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World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

July 30th is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. This year’s theme is Leave No Child Behind in the Fight Against Human Trafficking.

Sadly, 1 in 3 victims of human trafficking, globally, is a child. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, children make up about 60% of detected trafficking victims.

in North America, it’s estimated that 100,000–300,000 children are sexual exploited.

Crises such as pandemics, and economic and environmental challenges, along with the increase of Internet platforms, have increased the risks of trafficking that children face.

  • Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing and highly profitable crimes, generating an estimated $150 billion in profits each year. 
  • Women and girls make up the majority of victims, accounting for 42% and 18%, respectively. They are mainly trafficked for sexual exploitation and are three times more likely to suffer physical or extreme violence than men and boys.
  • The number of detected male victims has increased over the last years: 23% of victims are men and 17% are boys. They are mainly trafficked for forced labour.
  • In the past 15 years, the proportion of children, among identified victims of trafficking, has tripled to 35%.

To learn more about human trafficking, we listened to A Social Justice Podcast that featured Kathleen, Manager of Foundations and Special Projects, and Anti-Human Trafficking Coordinator at Covenant house Vancouver. You can either enjoy the podcast in digestible segments, here, or you can listen to the whole podcast, here.

In Canada, human trafficking is mainly either sex trafficking or labour trafficking. It has been described as a modern form of slavery.

Why does human trafficking exist? Human trafficking is systemic. It’s rooted in inequity and isolation. Every human being has basic needs, such as a roof over your head, food on the table, clean water, and clothing. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illustrates human needs, where the needs at the bottom must be met before one can ascend to the next level of needs. There is another need that social workers look at, which is the attachment need. As Kathleen explains, “Every human being has the need to feel connected to another person, a community, or a family member. Unfortunately, when those needs go unmet, whether that’s because of discrimination, isolation, intergenerational poverty, or homelessness, we see traffickers take advantage of those needs.”

The reason that certain demographics of people who are disproportionally affected by human trafficking are targeted, such as Indigenous women and girls, the 2SLGBTQAI+ community, homeless youth, and newcomers to Canada, is because of systemic discrimination and barriers, and not through any fault of that community.

How does one become targeted for human trafficking? When you compound basic needs, attachment needs, and systemic discrimination and barriers, you have someone who is vulnerable, but still wants their needs met.

Human traffickers look for vulnerable people to exploit. There are stages to the approach that traffickers take. It should be noted that at any stage, a person can be trafficked. To learn more about the stages, a good resource is the Pivoting Practice: Building Capacity to Serve Youth Impacted by Traffickingtoolkit that was coauthored by Kathleen (see page 35 for the various stages).

Stage 1: the luring stage. Once a vulnerable person has been targeted, the trafficker provides them with the attention they’ve been seeking and lures them with meeting some basic needs. Kathleen shares some examples: “A person may be unhoused — ‘here’s a place to stay,’ a person is hungry or cold — ‘here’s a coffee and a Danish,’ you need someone to talk to — ‘I’m here.’”

Meanwhile, the trafficker is learning more about that person and what their needs, hopes, and dreams are. This information is then used in the next stage.  

Stage 2: the grooming stage. This is when the trafficker fulfills all of those hopes and dreams. Survivors have shared that this feels like the best that their lives have ever been. This connection between the trafficker and victim has been referred to as a trauma bond.

Grooming and trauma bonding (aka Stockholm Syndrome) is now called trauma-coerced attachment. Now that we understand that attachment is a need, that need can be manipulated to coerce someone into exploitation. The trafficker creates a situation where they become the only contact to fill the victim’s needs.

Stage 3: coercion and manipulation.  The trafficker begins to hold back from providing the youth’s needs. The withdrawal by the trafficker confuses the youth. The youth’s needs are met as a reward system for doing what the trafficker asks.

Stage 4: the exploitation stage. Having broke the youth’s self-esteem, and often making the youth feel indebted to the trafficker, exploitation begins (see the toolkit for more information).

Stage 5: the recruiting stage. The youth is made to feel important and are told that they are the trafficker’s favourite. They are then asked to train others, which makes the trafficked youth feel powerful and important.

 It Takes a Community

Statistics show that it takes about seven attempts for someone to exit human trafficking because of the trauma-coerced attachment between trafficker and victim.

The trafficker can be a close friend or family member, which can make it difficult to reach out and ask for help. Because of this, Covenant House uses a no wrong door approach, which means that a youth doesn’t have to admit that they are being trafficked in order to gain access to help and resources.

There are people in the community who go to schools and provide education about human trafficking, at an age-appropriate level. They teach what consent is, healthy versus unhealthy relationships, what child sexual exploitation material is, and what peer-to-peer exploitation is. Often a young person will come up to the educators at the end of the session and say. “I think that I’ve experienced that.” But more often it’s, “I have a friend who has experienced that.”

Recently, the government has created temporary resident permits so that newcomers who are survivors of trafficking can apply for one, and from that they can apply for humanitarian compassion grounds, which is helpful because international traffickers tell victims that they can’t seek help because they will be deported.

To learn more about Canada’s strategy to combat huma trafficking, you can read about the National Strategy To Combat Human Trafficking, here.

It really does take a community to combat human trafficking. Prevention efforts should target root causes like poverty and inequality, to reduce a child’s vulnerability. From the government to the individual, we must all work together to stop this heinous crime.