Be aware.

Human Trafficking. What is it? Why does it occur? How does it occur? What can you do to stop it? Well, read on dear reader of this blog as you’re about to find out the answer to those questions!

Human trafficking is the physical movement of people across and within borders through deceptive means, force or coercion.  The people who commit human trafficking offences are motivated by the continuing exploitation of their victims once they reach their destination country.

Sadly, every day in our world people are being exported and imported into countries against their free will. Persuaded by threats and exploitation or being forcibly taken from their country, these individuals are smuggled into another. The children who are unaccompanied, migrants and economically disadvantaged are the ones who are most at risk.

Once over the border and in the new country they may be pushed into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery, servitude or removal of organs.  By being informed about what is going on in regards to the exploitation of people and how it can occur we can put an end to this cruel treatment.
Please click the link below for 20 ways to fight human trafficking!

http://www.state.gov/j/tip/id/help/

Recipe for disaster

An estimated 80% of all trafficked persons are used and abused as sexual slaves.This human rights violation is driven by demand for sexual services and the profit that is generated. The commodification of human beings as sexual objects, poverty, gender inequality and subordinate positions of women and girls provide fertile ground for human trafficking.
–Michelle Bachelet, UN Women Director & Former President of Chile

According to the 2000 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, ratified by 154 countries, three major ingredients create the act of human trafficking.

These include the following

Act: Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons;

Means: Threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim;

Purpose: Prostitution of others, sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, or slavery.

The outcome of this? Victims who are a shadow who they used to be.

As seen by this picture, human trafficking has devastating effects on an individual. The meal that this recipe creates is one that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those who it effects. The victims lives will never be the same after being consumed by this trade.

 

 

 

What would you do?

An estimated 60,000 people are trafficked each year.
What would you do if you were one of them? It’s hard to imagine isn’t it? Something so dreadful that only seems to happen in countries that are oceans away.
What if you were stolen? Taken away from everything and everyone they love.

Would you run? Would you fight? Or would you do what they say while fighting silent tears that run down your face? Would you scream? Would you shout? But what if no one hears you, so many others disappear with out a trace.

You’re expected to go to work and then exploited in ways that no human should endure. Your dignity and self respect are ripped to shreds from the torture and pain they have put you though. Your basic human rights such as right to equality, right to life, liberty and security of person taken away from you. Your freedoms stripped away from you such as freedom of speech and freedom from slavery or servitude. Rape, violence, shouted abuse, these are some of the tools they use against you to make you feel small and weak. They are trying to take and break your human spirit.

It’s so easy to think it can’t happen to you. But really, what’s protecting you from becoming one of the 60 000?

Click here to report human trafficking

A list of cruel reasons.

While reading this blog, you’re aware of what human trafficking is and the forms it can occur in. Have many of you stopped to wonder why this 10 billion dollar a year industry is still thriving and who it effects most? Well, that 10 billion dollar figure is a good place to start. People are greedy and sadly enough they are willing to exploit and hurt innocent people to get their income.

Other reasons include
-Poverty
-Uneven Development
-Corruption
-Gender Discrimination
-Illiteracy
-Harmful tradition
-Cultural Practises
-Lack of Political Will to end it (Horrible I know.)

The main victims of human trafficking tends to be women and girls. What a surprise!
Trafficked for such purposes as
-Prostitution- such forms include sex tourism, child sex tourism, paedophilia
-Forced Marriage
-Domestic Work

Effects of being trafficked can include for girls and women
-Unwanted Pregnancy
-HIV/AIDS
-Other STI’s/ STD’s
-Cervical Cancer
-Physical Injuries
-Violence
-Drug and Alcohol Abuse
-Emotional Trauma
-Long Term Psychological Impact

A loss of innocence.

While the subject of human trafficking is bad enough, it’s just heartbreaking to think that every year over one million children are trafficked. A ‘child victim of trafficking’ is any person under 18 who is recruited, transported, transferred, harboured or received for the purpose of exploitation, either within or outside a country.

Why children you may be wondering? What do they have to offer that an adult can’t?
Well for one, they provided cheap or unpaid labour which means big companies can save on labour. Also the children can be used as house servants or beggars on street to make money for people. Sadly and commonly the children are subjected to prostitution. That’s only a few of the horrors that these children can be forced into!

As demonstrated by the examples given, you can see that trafficking tends to expose children to physical violence, sexual abuse, and grave emotional distress. This trauma from being trafficked and exposed to this life of slavery can stay with them for life.

Robbie Williams on our most precious resource

Forced Labour

Forced labour in regards to human trafficking refers to how the victims are forced to undertake a hazardous journey and upon reaching their destination they are subjected to low paying menial work which is often degrading and the conditions that they are put to work in are very similar to slavery or bondage.

Different types of labour
Bonded Labour
use of a bond, or debt, to keep a person in subjugation.

Involuntary Servitude
A person trapped in involuntary servitude when it is believed an attempted escape from their conditions would result in serious physical harm or the use of legal coercion, such as the threat of deportation.

Domestic Servitude
Domestic workers may be trapped in servitude through the use of force or coercion, such as physical (including sexual) or emotional abuse.

Child Labour
This refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives the child of their childhood, interferes with schooling and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.
While most international organizations and national laws allow children to legally engage in light work, trafficking of children is illegal and in regards to forcing them into child labour should be eradicated.

Organs 4 Sale

Hey you, want to buy a heart? Or a kidney. Or a liver? How about an eyeball? You can even have two if you like, this guy here won’t be needing his!

 

Victim of human trafficking, was harvested for organs

 

Trafficking organs is a crime and can be classified into three categories.

1. Cases where traffickers force or deceive victims into giving up an organ.

2. When victims formally or informally agree to sell an organ and then are cheated as they don’t get paid for organ donation or are paid less than the promised price.

3. Vulnerable people are treated for an ailment, whether it exist or not and then the organs are removed without the persons knowledge.

 

Everyday of the year, 365/7

Scary to think about isn’t it! You may be wondering why 24 organs a day need to be harvested? Well transplant tourism is on the rise, meaning people travel to other countries just to receive a new body part. Transplant tourism can be very dangerous, as the surgery can be conducted by outlaw surgeons who are willing to break the law to put the body part in you! Not to mention the desperate and mobile organ donors that go around selling harvested organs. Just think about it this way, can you trust someone who is willing to take organs out of perfectly healthy people who have been trafficked in order to make some money?

Organ harvested for money.

 

 

Follow this link for stories on organ harvesting

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201311/body-snatchers-organ-harvesting-profit

 

 

Once a whore, you’re nothing more.

His hands are you holding you down. His body is on you grinding and he wants you. You look him in the eyes and pretend that this is all make-believe. You lie back and let it happen, like you have been for the past few months in this nightmare.

You remember the day this all started. It had been weeks since you had arrived in this new country and you still hadn’t found housing or made any money to send back home. You wonder if your father made the right choice in spending all of his life savings to get you here. You meet a woman who asked about you and acted like she cared. She took you to what you thought was a home. She gave you food and clothes and in return you give her your trust. You believe her when she says she has work for you and apply the make up the way she shows you and put on the revealing dress that your mother would have a heart attack about you wearing.

The lady starts to ask you questions and mentions a strange-sounding word, sex. You look at her blankly and she smiles and says ‘Oh I can make a fortune off you.’ You smile unsure, it must be good that she’s happy, right? She leads you into a dark room with a mat on the ground. She instructs you to sit and wait. You wait, and after five minutes a man in a fancy suit arrives. After that you don’t remember much of what happened. All you know is that you’re bleeding and it hurts so much and you can’t stop crying.The woman comes back, shakes her head and says briskly, be ready in five minutes, you don’t finish until midnight. Shock hits you like a hammer hits a nail, you’re stuck in this world.

Weeks pass. You make friends with other girls. You start to learn tricks from them, how to make clients want you. You learn that the more money you make off these clients, the more benefits from the woman you will receive. When you look in the mirror you can’t look yourself in the eye. The disappointment is too much to take in and you don’t want to start crying for it may smudge your makeup. This is who you are now, once a whore you’re nothing more.

Click on this link for stories about girls who feel like this due to being trafficked. http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2009/national/trafficking/stories.html

Close to home.

In a country like Australia, you would think something as ghastly and taboo such as human trafficking would not affect us. However; Australia tends to be a destination country for victims of human trafficking from East Asia, South East Asia and Eastern Europe.

Australia has agreed to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and its supplementary Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). Australia is actively engaged in the fight against human trafficking with other countries in our region and beyond. So why is this happening if we as a country are against it?

Well human trafficking is often fuelled by the demand for cheap labour or services and commercial sex acts. According to  Project Respect the demand for trafficked women in Australia has grown in the sex industry because of a various reasons, one being that there is a lack of women in Australia willing to do prostitution. Another reason being, that there is a significant lack of ‘customer’ women who they can be violent towards. A third cause being that there are radicalized ideas that Asian women have certain desirable qualities for example that they are more compliant and accept more violence.

 To ultimately solve the problem of human trafficking, it is essential to address these demand-driven factors, as well as to alter the overall market incentives of high-profit and low-risk that traffickers currently exploit.