Human trafficking, to put it simply, is the harbouring, transport, or recruitment of people in order to exploit them in some manner. Essentially, this is modernised slavery.
The United States, however, is not cleared from such a thing taking place within its borders, as trafficking has been reported in each of the 50 states. America, in fact, seen as a destination for thousands who are trafficked for sexual and, to a lesser extent, labour exploitation, and though the precise numbers are undetermined there are approximately 50,000 people being trafficked. Aound 80% of those trafficked are female, and up to 50% are children.
One such case, reported about on Newsline recently, features two young, female foreign exchange students from Ukraine. Two men greeted the girls, and informed them that they were to take jobs waitressing in Detroit in order to hone their language skills. As soon as they arrived at the hotel in Detroit, however, the girls were stripped of their passports and papers, and told that they owed the men money for being brought to America, and were forced to work in a strip club every night for 12 hours, and turn over all of the money to the two men, who repeatedly abused them mentally, physically, and sexually.
These girls have since escaped and resumed as normal of a life as is to be expected after enduring such a thing, but thousands of other women are subject to much the same thing every year in the US alone. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to prevent these sorts of crimes as they are so under-the-radar that there cannot even be a precise number of incidences. It would seem that the government is, actually, doing the best they can to curtail these activities, but eliminating them altogether seems difficult nearly to point of becoming unfeasible.
The US recently put out a report that put countries on tiers of abuse. The third tier, meaning that their government has not complied with the minimum restrictions set down by the US. Uzbekistan, Cuba, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela can all claim the rights to this charming title, clearly far too many for such grievous offences. This raises no major issues at first, but then one must wonder: Why was India not on that list, when it’s claimed to have approximately 65 million forced labourers? So as not to alienate the Indian government, it‘s been revealed. Apparently, keep up and forging friendships is far more important than petty human trafficking. (The US got a “special cases” tier, if you’re wondering.)
This report that the US did, however, was a means by which to give the offending countries a time period to reform, and if they don’t, then they have to face sanctions, meaning no non-humanitarian, non-trade money (what exactly that leaves is questionable, however). So the US can place an embargo on Cuba for being Communist, but it’s just going too far to do that with countries that couldn’t care less about human trafficking. Again, humanitarian aid falls just a little short of being as important as money.
Sources
Newsline
Trafficking in Persons Report.
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March 26, 2008 at 2:19 pm
muychingon420
Its a sad thing that even nowadays there are things such as this. However we must realise that as long as there is labour in the world there will be people forced to do it. We need to crack down on this kind of thing in our own country. This reminds me of the slave trade and while many people dont hink that theres slavery anymore the truth is that it runs rampant throughout the world.
March 28, 2008 at 11:13 pm
v0ltaire
Wow, frankly some of the stats surprise me. I had no idea the US had such high numbers coming into the country. What is not surprising is the “tier system” in which the US has modestly removed itself and its friends from the infamous “third tier”. Not only is it just money, its another rallying point, just another thing their using to try and make us hate these countries, while quietly keeping our allies in the clear. Talk about censorship….