Tag: sexual trafficking

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Sexual Trafficking in the United States

Posted on by kathiemm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtIdtXZ6Ks8

Invasions can be carried out by many noxious forces: bombs, soldiers with weapons, armed police, poisonous smog, polluted waters, bacteria, viruses, etc. We know these things.

But how about sexual traffickers and their customers?  Men (almost exclusively) for whom trafficked girls and boys may be little more than dehumanized receptacles for their sexual satisfaction—are they not invaders too?

Human trafficking victims, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services,  “often come from countries or communities with high rates of crime, poverty, and corruption; lack opportunities for education; lack family support (e.g., orphaned, runaway/thrown-away, homeless, family members collaborating with traffickers); and/or have a history of physical and/or sexual abuse.” In other words, some of the most vulnerable people in this country and elsewhere, instead of receiving services, are forced into sexual slavery.

Human trafficking, particularly sexual trafficking, began receiving increased media attention following World War II, when Japan’s forcing women and girls  to become “Comfort Women”—a practice that has been labeled a war crime—became known.  On July 30, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for Japan to “acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility…for its military’s coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war.”

In the United States today, sexual trafficking flourishes—including in our nation’s capital. Thousands of girls, boys,  and women—at least as many as the women forced into sexual slavery in Japan—are raped daily.Do we see a little hypocrisy here?

Billions of our tax dollars are spent on the invasion of other countries in order to benefit the military—industrial complex,  but programs and agencies committed to reducing sexual slavery and its aftereffects are woefully underfunded. Are priorities a bit skewed?

Sexual trafficking in the United States is not state-sponsored as it was in Japan, but it is largely tolerated. The powers-that-be seem unable to find ways to make a profit from ending trafficking and are unable to find other reasons to do so.  Time to speak up?

 

 

Human rights urgency

Posted on by kathiemm

December 10 is Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. In 1993, the World Conference on Human Rights (source of  the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action) created the United Nations post of High Commissioner for Human Rights. Internationally, there’s still much work to be done.

Here in the United States, the most urgent human rights problems include:

Sexual trafficking. The FBI notes that “Human sex trafficking is the most common form of modern-day slavery,” that it is the fastest growing business of organized crime, and that “The United States not only faces an influx of international victims but also has its own homegrown problem of interstate sex trafficking of minors.”

Mass incarceration. This national disgrace violates, among other human rights, the right of freedom from discrimination. See these articles in:

Capital punishment. States that maintain the death penalty violate many human rights—as does the federal government which permits such violations. Moreover, conditions on death rows constitute torture—another major human rights violation.  See this (pdf) fact sheet or watch the video.

Poverty. Income inequality and its handmaiden, poverty, are both causes and effects of human rights violations—including  economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for human  dignity (Article 22 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights).

The U.S. is marketed as home of the free and the brave, but members of the privileged class who view rights solely as freedom to pursue their own wealth and power at all costs (i.e., costs to the less privileged) are neither free nor brave. Rather, they are the slaves of their own greed and the perpetrators of their own worst nightmares.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology