BECAUSE

Today, the A21 campaign against trafficking starts something they call BECAUSE. Its an effort to bring awareness to what is happening in the world today when it comes to trafficking and lasts until january 21. I can't do much right now to prevent trafficking but everyone can do something. I've decided to spend these days reading about trafficking and blogging about it (in my spare time of course).

So what is the big thing about trafficking?
Well, the selling of people as slaves is today the second largest global organized crime, bringing in about 31.6 billion USD each year. There are 1.39 million victims of sextrafficking in the world, 25% of them taken from Southern and Eastern Europe. Sadly, only 1-2% of the victimes of trafficking are rescued and only 1 in 100,000 of the Europeans who are involved in trafficking are convicted.

A big reason that so many of the victims come from countries like Greece, Albania and Ukraine is because of the poverty and unemployment there. The women are promised well payed jobs abroad and not seeing any better option take them, then are often smuggled out of their home countries and sold. Many women end up working in bars and being forced to have sex with 10-40 men a day. Trafficking is not something that just happens in some countries though, every country in the world is affected by it in some way or other today. Many slaves are brought to London, the same city in which I live my everyday life. It is happening so close to me yet I don't see it.

My lunch break is just about over but I'll be back with more facts tomorrow. Check out http://www.thea21campaign.org/!