Did You Know?
A handful of facts from the 2009 Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Report
- The United States passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000 to combat human trafficking.
- Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery that involves exploitation and forced servitude.
- The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are AT LEAST 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, or bonded labor, and commercial sexual servitude at any given time.
- It is estimated that AT LEAST 1.39 million are victims of commercial sexual servitude.
- Although a person can be forced into labor in his own country, immigrants are particularly vulnerable.
- 56% of all forced labor victims are women and girls.
- Females of forced or bonded labor, particularly those in domestic servitude, are often are sexually exploited as well.
Sex trafficking constitutes a significant portion of overall human trafficking.
UNICEF reports that as many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade.
Over two million children work in gold mines worldwide, many forced, often through debt bondage, to do back-breaking work in hazardous conditions.
Many victims in developing countries are promised the opportunity to make a better life for themselves through employment, education, or schooling.
Workers are lured with prospects of employment only to be trafficked for organ removal. The World Health Organization estimates that 10 percent of the 70, 000 kindeys transplanted each year may originate on the black market.
Women are presented with jobs abroad as babysitters, housekeepers, waitresses or models, but once in the new country, they are forced into prostitution.
Some families are persuaded to give their children to other adults, often relatives, who promise to provide the child with an education and an opportunity for a better life. After gaining the family’s trust and child, the boy or girl in question is sold.
Even though a person agrees to legally or illegally migrate or take a job, the second that work or service is no longer voluntary, the person is a victim of forced labor or forced prostitution.
26 countries enacted new anti-trafficking legislation last year.
For further information, you can find the report in its entirety here: http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009
