Stop Human Trafficking

Today, millions of lives around the world are in the grip of injustice.

More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade: Millions toil in bondage, their work and even their bodies the property of an owner.

Trafficking in humans generates profits in excess of 12 billion dollars a year for those who, by force and deception, sell human lives into slavery and sexual bondage. More than 2 million children are trapped in forced prostitution. The AIDS pandemic continues to rage, and the oppression of trafficking victims in the global sex trade contributes to the disease's spread.

In many countries around the world, pedophiles find that they can sexually violate children with impunity. And though police should be protectors, in many nations, their presence is a source of insecurity for the poor. Suspects can be held interminably before trials, imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.

The land rights of women are violated on a massive scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, leaving widows and other women in vulnerable positions unable to care for themselves or their children. Around the world, women suffer the double indignity of rape and seeing their perpetrators face no consequences for crimes of sexual violence.

Often lacking access to their own justice systems and unable to protect themselves or their families from those more powerful, it is overwhelmingly the poor who bear the burden of these abuses.

IJM

Get as many qualified people as possible to help end human trafficking!

The stories are shocking and heart-breaking. This is precisely why those of us who live in safety must take aggressive action.

The story of one girl who wanted to be a missionary deeply disturbed me. Thinking she was going on a mission trip, sex traffickers lured her into their own hands and and flew her overseas. Overnight, her missionary dream turned into a sex slavery nightmare. She was a virgin. She was frightened into earning cash for heartless foreign strangers and treated like a piece of meat. All she had left was hope in God that she would one day be rescued. Rescue efforts don't always end well; they are sometimes disastrous; always dangerous. This girl kept writing scriptures on the wall for her own encouragement. The Bible verses spoke of not fearing evil, and of how God sees it all. She hoped against hope, remembering that God promised not to leave her comfortless and that He could make a way when there seemed to be no way. And she clung to Him without giving up.

And then she was rescued. Today, she clings to God more than ever. It takes a great deal of courage, but she tells her story to others, again in hope. But not for herself, for those left behind, still waiting to wake up from the nightmare that she once lived.