Millions of people are enslaved. Today. 2008. Many are women and children, forced to have sex many times a day. Terrified of violent owners. Some as young as six.
My eldest daughter is six. She is snuggled on my husband’s knee right now, carefully reading aloud a story I wrote about her for her sixth birthday. She articulates the longer words, like ‘beautiful’ very slowly and clearly in her lovely sing-song voice. She smiles as she reads her own name in the story.
Some as young as four.
My four-year old daughter is snuggling next to me. Her skin is incredibly soft. Her shiny hair smells sweet and familiar. “Look, Mum, I have legs as long as you! I’m a big girl!” she says, stretching out her four-year-old legs next to mine.
A dozen little girls huddle together on a dirty couch. A single light bulb sheds pale, yellowy light their soft cheeks, their shiny hair. Their legs aren’t long enough to reach the dusty floor. Their ‘owner’ brings a man into the room..
I remember being four, and learning to ride a bike, my mother standing behind me to help keep me steady. She was so proud of me when I stayed up all by myself.
He doesn’t look at her face. He doesn’t see her beautiful brown eyes. He doesn’t know her name. He points at her, and she is pulled off the couch.
Posted in Prostitution, Slavery | 3 Comments »Recently yotta-brilliant founder of Off The Map, Jim Henderson, introduced me to his extremely kewl niece, Alexa, and her zetta-awesome senior project, which I want to tell you about. Jim said:
I am so proud of my niece Alexa. How many young people when asked to create a Senior project would choose something as big, complex and important as ending Human Trafficking. Alexa is partnering with IJM which is probably the most respected organization in the world when it comes to this issue.
Alexa is a high school senior and she has put together what looks to be a fairly posh benefit dinner to raise funds for International Justice Mission. She has also built a pretty sweet web site to promote the dinner, as well as to educate people about human trafficking, at www.endhumanslavery.com I would totally encourage you to check out her web site, and if you are in the Seattle area, sign up for the benefit dinner, which happens the evening of March 14th in Bothell.
Alexa’s site has these quotes running at the top:
Human trafficking has become a $9 billion a year global industry and is increasingly an activity of organized crime.
Every 10 minutes a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor
Over 12 million people worldwide are trafficked for forced labor or sexual exploitation
IJM has some ideas about how we can begin to address this issue. But I’m wondering if any of you have any ideas/thoughts on how we can respond? What good news is there in the face of such horrible news?
Posted in Activism, Slavery, Women's Rights | 11 Comments »Two years ago I did an intense 18 credit course in which we looked at the history of “Indochina”–Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and specifically at the U.S. war down there and it’s aftermaths. One issue we looked at was the sex trade/trafficking in humans. Ever since that course, I’ve had this little question poking around in the back of my head: What are the implications and effects of the Iraq War with regards to this issue? Recently, this video gave me the beginnings of an answer. H/T to Jen
Posted in Prostitution, Slavery | 10 Comments »“The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the extraordinary pieces of ancient wisdom literature. The author beautifully expressed the desperation of the powerless: ‘I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed - with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power’ (Eccles. 4:1).“In our world today, 27 million individuals live as slaves. Frankly, power is on the side of the oppressors at the moment, but a wave of abolitionists is on the rise. They will wipe away the tears of the oppressed and deliver justice to the oppressors.”
To learn more about modern day slavery, I recently read David Batstone’s excellent new book Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade - and How We Can Fight It. David Batstone is a professor of ethics and an award-winning journalist who traveled all over the world preparing to write this book. I found this well-researched and passionately written book to be both heartbreaking and inspiring.
In it Batstone gives both statistical and policy information, as well as first hand accounts. He outlines the massive scope of this global crisis; there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today, more than in the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade combined. He explains the main types of modern slavery - sex trafficking/forced prostitution, bonded labor, and captive child soldiers. And he details actions that are being undertaken and need to be undertaken by governments and institutions to fight against this scourge. Read the rest of this news item »
Read the rest of this news item »
A nearly miraculous 6 month ceasefire between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Uganda is set to expire Wednesday, February 28th (that is, today). This is enormously heartbreaking, as it means that a situation has been *so* bad for so long for so many children, and which looked to be getting better, may now be getting worse again.
If I think about this too much, I start crying.
Does god hate africa more than he hates the rest of us?
Posted in Slavery, War | 16 Comments »