It is the world's third largest crime next to drug and weapon trafficking. Human trafficking has become nearly an epidemic in third-world countries. In a Time magazine article, “Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers pimping daughters,” an Iraqi human rights' activist, Atoor (her last name was not listed), went undercover in Iraq posing as a teenage prostitute slave who had been sold by her mother. “She goes by ‘Hinda,’ but that's not her real name. That's what she's called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country. They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.” (Abouzeid 2009)
Apparently, Iraqi mothers have been selling their teenage daughters for sex ever since the Saddam Hussein regime. In addition, travelers and tourists who venture to these third world countries, run the risk of being kidnapped and sold for sex as well. Ostensibly, the younger the girl, the more she is worth. Girl s from ages 11 – 14 can go for as much as $30,000. “The victims are trafficked illegally on forged passports, or ‘legally’ through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she's travelling with her ‘husband.’ The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work… To date, the government has not prosecuted any traffickers.” (Abouzeid 2009)
I was personally never aware of this problem. It frightens me to consider the possibility of something like this occurring in the United States. After reading this article, it seems women in America may take for granted the freedoms and luxuries we have. I wrote this blog to ask everyone who reads it to consider the possibility of this happening to someone you know. I myself cannot, nor do I want to imagine that chance.
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