Human Trafficking

There are people in the world who are taken from their homes, removed from their friends, families and cultures, and forced to work off their “debt” to their employers in whatever ways available. Whether it is sex, manual labor or any other kind of work about which the person doing it has no choice in the matter, these are all common fates for people around the world. It even happens in the United States, according to Kevin Bales in the book “Disposable People.”

How can something be so close to us? Is this really something that can happen right underneath our noses, both in this country and around the world? We benefit from it, perhaps unwittingly but it is still the reality. In every country, on every coast, it happens.

“But what about educating people about it? Isn’t that enough?” Of course the privileged of the world will know how bad it is to participate in human trafficking; the problem is the vast amount of inequality around the world that makes the practice of human trafficking an almost inevitable result. In a world where natural resources are owned by companies, policy of countries is controlled by international forces and work is scarce, the commodity that is most valuable in today’s society is people. It has been so throughout history, and it is true today; people are worth a serious amount of money and investment, though in the eyes of some it might not be in their value as a human being but in the amount of labor they can produce that the value shows itself.

It goes against the ideals of today’s United States to acknowledge the existence of human trafficking within its borders, let alone committed by American citizens and American companies. It was not always so, obviously, but the world has changed (for the most part) and it is no longer socially acceptable to participate in the practice of human trafficking. The secrecy involved makes it difficult to track, but through this blog I hope to spread information and encourage action on behalf of the privileged in society so as to change the reality we are living with. It may be a small blog for a small class, but the more information about this topic on a forum such as the internet the better – in this kind of subject, there is no such thing as a bad discussion. Any discussion is good, and that is what I hope to contribute to through this blog.

http://skylight.wsu.edu/s/cfccb8e8-4452-467b-8f92-18b2fcf162c2.srv