The New Slave Trade Essay -- Essays Papers

The New Slave Trade When I arrived at the brothel, a girl asked me, â€Å"What are you doing here?† I responded, â€Å"I come here to work.† â€Å"Don’t you know this is where people sell their body?† I couldn’t sleep at night; I kept thinking about what she had said. Selling my body? I didn’t know what selling my body means. I thought†¦ it means cutting off parts of my body and sell them; if it was only that†¦ (Sacrifice) Here is another innocent voice out of countless others who have been sexually exploited by faceless offenders night and day. According to the Southeast Asian Women Organization, 30 million women and children have been the victim of sexual trafficking since 1970. The exact statistics are difficult to obtain because by its very nature, commercial sexual exploitation involves underground activities that remove the victims from public view, making them seemingly â€Å"invisible.† Bound behind the doors of brothels or secret rooms, the women and children are hidden away so that they can be exploited at leisure while protecting the perpetrators’ exposure. The gathering of data can only be conducted when the children â€Å"surface† so the data always underestimate the actual scope of the problem. The children â€Å"surfaced† when they run away to local homeless shelters, seek hospital treatments for STDs or other maladies, are caught by immigration service or thrown out of their brothel as ‘useless’, or engage in such activities that cause them to be identified and recorded. Adding to this difficulty is the fact that there is little consensus in national law, across disciplines or in data gathering protocols on what constitutes a child or sexual trafficking. Even the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child a... ... food for me to serve?† - they beat me up if I didn’t sleep with the men - 30 million sexual trafficking victims since 1970 according to Southeast Asia Women Organization - Global Fund for Women provides money for programs - ABC Nepal tires to increase women status - 75% of the population in Nepal is illiterate - Night clubs and brothels grew up like mushroom. 100,000 GI flocking to Bangkok to vent their hedonistic desire is like bringing in mass rape to the country. - Many sex tours and pagkages in Thailand. In some villages, 70% of the girls work as prostitutes - My only day off is when I’m menstruating - Of the 30,000 Burmese women who were trafficked to work as prostitutes in Thailand, 50-70% is tested HIV positive by the end of the year. (Women Project of Asia Watch)