July 8, 2014 Leave a Comment
Understand the issue: In Canada
- Trafficking is illegal, a grave human rights violation and girls are being trafficked within Canadian borders and across.
- 800-1500 women are trafficked into Canada each year.
- It is a lucrative business as traffickers can earn up to $280,000 annually, for each girl.
- Girls and women from marginalized/racialized groups are at a higher risk of being trafficked.
- Traffickers receive a higher financial gain for girls under the age of 18, making vulnerable young girls particularly at risk for sexual exploitation. The average age is 13 and is getting younger.
- Traffickers use deception and coercion to lure women/girls with promises of a better life, a romantic relationship, false job opportunities or by abduction. They are lured on the Internet or in public venues such as shopping malls, social events and bus stations.
- Recruiters are often members of organized crime groups, gangs, pimps, peers and sometimes even family members.
- There are manuals that teach future traffickers tactics to condition and exploit women and girls. Their methods include starvation, confinement, physical abuse, rape, gang rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims’ families, forced drug addiction and the threat of shaming their victims and their families.
- Traffickers often move women and girls around to isolate them and separate them from their families, friends and communities and to avoid detection by police and local groups working to help.
- Women and girls are sometimes tattooed as the property of traffickers/gangs.
- Trafficking also occurs for the purpose of forced labour. The case of Ferenc Domotor is considered to the biggest human trafficking
- Human trafficking is a $32 billion dollar industry – greater than the profits of Nike, Starbucks and Google combined.
- Every minute, 2 children are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
- Today there are over 27 million people in slavery. (Almost the entire population of Canada)
- Share the information you have learned today. Engage your family/friends/peers in a conversation, in person, on Facebook, on Twitter, Tumblr, etc or write about it. Raising awareness about human rights injustices is the first step in combating them.
- Support (donate, raise $$, LIKE, retweet, reblog) organizations that are already doing work on the subject: Walk With Me, Free-Them, Canadian Women’s Foundation, GEMS: Girls Education and Mentoring Services, etc.
- Be creative. Raise awareness in a way that is meaningful to you. (A few creative examples: Liora K Photography, Project Unbreakable, Designers Against Child Slavery)
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