources/chocolate/

The Cocoa Campaign http://www.ilrf.org/stop-child-labor/cocoa-campaign

A Scorecard for Buying Chocolate http://www.greenamerica.org/programs/fairtrade/whatyoucando/2010Scorecard.cfm

Stop Chocolate Slavery http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/index.html

Slave Free Chocolate http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/   (and info about US and International efforts to stop chocolate slavery)

There’s a movie I haven’t had a chance to see, but I’ve heard a lot about.  The Dark Side of Chocolate