Finding Momentum

The International Justice Mission is a Christian organization that fights modern-day human trafficking. I’m going to spend a little bit of time introducing them to you and tell you why I care about this cause.

The modern-day slave trade

Last semester, a few friends of mine taught a DeCal course on “The Modern Slave Trade”. I had the privilege of attending one of their sessions on modern-day sex trafficking, its roots and how it rears its ugly head today. On that day and through some subsequent research, I learned:

• Women and children of little-to-no-education are the most common victims of the slave trade.
• There are 1.2 million child sex slaves, according to UNICEF. That’s just the children.
• The sex trade depends on visibility. Thus, one solution is simple: prosecute hard, drive it underground and starve it.
• It could start with kidnapping: drugged food or drinks. It could start with deception: a promise of a better job in another city.
• Deception is key: you could be tricked by somebody you trust.
• Victims often become perpetrators in this twisted world
• Slavery can be fought with education

In the course of that session, we watched an NBC Dateline episode that sent a crew with a hidden camera along with IJM investigators to bust a sex trafficking operation in Cambodia. A brief summary of that episode:

Why I care

I was feeling all sorts of things after watching the video: shock, utter disgust and anger. I think what particularly riles me about this issue is the utter helplessness of the victims and the cruelty of the perpetrators. What is even more disgusting is how rampant human trafficking is today (it’s in our own backyard, for heaven’s sakes: Raj Properties, anybody?).

The heartless exploitation of another human being is something that we should hate with a passion. We should despise it, condemn it, get all riled-up when we hear of it. But we can’t stay there; we need to do something about it.

There’s more to come

I haven’t told you yet how I plan to fundraise for this cause. There’s some plan to do some online fundraising, as well as some sort of word-of-mouth work I’d love to have you involved in. I hope to continue writing to further flesh out my thoughts and feelings about this heavy topic.

But I’ll open this up for discussion: what are your thoughts about human trafficking?

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