Day 19. 25 more facts

1. Human trafficking is estimated to surpass the drug trade in less than five years.  Journalist Victor Malarek reports that it is primarily men who are driving human trafficking, specifically trafficking for sex.ⁱ
2. Victims of human trafficking suffer devastating physical and psychological harm. However, due to language barriers, lack of knowledge about available services, and the frequency with which traffickers move victims, human trafficking victims and their perpetrators are difficult to catch.ⁱ
3. In approximately 54% of human trafficking cases, the recruiter is a stranger, and in 46% of the cases, the recruiters know the victim. Fifty-two percent of human trafficking recruiters are men, 42% are women, and 6% are both men and women.^d
4. Human trafficking around the globe is estimated to generate a profit of anywhere from $9 billion to $31.6 billion. Half of these profits are made in industrialized countries.^d
5. Some human traffickers recruit handicapped young girls, such as those suffering from Down Syndrome, into the sex industry.^l
6. According to the FBI, a large human-trafficking organization in California in 2008 not only physically threatened and beat girls as young as 12 to work as prostitutes, they also regularly threatened them with witchcraft.^e
7. Human trafficking is a global phenomenon that is fueled by poverty and gender discrimination.^k
8. Human traffickers often work with corrupt government officials to obtain travel documents and seize passports.ⁱ
9. Women and girls from racial minorities in the U.S. are disproportionately recruited by sex traffickers in the U.S.^l
10. The Sunday Telegraph in the U.K. reports that hundreds of children as young as six are brought to the U.K. as slaves each year.^m
Japan is a major hub of sex trafficking
11. Japan is considered the largest market for Asian women trafficked for sex.ⁱ
12. Airports are often used by human traffickers to hold “slave auctions,” where women and children are sold into prostitution.^m
13. Due to globalization, every continent of the world has been involved in human trafficking, including a country as small as Iceland.^k
14. Many times, if a sex slave is arrested, she is imprisoned while her trafficker is able to buy his way out of trouble.^l
15. Today, slaves are cheaper than they have ever been in history. The population explosion has created a great supply of workers, and globalization has created people who are vulnerable and easily enslaved.^l
16. Human trafficking and smuggling are similar but not interchangeable. Smuggling is transportation based. Trafficking is exploitation based.^l
17. Sex traffickers often recruit children because not only are children are more unsuspecting and vulnerable than adults, but there is also a high market demand for young victims. Traffickers target victims on the telephone, on the Internet, through friends, at the mall, and in after-school programs.^o
18. Human trafficking has been reported in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and in some U.S. territories.^e
19. The FBI estimates that over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range in age from nine to 19, with the average being age 11. Many victims are not just runaways or abandoned, but are from “good” families who are coerced by clever traffickers.^o
20. Brazil and Thailand are generally considered to have the worst child sex trafficking records.^k
21. The AIDS epidemic in Africa has left many children orphaned, making them especially vulnerable to human trafficking.^l
22. Nearly 7,000 Nepali girls as young as nine years old are sold every year into India’s red-light district—or 200,000 in the last decade. Ten thousand children between the ages of six and 14 are in Sri Lanka brothels.^j
23. Human trafficking victims face physical risks, such as drug and alcohol addiction, contracting STDs, sterility, miscarriages, forced abortions, vaginal and anal trauma, among others. Psychological effects include developing clinical depression, personality and dissociative disorders, suicidal tendencies, Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.^l
24. The largest human trafficking case in recent U.S. history occurred in Hawaii in 2010. Global Horizons Manpower, Inc., a labor-recruiting company, bought 400 immigrants in 2004 from Thailand to work on farms in Hawaii. They were lured with false promises of high-paying farm work, but instead their passports were taken away and they were held in forced servitude until they were rescued in 2010.^c
25. According to the U.S. State Department, human trafficking is one of the greatest human rights challenges of this century, both in the United States and around the world.^l

(http://facts.randomhistory.com/human-trafficking-facts.html)