Modern-day slavery is not about race; it’s about poverty – vulnerable people exploited for the economic gain of a few individuals. There are approximately 27 million slaves around the world who are abused, held against their will, and left hopeless. With an unending supply of human lives, human trafficking has become the fastest growing criminal industry in the world today.
The why and how of trafficking is different in every country but there are consistent similarities. Families without the necessary resources are forced to sell their children into bondage. Other families are tricked into sending their daughters to the cities for what appear to be good jobs, only to lose them to the brothels. Others are stolen off the streets. However they arrive the conditions are often the same. They are immediately raped, beaten, drugged and then put to work serving up to 40 men per day. They are disposable to the trafficker who can replace them easily. Life is not precious, but is used for a price.
Cambodia
Cambodia is a source, transit, and destination country for human
trafficking. The traffickers are reportedly organized crime syndicates, parents,
relatives, friends, intimate partners, and neighbors.
There are many causes
of human trafficking in Cambodia. Trafficking has increased because of a number
of factors, including poverty, socio-economic imbalance between rural and urban
areas, increased tourism, lack of unemployment, education, and safe migration;
poverty being the most significant cause of trafficking. The International
Labour Organization argues that the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime is still
felt both psychologically and economically and plays a direct role in labor and
sexual exploitation arising from ill-prepared migration. The upheavals caused by
the conflict and lack of opportunities in rural areas have fueled a return to
the cities and urban areas, all but emptied during the Khmer Rouge period. With
well over half the population below the age of 20, Cambodia faces a growing
problem of providing decent work for its young population, further increasing
the drive toward cross-border migration for employment, and perpetuating the
cycle of vulnerability to human trafficking.
The Cambodian Government was
placed in the Tier 2 Watch List in the 2007 U.S. Department of State’s
Trafficking in Persons Report for not fully complying with the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking but making significant efforts to do so. The Government remained in
the Watch List because it has not increased its efforts to combat trafficking
since 2005. Some law enforcement and government officials are believed to have
accepted bribes to facilitate the trafficking and sex trade. There are reports
of government officials who are complicit in the trafficking by accepting
bribes.
United States
According to the Polaris Project, victims of human trafficking in the United States are not just trafficked from other countries but also include U.S. citizens and residents trafficked within its borders. Much like the majority of other countries affected by human trafficking, the U.S. has a large internal or "domestic" component of human trafficking for the purposes of both sexual and labor exploitation. One of the largest forms of domestic sex trafficking in the U.S. involves traffickers who coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through the use of a variety of recruitment and control mechanisms in strip clubs, street-based prostitution, escort services, and brothels. Domestic sex traffickers, commonly referred to as pimps, particularly target vulnerable youth, such as runaway and homeless youth, and reinforce the reality that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12-13 years old in the U.S. Recent cases have also demonstrated that labor trafficking of U.S. citizens occurs in locations such as restaurants, the agricultural industry, traveling carnivals, peddling/begging rings, and in traveling sales crews.
We are currently working with other non-profits to identify victims in Nashville, provide resources to help victims recover and have started to look at how we can prevent trafficking in our town. This issue is more easily identifiable in other countries but is happening here under our very noses, in our communities. Freedom’s Promise is working to raise awareness of this issue in our community and find viable solutions.
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