SEX TRAFFICKING

- SANIYA GOYAL

We all are aware of what sex trafficking is but we hardly talk about it. Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, including sexual slavery, which is considered a form of modern slavery.

Many of you may don’t even have any idea that the porn industry and sex trafficking are somewhat closely linked. When we think of sex trafficking, its most familiar context is with the prostitution industry. But there are other sorts of sex trafficking separate from forced prostitution. Generally, we think that people choose to step into the porn industry but that’s not the truth. Survivors of sex trafficking are subjected to more than one form of abuse. Some traffickers will take pornographic photos of victims and threaten to shame them by exposing these photos to their families back home. Traffickers will then sell the content, uploading it to porn sites.

Pakistan, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh are in the top 10 countries with the largest number of trafficking victims around the world. India takes the top position with 14 million victims, following China comes in second with 3.4 million victims, and Pakistan comes in at third with 2.1 million victims. Well, I am not so surprised by the statistics.

According to the National Crime Report Bureau, a child is abducted every eight minutes in India. India has also been coined as ‘the world’s most dangerous country for women’ because of rising cases being reported for rape, harassment, human trafficking, and other forms of violence against women.

Human trafficking affects all countries and all genders. We often associate men and boys being trafficked into hard labour and women and girls trafficked into the sex trade, but there is a risk in solely imagining these gendered stereotypes. But let me clear your thoughts upon this men and boys are victims of sex trafficking, too.

Every day through the newspaper we see new faces and down there is written ‘missing’ who knows how many of them are sex trafficked. The brutality of sex trafficking is still hidden. There are thousands of movies and documentaries filmed to create awareness around the globe regarding sex trafficking. In my opinion sex trafficking is like any other heinous crime irrespective of the gender who is held captive under this dark world. However, the grim reality is the victim does not get to see the light of justice.