Human Trafficking

An Invisible Issue: Human Trafficking Many people know the basics of what human trafficking is but what they don’t know is how often it occurs. People do not spend time thinking about how many people human trafficking affects or how to stop it. Human trafficking is an issue that is highly ignored. Many people believe that the selling of people into slavery is not a problem in America or not a big problem at all. The truth is that there are large amounts of human trafficking happening all over the world, even in the United States. People must be informed so society can begin to take action to stop the problem. There are many cases of human trafficking, mostly amongst women and children. Human trafficking specifically of women is used internationally for economic gain. In order to transport women and children across the border force, coercion and fraud are used. Human trafficking is compared to drug trafficking but less risky because the trades can easily seem more legitimate. Also with poverty and a lack of education increasing, the United Nations predicts that human trafficking will increase rapidly with them (Veenstra 1472). People need to be taught about the haunting facts otherwise the rate of human trafficking will continue to rise and more women and children will be at risk. Seventy percent of human trafficking victims are women and 50% of victims are children under the age of 18 years old. Around 700 thousand to 4 million women and children are estimated to be trafficked each year and about 7 billion dollars are the estimated profits (Veenstra 1472). So many people do not even realize that this problem occurs, yet up to 4 million women and children are trafficked each year. Men are not left out; they are also trafficked and are often unaccounted for. Two-hundred-ninety-three thousand American children who are mostly runaways or throwaways from the streets are at risk of becoming victims of trafficking (Walker 2). It is believed that a country such as

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