Benefit Individuals and/or Communities and Create Positive

¶ … benefit individuals and/or communities and create positive social change. Then explain how these findings might impact practice, program development, program evaluation, advocacy, and/or policy development. Be specific, and provide examples.

Social change: Philosophical perspectives

Despite the lurid press that it sometimes generates, human trafficking is often an unrecognized crime. Because the victims are afraid of coming forward, because they entered the country illegally and fear deportation, the worst abuses are hidden in the shadows. The fact that a prostitute might be underage and working for nothing is easy to ignore by both the 'pimp' who exploits her and the client she services. The fact that the individuals who pick our fruits and vegetables might receive nothing for their work makes us uncomfortable as a society. The people next door who employ a nanny or a maid and pay her nothing but room and board console themselves with the idea that they are doing her a 'service,' even though they are committing a crime.

Studying human trafficking is essential to bring this crime to the forefront of our consciousness as a society. On a very basic level, human trafficking is a difficult crime to keep track of, due to the resistance of victims from coming forward. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime itself stated that keeping exact figures on how many persons are trafficked "may prove to be unachievable" (Loring, Engstrom, Hillard & Dias 2007:1). The fact that the majority of the victims are women further causes many to look the other way -- its victims are the most vulnerable members of society. Furthermore, because victims are often minorities in the nations from which they are expelled -- the poor, the nonwhite, the undesirable -- there is a further incentive not to give the crime the full attention it deserves. The leaders of the exporting nation may be secretly glad to 'be rid' of the victims, and allow trafficking to occur so they will not be pressured to change, while the nation 'accepting' the traffickers benefits economically from free labor. Trafficking is often tacitly accepted in many nations, and endorsed covertly by the power structure through silence, refusal to enforce laws, and even bribery of government officials (Loring, Engstrom, Hillard & Dias 2007:5)

However, by ignoring the crime of the 'slave next door,' we are making ourselves complicit in the perpetuation of this evil. Those who expose trafficking seek to give voice to the voiceless. They also reveal the existence of inequities in the new global economy and within our own societies. The fact that most of the victims are female is important from a feminist perspective, because it highlights how women in many areas of the world often do not have recourse to better themselves economically, other than the sex industry or domestic servitude. Even without a clear idea of how many women are trafficked, the United Nations estimates that 80% of all persons who are trafficked are female (Loring, Engstrom, Hillard & Dias 2007:1).