Written by Pranav Satyal
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that the Human Trafficking industry generates $32 Billion a year worldwide. Today, child trafficking is the most common form of slavery. Children are exploited and forced to work in sweatshops, on construction sites, as domestic workers, as child beggars, as child soldiers, on farms, in restaurants and hotels and predominantly as commercial sex workers in industries such as brothels, strip clubs and escort and massage services. Human trafficking is involuntary servitude, a form of slavery. Sex trafficking involves individuals profiting from sexual exploitation of others, which has severe physical and psychological consequences for its victims.
Although people think child trafficking is a problem that only occurs in developing countries, the United States is considered one of the major hubs. Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 States. Trafficking is not bound by ethnicity, skin color, socio-economic status, education level, gender, age or citizenship; anyone can be trafficked. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that each year 300,000 children become victims of commercial sex exploitation.
Sex trafficking is extremely prevalent in large cities including Chicago and St. Louis. The Chicago Bureau has estimated that there are approximately 25,000 sexually trafficked victims in the city. Moreover, UNICEF has estimated that more than two million individuals are victims of trafficking in the United States alone. However, drastic measures are not taken by the government to change this situation.
The sex trafficking industry generates approximately $9.5 billion each year in the United States alone. A pimp can make $150,000-$200,000 per child each year, and the average pimp has four to six victims, which they use repeatedly to generate more profit.
The most evident parallel to sex trafficking is the drug trafficking industry. For a drug dealer, a particular drug is a commodity that needs to be replenished continuously to make profit, but for a pimp, a trafficked victim is a commodity that will generate profit as long as the victim is alive. But while our government declares war on drugs, they have yet to declare war on traffickers, despite the fact that being trafficked is more lethal to a person than ingesting narcotics. Sex trafficking is the modern day slavery where pimps are profiting off the exploitation of young victims.
New technologies have revolutionized the sex trafficking industry. Traffickers not only use social media and other online tools to find and recruit victims, they also use these tools to communicate with customers online. Websites like backpage.com make it easier for the pimps to advertise their girls/boys and it is even easier for the customers to browse and contact different pimps.
During the Super Bowl weekend in 2014, 16 children as young as 13 years old, some of whom had been reported missing by their families, were rescued from sex trade in New Jersey. Last year, the FBI rescued 105 Victims. The average age of these victims was 13- 17 and the youngest victim was nine years old.
Human trafficking is not only plaguing the United States, it is plaguing each and every society on this planet. This plague needs to be contained, cured, and removed from our society. The only way to stop this disease from spreading is by being aware and making others aware.
