WASHINGTON—Nearly 2,000 people came together this week to celebrate progress in the anti-human trafficking movement, and to raise awareness and funds for anti-trafficking efforts. Anna, a young trafficking survivor, performed her song “Lovely” for the first time in public.
“You can’t buy me, because I’m lovely just the way I am,” sang Anna.
The event was the 5k D.C. Stop Modern Slavery Walk, put on by the non-profit volunteer organization D.C. Stop Modern Slavery (DC SMS). According to the group, 1,960 people participated in the walk, which raised $66,596 dollars in donations.
Following the walk, DC SMS held a rally at Constitution Gardens on the National Mall, where advocates spoke about human trafficking, including Tina Frundt, founder of Courtney’s House, a non-profit organization that helps former victims of human trafficking.
“The hardest job I have is convincing people that this actually happens in the United States. … If you don’t get anything else here today, leave here understanding that this can happen to all of our children—because the commodity is children,” said Frundt.
After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest criminal activity in the world, according to the U.S. Department of State (DOS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, and coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor, and include young children, teenagers, men, and women.
Modern-day slavery exists in several forms, including forced labor, involuntary domestic servitude, sex trafficking, and child sex trafficking, among other types, according to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs.
“We had 13 different organizations here today for a walk for freedom to help these [victimized] children … We need to take this walk to Capitol Hill, let them know we care about our children. Let them know that we are not going to accept our children being arrested when they are actually victims and not criminals,” said Shamere McKenzie, an advocate and former victim of trafficking. She was enslaved and abused for one year and seven months after meeting a man who told her that he would help her in return to college.
Local organizers from Friends of Prajwala USA participated in the DC SMS walk. It is the U.S. public awareness and support arm of Prajwala, an anti-trafficking organization based in Hyderabad, India. The group is actively involved in second–generation prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, restoration, and social integration of victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.
“It’s hard to hold these [victims] back [from returning to traffickers], although we rescue people and have them in the shelters, the worst part comes from the society, where people do not want to accept them ... They don’t treat victims as victims in India. We don’t have victim-sensitive rules and laws in India—once they go and raid the brothels, the men walk free,” said Lavanya Ravulapalli of Friends of Prajwala USA.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines “Severe Forms of Trafficking in Persons” as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or sexual services through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose for subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt-bondage, or slavery.
Approximately 600,000–800,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders worldwide, and between 14,500 and 17,500 victims are trafficked into the United States according to DOS.
“Trafficking isn’t just a problem of human bondage; it fuels the epidemic of gender-based violence in so many places—here in our country and around the world,” said Secretary o State Hilary Clinton in her remarks on the release of the 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks 184 countries on the extent of the compliance of the minimum standards to prevent human trafficking, as set forth by TVPA.
“Governments have taken important steps, but we have to really mix the commitments with actions in order to get results,” said Clinton.
In 2003, the Bush Administration authorized more than $200 million to combat human trafficking through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003 (TVPRA). The act augments legal tools which can be used against traffickers by empowering victims to bring federal civil suits against traffickers for actual and punitive damages and includes trafficking under Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law, and it encourages state and local law enforcement agencies to participate in the detection and investigation of human trafficking cases, according HHS.
