Sexual favors pays slave labor

Sex is everywhere—in television, advertisements and music videos. Internationally, sex is also advancing as trade itself as women, teenage girls and children are sold as slaves for sexual acts. Children as young as 3 years old are being forced into the international sex trade.  Every year millions of people are sold into the international sex market and then shipped to other countries to work as slaves. The term “trafficking” has been coined to refer to the transfer of women and children from country to country, according to the LookSmart.com article “Sex Slave Trade Enters the U.S.” written by Catherine Edwards and James Harder. Edwards and Harder write that sex trafficking began in the Philippines and Thailand after the Vietnam War to cater to soldiers. Then people traded people for sex as “party favors” for Japanese, American, Canadian and European men in Southeast Asia, she said.

The Silent Auction

Sex trafficking entered the United States as women were brought from Asia. Most of these women were poor teenage girls who were separated from their families and forced to perform sexual acts. For years women and children have been transported through this underground market of prostitution without anyone noticing, but now it’s time for the silence to finally come to an end. Organizations like the United Nations and Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE), based out of San Francisco, are only a few of the groups that assist victims of trafficking, prostitution and sexual exploitation.

The Law

The international sex trade is a form of human slavery where people are coming from powerless positions, Dr. Jamie Funderburk, clinical associate professor and psychologist at the University of Florida, stated in a phone interview.

“Vulnerability and a lack of a political foundation are significant factors for the sex trade as well,” Funderburk said. “The trauma is on-going by allowing these children to be cut off from their familiar surroundings.”

The laws that prohibit this heinous practice differ from country to country, she says.

“In some countries, [sex trafficking] is not illegal,” she said. “In Afghanistan, girls ages 8 to 11 have pre-arranged marriages by family members and are forced to marry men 60 or 70 years of age. In that instance, forcing marriage on a young girl, which sometimes includes forced prostitution in some areas, are parts of the culture.”

The United States has taken measures to prohibit the sex trade through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

It states that governments should administer stricter punishments to people who are involved in sex trafficking. These punishments will adequately reduce the number of trafficking cases that are affecting humans in the United States and in the Middle East.