What to know about human trafficking

• Human trafficking is slavery
• It involves one person controlling another and exploiting for the purposes of work. Victims are trapped physically, psychologically, financially, or emotionally by their traffickers.

• It happens where you live
• Stories about human trafficking are often set in far away places, like Calcutta, Cambodia, Brazil, but it also happens here
• Enslaved farm workers have been found harvesting tomatoes in Florida and picking strawberries in California
• Young girls have been forced into prostitution across the U.S., in cities such as Toledo, Columbus, Atlanta, Wichita, and Los Angeles
• Wherever you live, chances are some form of human trafficking has taken place there.

• It happens to people like you
• Most human trafficking victims are females under 18, but men and older adults can be trafficking victims too.
• Children from middle-class families, women with college degrees, and people from dominant religious or ethnics groups can be victims
• Wherever there is a demand, the product must be supplied

• Products you eat, wear, and use everyday may have been made by human trafficking victims
• Human trafficking isn't just in your town, its in your home. According to productsofslavery.org, human trafficking victims are forced to make many of the products we use everyday.
• Trafficking in the production of consumer goods is so widespread, most people in the U.S. have worn, touched, or consumed a product of human trafficking at some point.

• We can end human trafficking
• We can not only end trafficking around the world, we can end it within our generation
• To achieve this goal we need to work together, activists around the world are launching and winning campaigns to hold governments and companies accountable, and create better laws to deter trafficking.

Image: www.theironjen.com
Works Cited:
Kloer, Amanda. 5 Things to know about human trafficking, www.cnn.com