On April 1 at 6:00 p.m. in the Apollo Room, the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Student Advisory Board will host an event to raise awareness for human trafficking.
“This event is about Human Trafficking in Ohio. This is a very important issue that plagues this great state. Making students and faculty aware of this issue is the first step to ensure that some kind of proactive resolution can be found to fight this dire issue,” said event team member Sukhman Singh.
Human trafficking rakies in over $32 billion US dollars globally each year. According to the United Nations’ Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (GIFT), $15.5 billion—49% of the global profit—is made in industrialized, “First World” countries.
Trafficking can take many forms. The most common are sex trafficking and forced labor of both children and adults. Other forms include debt bondage or bonded labor, forced domestic servitude and child soldiering.
Bonded labor is the abuse or exploitation of a contract or debt.
“Forced domestic servitude” describes involuntary domestic workers whose off-duty living space is connected to their workplace—they are often live-in workers—resulting in their isolation and exploitation.
Child soldiering is the practice of illegally recruiting children for labor, sexual exploitation, or to fight. Many are abducted and forced into combat, but others are made to work as cooks, guards, servants, spies, or messengers.
According to United Nations statistics, at any given time about 2.5 million people are being held as slaves and forced to work. Of these, approximately 1.2 million are children. Most are subjected to physical or sexual abuse during trafficking, and 43% of those victims are forced into prostitution. Another 32% of victims are forced to become unpaid domestic workers, mostly women and girls.
Toledo, Ohio, is noted as the fourth-largest site of human trafficking in the U.S. From Toledo, victims are moved to various places within the U.S. and abroad.
