Trafficking

An additional danger for uneducated women in developing countries are human traffickers who prowl the villages looking for young women and girls that they can entice unknowingly into the sex trade.  Many traffickers make promises of taking children to special schools in the cities or to work in legitimate jobs in restaurants or hotels. 

If women and children can be encouraged to stay in their villages and make an income from the safety of their homes surrounded by their communities they can avoid the fate of those who risk migration who are often never seen again.

Knowledge of these schemes provided in functional literacy training is a simple way to protect women and children in villages from this growing danger.  Human trafficking is becoming a crosscutting issue in development that affects women and children in poverty all over the world.

For more information on trafficking, please visit the following sites:

ECPAT International
StopDemand.org
WorldConcern.org
The Sold Project
U.S. Department of State Trafficking Report
HumanTrafficking.org

In Nepal, 7000-12000 girls are trafficked yearly across the Nepal/India border into brothels in Bombay, India many of whom are then purchased and taken to the Middle East.  Our partners in Nepal are working tirelessly to prevent this trafficking.

In India, girls in South India are at risk for child labor, early marriage and trafficking.  More than 2.3 million girls and women are believed to make up India's sex industry and prostitution transactions totaled $4.1 million a day in 2004.

In Thailand, women and children in rural villages, desperate for income will meet traffickers who encourage them to migrate to the cities to work in legitimate jobs.  Once in Bangkok, Pattaya, Chiang Mai or Phuket they find themselves isolated away from any help and are often trapped and forced into sexual slavery.  Those migrating from neighboring Burma, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam are especially vulnerable and afraid to go to the police for fear of being imprisoned or deported for illegally immigrating even though they are suffering great abuse at the hands of their captors.