Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking 101

Millions of people are trafficked internationally every year. The State Department estimates that 1 million children annually are trafficked into sex slavery. Up to 17,500 are trafficked into the United States every year, according to the State Department, and this number doesn’t include thousands more domestic trafficking victims.

Understanding Trafficking

When people first hear about “modern-day slavery,” they often imagine someone chained up in a dark basement somewhere. Most human trafficking doesn’t involve iron chains. The chains are in the fraud, physical or economic coercion, rape, and continual threat of force. The chains are hidden from view. And because they're hidden from view, they’re harder to break.

Trafficking is also not smuggling. Smuggling is voluntary. In trafficking, there is no choice. And there doesn't have to be movement across borders. A girl forced to pimp herself out in her neighborhood is trafficked as much as a girl kidnapped and taken to another country.

People: Just Another Commodity

Human trafficking is beyond big business. It is the second largest form of international crime after drugs, but before arms. And it’s the fastest growing form of international crime, period.

This is a business that hauls in $32 billion a year. More than Coca-Cola and Starbucks. . . combined.

Human trafficking is enormously profitable because it uses a largely unpaid, disposable workforce – and, unlike drugs or weapons, the same “product” can be used again and again and again.

MG ALERT focuses on three main types of trafficking:

Middle Georgia Alliance to End Regional Trafficking

Until everyone is free...