People say they leave their homes and migrate because of unemployment, poor pay, instability, and conflicts. They hope to improve their economic situation by moving to a country or city that is wealthier and has more opportunities.
Recent years have seen greater numbers of people migrating from poorer areas, often rural areas, to places where there is often a steady demand for cheap unskilled labor, like cities in their own country or another country.
If you know something, do something
Strict immigration policies
Most countries have very strict immigration regulations and do not give outsiders legal work permits easily. This creates the conditions for human trafficking, because migrants have to depend on illegal middlemen for passports and transportation, and they may end up in the hands of traffickers.
Human Trafficking: Modern form of Slavery
Modern way of slavery
Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery. It involves controlling a person through force fraud or coercion to exploit the victim to forced labor, sexual exploitation or both.
Organized criminal gangs
Human traffickers are organized criminal gangs that exploit people by holding them in oppressive slave-like conditions, treating them in an inhumane and cruel manner. This can include beatings and other punishment, sexual abuse and sometimes even death.
People are forced to work and the traffickers take all or most of the money earned by the victims. This is a form of labor exploitation or slavery.
Human traffickers target children
Sex industry
Most trafficked women and girls are exploited in the sex industry and through domestic labor, while men are trafficked mainly for labor in agriculture, construction, and services.
Traffickers often take away migrants' passports and because of this, and because they do not have valid visas or work permits, trafficking victims are afraid of the police and other authorities, and are unable to seek protection.
Everybody is exposed to human trafficking
Sexual and labor exploitation
Approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation, according to some estimates. There are an estimated 20 to 30 million slaves in the world today.
Making a positive change
A global movement: 'DoSomething.org,' is an organization of about 5,5 million young people who are making a positive change offline and online.
Facts about human trafficking
Find out how to do something after you have learned something.
Trafficking predominantly encompasses exploitation which comes in many forms, including:
- subjecting victims to slavery
- into involuntary servitude
- forcing victims to commit sex acts for the main purpose of pornography
- The average age a child/teen enters the sex trade in the USA is 12 to 14-year-old. many victims are runaway girls who were sexually abused as children
- California harbors 3 of the FBI's 13 highest child sex trafficking areas in the nation. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and
San Diego- The National Human Trafficking Hotline receives more calls from Texas than any other state in the US each year. 15% of those calls are from the Dallas-Fort Worth area
- Between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the US each year
- Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry (after illegal drugs and arms trafficking). Reportedly it generates a profit of $32 billion every year. 15,5 billion is made in industrialized countries
- The International Labor Organization estimates that women and girls represent the largest share of forced labor victims with 11,4 million trafficked victims (55%) compared to 9,5 million (45%) men
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