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Child Trafficking is the illegal sexual exploitation or forced labor of children. According to the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, 30 million people are trafficked throughout the world, and 50% of victims are estimated to be children. Approximately 80% of human trafficking is sexual, while 20% involves forced labor. Victims include orphans, poor children, victims of domestic violence, and runaway children. Children between the age of 12 to 14 are at the highest risk to enter human trafficking, though children younger and older are vulnerable as well. People recruiting child victims target children by offering false affection and promises of money, protection, and education, but these promises are not met.
The physical and psychological effects of human trafficking are serious. Children being trafficked lack shelter, live in unsanitary conditions, suffer physical abuse, are malnourished, and are forced to work long hours. According to the Polaris Project, an average victim of human trafficking may be sexually exploited 20 to 48 times a day.
Education is one of the most powerful ways to decrease child trafficking. Girls who have more education get married later, therefore preventing domestic abuse and child marriages, two major risk factors related to human trafficking. According to the International Center for Research on Women, 60 percent of girls in Mozambique that receive no formal education are married by age 18, compared with 10 percent of girls that receive secondary schooling and only 1 percent of girls who receive higher education. Some African countries are using incentives to keep kids in school due to the many benefits of receiving a quality education. There are programs that give families a stipend for every month that a child has perfect attendance in school, keeping children away from child trafficking.
Education also allows young adults to find alternative opportunities to make a sufficient income and gain secure employment. Vocational training is being used to give human trafficking victims and at-risk populations access to better jobs that provide living wages. Child trafficking is often a cycle when children of victims become victims themselves, but education can break this cycle and allow a family to sustain itself through safe means and keep children in school longer.
To end human trafficking, everybody can make a difference by supporting education initiatives and child trafficking awareness campaigns. Givology is taking an active role in supporting populations at risk of human trafficking by partnering with grass-root organizations like [url=http://www.givology.org/~eglobal/]Emerge Global[/url] and [url=https://www.givology.org/~ufoundation/]The Umbrella Foundation[/url] that help vulnerable children and survivors and prevent human trafficking. Emerge Global is teaching girls, including sex trafficking survivors, to make jewelry to sell and earn a living from. The Umbrella Foundation helps sex trafficking survivors reintegrate in their families and communities and ensuring that they are safe and well cared for. Givology has also partnered with Aapne Aap Women World Wide, an organization that is working to end sex trafficking in Nepal. Founder of Aapne Aap Women World Wide, Ruchira Gupta, has a powerful story that she shares in an [url=http://givology.org/~givologystaff/blog/114092/]interview with Givology.[/url] Although the effects of human trafficking are horrible, there is something that everybody can do to stop this human rights abuse.
23 NOV 2014