What is Human Trafficking?

"The greatest and most shameful regrets of history is always about the truth we failed to tell."
—Haugen 2005

TRAFFICKING IS…
to be deceived or taken against your will, bought, sold and transported into slavery for sexual exploitation, sweat shops, child brides, circuses, sacrificial worship, forced begging, sale of human organs, farm labour, domestic servitude.

TRAFFICKING IS…
where family members and friends deceive parents to release their children or sell them for as little as $20 each, selling them on to local gangmasters or serious organised international trafficking rings.

TRAFFICKING IS…
growing. 2–4 MILLION men, women and children are trafficked across borders and within their own country every year. More than one person is trafficked across borders EVERY MINUTE, which is equivalent to five jumbo jets every day. a trade that earns twice as much worldwide revenue as Coca Cola.

TRAFFICKING IS…
where victims usually suffer repeated physical abuse, fear, torture and threats to families to break their spirits and turn them into saleable commodities. a person can be sold and trafficked many times.

A UK Trafficking Survivor

"Two years ago everything changed. I was trafficked. I was fooled. I was deceived by a man who said that he loved me. The tragedy is that I believed him. Now I know that love is not shown by forcing me to work on the streets, beating me up, force feeding me and turning me into someone with no mind of my own. I had become like a frightened rabbit. I was terrified that he would kill me. Death too often felt like my only way to escape.

People are product.
I was one of them.
But I am a survivor.

I have a new life but I am haunted by the faces of those who used me, those whom I did not choose, those for whom I was nothing more than a ten-minute thing. Please join STOP THE TRAFFIK and make a difference to people's lives... ... people like me."

To find out how you can support STOP THE TRAFFIK please visit www.stopthetraffik.org