Human trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world as well as the least prosecuted. Executive director and co-founder of the FAIR Fund Andrea Powell joins Peter to explore this crime and the links between trafficking and the travel industry.
Peter Greenberg: We talked about this issue after I returned from a UN conference on this human trafficking in Cairo a few months ago. Most people think human trafficking is just about prostitution; it’s not. Most people think it’s just about sex; it’s not. And most people think it doesn’t occur in the United States and they’re wrong. Am I right?
Andrea Powell: You are absolutely right. Human trafficking happens everywhere around the world. When we think of it as a global problem, unfortunately we have to include the United States as well.
PG: Here’s a scary story: a mother was traveling from Philadelphia to Palm Beach on a US Air flight. At the ticket counter, she noticed the guy in front of her who was checking in with a 9-year-old boy who seemed listless and confused. When the counter agent gave the man the tickets and mentioned “have a nice flight to West Palm Beach,” she heard the kid say “you told me we were going to North Carolina.” That was the first sign.
She alerted the counter agent who did nothing. And she told the gate agent, who did nothing.Then she saw that the kid behaving like he did not know the man he was traveling with. During the flight, the woman again alerted a flight attendant who was a mother herself. The flight attendant went to the captain, another parent, who called ahead to the authorities. When the plane landed in West Palm Beach the authorities were there. They interrogated the man and guess what? It was a child-trafficking case.
The good news is that a number of airlines have now signed a new protocol for training their employees on how to better spot and stop trafficking before it starts. Part of what your organization is doing is the after care of providing safe houses and entry back into society for the people afflicted.
AP: FAIR Fund works in the United States as well as globally to identify and assist young people who have experienced situations of sex trafficking and labor trafficking. We work in the Washington, D.C. area where we’re based as well as in Russia, Serbia and Uganda. The woman from the West Palm Beach flight is absolutely a hero for being willing to follow her instincts and take a stand. As travelers if we find these cases, we are obligated to report them.
PG: We’re really dealing with slavery in 2011.
The most important way to get involved is by simply printing out or writing down in your wallet the trafficking hotline number: 888-373-7888. It’s the national health and human resources hotline run by a colleague organization of ours, the Polaris Project.
AP: Absolutely. This is a modern form of slavery. And many people think this is something that only affects people in Thailand or Russia. But it happens everywhere around the world. In fact one of the common misconceptions, even here in the United States, is that trafficking only happens to kids from Russia or Thailand coming into the U.S. But in fact the most exploited commodity, in terms of human trafficking here in UnitedStates, is American children.
Around 100,000 children are at risk of sexual exploitation in the United States every year, according to a University of Pennsylvania study. Furthermore, thousands of children are trafficked into this country annually, according to the State Department. This is a problem that affects us all. It not only takes law enforcement and organizations like FAIR Fund to get involved, but we need people from all walks of life around the world to get involved.
The most important way to get involved is by simply printing out or writing down in your wallet the trafficking hotline number: 888-373-7888. It’s the national health and human resources hotline run by a colleague organization of ours, the Polaris Project.
Call anywhere in the U.S. or abroad to make a report. Even if you’re not sure if this is a trafficking situation, I’d always just make a call anyways. If it doesn’t come to anything, that’s fine. But wouldn’t it be more of a shame that you didn’t call and that child continues to be exploited and abused? Say, it’s a teenage girl at a bus stop in the middle of the night in Miami and you know she shouldn’t be out there. Or a child working at a restaurant at 11 p.m. These are all red flags.
FAIR Fund and our colleagues can’t be everywhere at once, so we really need fellow travelers and fellow people here in the United States and abroad to work with us and do this work.
By Peter Greenberg for PeterGreenberg.com.
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