- Today over 27 million people worldwide are living as slaves. This is more than double the number of slaves deported in the 400-year transatlantic slave trade to the Americas. [ref.]
- Sex trafficking is by far the most commonly identified form of human trafficking. Making up 79% of victims. [ref.]
- Each year more than 2 million of the world’s innocent children are exploited through sex trafficking. [ref.]
These children are lured from their communities and treated as objects to be sold and abused.
- At this moment over 300,000 helpless children have been ripped from their homes in regions such as Africa and Asia and are being forced into armed conflict as child soldiers. [ref.]
- 18% of human trafficking victims are forced laborers. [ref.]
- Most trafficking is national or regional, carried out by people whose nationality is the same as that of their victims. [ref.]
- Many individuals forced into slave labor are producing products we use on a daily basis, such as chocolate and coffee. [ref.] [ref.]
This fact can initially seem overwhelming. But the fact is that all of these products are available in “fair trade” form. This allows us to not encourage forced labor through our demand for a product.
- Slavery is happening right now in our own communities. Each year the U.S. reports a high occurrence of slavery in the form of forced labor and sexual exploitation within its borders.[ref.]
This is not just a problem that is happening in other parts of the world. We cannot ignore it in the world or in our communities. - Current U.S. Anti-Human Trafficking Law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (“TVPA”) defines “Severe forms of trafficking in persons” involves (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 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. [ref.]