Stop The Traffik

Alex McCormak

As part of the People and Planet Weekend there was a workshop entitled ‘Stop the Traffik’, named after a campaign fighting for the 2.4 million women, men and children that are victims of trafficking worldwide. Using a combination of Powerpoint presentations and a short documentary, two representatives from the campaign introduced this immoral and illegal source of income that is operated world wide today, even in this country. It may be surprising to hear that as many as 80% of the prostitutes in English brothels have been trafficked and forced into The Sex Trade on a national as well as an international level.

Many victims who are coerced or abducted come from poor backgrounds and are uneducated; in the most severe cases it is parents in the poorer regions of the world, who are exploited and tricked into selling their children in order to pay off debts, or just to gain some needed income.

However, it is not just developing countries which are affected by this crime. In Lithuania, a teenage girl was led into believing she was chosen to attend an internship in England, sadly, in reality, as soon as she was over the border she was abducted and brought to a brothel where she was abused and forced into prostitution. Luckily in this particular situation, the Police were able to find her and reunite her with her family. Shockingly still, for more than 2.4 million people this is not the case, and if trafficking isn’t stopped our generation will be remembered as an age of slavery and exploitation.

‘Stop the Traffik’ also campaigns for the end of slave labor on the Ivory Coast, which provides the western world with over 40% of its cocoa. In less economically developed countries, many men are promised a well paid job as workers on cocoa plantations, but when they arrive, having left their homes and families behind, they are forced to work inhumane hours without pay. In essence they are nothing more than modern day slaves.

As trafficking is said to be the fastest growing form of international crime it will be hard to defeat, but with our help and signatures ‘Stop the traffik’ can get the UN to commit to a highly funded campaign to stop this atrocity.

http://www.stopthetraffik.org/