The Fight Against Human Trafficking

The everyday person at all levels in society can help in the fight against sex and labor exploitation. First starting out with the government, laws can have a major impact on exploitation. Currently in the U.S. the biggest policy that affects human trafficking is U.S Code 18 which directly states “Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.” (Rosenstein, 2018) Which is the law that gives penalty for sex trafficking specially focusing on children.

Outside of the law and examining organizations within the U.S. government the FBI leads major efforts against the fight. They do this by linking with other organizations.

One specific organization is Project Safe Child which was created by the Department of Justice in 2006. (Rosenstein, 2018) There goal is to “prevent childhood pornography because there seems to be a large link between child pornography and sex trafficking.”(Rosenstein, 2018) This group goes into the community and advocates from there to spread awareness on the topic so that it can be broken down from a base level.

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This organization is one that anybody can help with and join therefore it makes the everyday person active in the fight. Everyday medical professionals can also help with the fight because as previously stated in the health section “28% of trafficked women did see a health care professional while in captivity.” (Deshpande, 2017) So if a medical professional was taught to look for certain signs both physical and physiological. That could have a great impact and potentially save lives because they are some people who may encounter a victim of sex and labor trafficking on the daily and may never know.

This alone could lower the rate drastically in the fight against exploitation. The next everyday person that could potentially have a major impact on helping society are business owners. Labor and exploitation victims often come into new countries looking for work.

Although some companies do in debt research about their employees before they are hired some do not. Some business owners look for cheaper labor and often brush past important facts such as the person not being a citizen. Which is one of the main promises that victims are made. Without this citizenship in the country that have entered they are harder to track therefore even harder to help. But if CEOS were to just look a little deeper into their hiring practices especially at large corporations were it is much harder to put a face to a name then the exploitation could be decreased as soon as the victims are brought over. That along with citizens pushing government officials to create even more laws and organizations to better help the fight against human trafficking would be an enormous help. If the government is for the people and this is a worldwide issue that citizens should be involved with than it should be reflected in governmental regulations.

In Thrupakews 2015 Ted Talk she states that of the forced labor of human trafficking. “68% is for the purpose of creating the goods and services that most of us rely on every day in sectors like agricultural work, domestic work and construction. (Thrupakews, 2015) This goes to show that we can single handily prevent specific items made traffickers produced. Some well-known chocolate brands that use children as labors are; Crunch, Aero, Kit-Kat, Hershey’s, Snickers, M&M and Twix. These children range between the ages of 5-15 and work in cocoa farms in Africa. (Seven famous brands, 2016) The same applies for clothing some well-known clothing brands that also participate in child labor they are; H&M, Zara, Forever 21, Gap, Urban Outfitters. (McClysaust, 2011) These clothing lines are found to break labor rights. They often pay little, offer hazardous working conditions and employees are worked longer hours with little to no pay difference. (McClysaust, 2011) So if the everyday individually walking through the grocery or clothing store and just took an extra few minutes to examine where these products were made and or the large corporations that produce them that it could be stopped. Especially in this generation when we have our phones on us all the time which gives us easy access to worldwide information there is no excuse to be uninformed when it comes to purchasing products.