Human Trafficking

There are social, controversial, ethical, and health issues to take into consideration when discussing human trafficking. Human rights activist have a huge battle to fight when trying to resolve issues of human trafficking. Corrupt governments and public officials see human trafficking as a profit to their country. It has been estimated that 7 to 10 billion dollars is made each year because of human trafficking (Cwikel & Hoban, 2005).

Many circumstances involving human trafficking are secret and kept from the government, which makes stopping this problem challenging. It is stated that a person subject to human trafficking because of their families are in need of money. These families would sell their family member for slavery, forced marriage, or sex trade, and when the victim is asked if they need or want help the majority of them will say no because they want to help their family.

Some government officials will imprison a human trafficked person or charge him or her with a crime, such as prostitution instead of helping these people get to a safe place, resulting in poverty, death, and illness. HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are major health issues related to human trafficking. A person who is sold into sex slavery, are subject to several sexual encounters with different people, spreading sexual diseases all around the globe.

When a person is too sick to perform his or her duties, they are thrown to the street where he or she will be homeless and may even die from the untreated disease contracted because of human trafficking. This is a serious problem with many issues needing to be resolved so this human maltreatment can stop for good.

Sex traffickers use a variety of methods to "condition" their victims including starvation, confinement, beatings, physical abuse, rape, gang rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims' families, forced drug use and the threat of shaming their victims by revealing their activities to their family and their families' friends. Psychological harms include mind/body separation/disassociated ego states, shame, grief, fear, distrust, hatred of men, self-hatred, suicide, and suicidal thoughts. Victims are at risk for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, physical hyper-alertness, self-loathing that is long-lasting and resistant to change (complex-PTSD). Victims may also suffer from traumatic bonding - a form of coercive control in which the perpetrator instills in the victim fear as well as gratitude for being allowed to live. Victims trafficked into prostitution and pornography are usually involved in the most exploitive forms of commercial sex operations. Sex trafficking operations can be found in highly-visible venues such as street prostitution, as well as more underground systems such as closed-brothels that operate out of residential homes. Sex trafficking also takes place in a variety of public and private locations such as massage parlors, spas, strip clubs and other fronts for prostitution. Victims may start off dancing or stripping in clubs and then be coerced into situations of prostitution and pornography.

Poverty is the leading cause in human trafficking. It has been documented that poverty leads to a lack of education leading to no employment and that leading to sex trafficking By fighting poverty many believe that there will be an end to sex trafficking too. Woman living in poverty countries will not be looking into sex driven businesses for employment. "Trafficking is inextricably linked to poverty. Wherever privation and economic hardship prevail, there will be those destitute and desperate enough to enter into the fraudulent employment schemes that are the most common intake systems in the world of trafficking." (The United States Agency for International Development) In Kenya, It has been reported that parents have sent their daughters