Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
According to statistics, approximately 21 million people have been taken against their will and forced into the world of human trafficking. Of these estimated 21 million victims, “about 68 percent are subjected to forced labor, 22 percent are subjected to forced sexual exploitation, and 10 percent were exploited in state-imposed forced labor.” Women and girls make up 98 percent of the victims who are forced into sexual slavery and 55 percent of those who are forced into some form of forced labor.
Why does this human trafficking exist? According to statistics, “Human trafficking earns profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers.”
When we hear about the trafficking that is occurring in foreign countries, we often think that it doesn’t happen here in the United States. However, instances of human trafficking have in fact been reported in all 50 states. In 2014, California received the most calls and reports on the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline. Most of the reports the hotline received were related to sex trafficking.
Hope For Justice is a non-profit organization that works to disrupt and put an end to all forms of human trafficking. In order to do this, it employs special investigators that “work with law enforcement to identify victims of trafficking and modern slavery, build bridges of trust with them, and remove them from situations of exploitation,” according to their website. The organization has six offices in different parts of the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Cambodia, and Norway.
The nonprofit helps victims restore their lives by helping them work through the trauma they have experienced. Hope for Justice “offers tailored restorative care initiatives, helps partners to develop accredited systems, and offers support to meet vital needs.”
According to Ben Cooley, CEO of Hope for Justice, “We’ve brought together a multidisciplinary team to combat a complex crime which has a profound impact upon its victims. Our highly experienced staff is bringing expert care and innovative strategies to [its] work with victims, partner organizations, law enforcement, and governments.”
The final step in Hope for Justice’s plan is reform. The organization helps to train healthcare professionals, local authority staff, students and teachers, NGOs, police officers, child services, business leaders, prosecution services, churches, probation officers, social workers, and court employees to spot the signs of human trafficking and act on it. The hope is that these professionals will help to seek policy changes and prevention of further trafficking. The organization also “works with companies to eliminate modern slavery from supply chains.”
In order to get involved with Hope for Justice and learn more about how to put an end to human trafficking, your businesses and supply chains can register with the organization. Individually, you can join an abolition group, start fundraising, or pledge your birthday. Most importantly, you can get involved by simply spreading the word about human trafficking.
Visit the website to learn the signs of human trafficking, donate, or learn more about how you can get involved in the fight to end modern slavery.
Featured Image by Global Panorama on Flickr
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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