Cincinnati Human Trafficking Report
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center released a first of its kind report on the extent of human trafficking in the Greater Cincinnati area encompassing southwest Ohio, northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana. The report's main finding is that human trafficking exists, according to police, prosecutors, emergency room personnel and others, but that more training and stronger laws are needed to combat trafficking.
Click here to download a printable copy of the report.
Slavery in the 21st Century
Slavery still exists today. Whether it is called human trafficking, bonded labor, forced labor, or sex trafficking, it is present worldwide, including within the United States and, increasingly, in your local community.
An estimated 12 - 27 million people are caught in one or another form of slavery. Between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States. Nearly three out of every four victims are women. Half of modern-day slaves are children.
Slavery Defined
Contemporary slavery has been defined and banned in international treaties and within nations around the world. But outlawing slavery has not prevented its expansion into a multi-billion dollar global industry on a par with drug trafficking and illicit arms sales. Efforts to combat slavery will have only limited effectiveness unless anti-slavery laws are recognized, implemented and enforced by law enforcement officers, courts, and political leaders. Public awareness is also critical: slavery will remain an invisible scourge unless or until an informed public becomes actively engaged and committed in helping identify situations in which some form of slavery is suspected. An aroused public also can bring public pressure to bear those in power to address those cases.
These are widely used definitions of modern slavery:
- Forced Labor: "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself [herself] voluntarily." -International Labour Organization
- Trafficking in Persons: "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation." - United Nations
- Trafficking in Persons: "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery." - United States
Slavery: Past and Present
Slavery today is similar to forms of slavery that have existed for centuries in that these characteristics are found:
- Control through violence or threat of violence
- Exploitation for profit
- Loss of free will
Modern forms of slavery however, are much different in several important ways:
- No longer a need for legal ownership
- People caught up in slavery today can be purchased and sold for as little as $100 (compared to 10 times that much in the 1850s). As a result, people become "disposable;" i.e., easily replaceable.
- Slavery cuts across nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, education-level, and other demographic features.
Slave Labor Uses
- Prostitution, pornography, stripping
- Domestic servitude (e.g. nannies and maids)
- Agriculture (e.g. farms and dairies)
- Hard labor (e.g. construction, landscaping, and mining)
- Sweatshops
- Child soldiers
- Peddling and begging
- Hospitality industries (e.g. hotels and restaurants)
- Other poorly regulated industries
Slavery in the United States
Contemporary slavery/human trafficking remains a reality for many victims in the United States, where both American citizens and foreign nationals are trafficked into and within the United States for forced labor. Victims are men, women, and children and are from diverse nationalities, ethnicities and religions. They are found in any situation where another person is willing to exploit another for profit. Victims have included, among others:
- Members of a Zambian boys choir who were forced to sing to earn their traffickers a profit and withheld from obtaining an education were promised;
- Hearing-impaired Mexicans (men, women and children) who were forced to peddle items on the streets of New York to earn money for their traffickers;
- South Asian women forced to work in a textile factory without pay and with constant physical and sexual violence against them
- Young American girls forced to prostitute themselves on the streets of Los Angeles (and dozens of other cities) while under constant physical and sexual violence from pimps and those purchasing the sex;
- Latino men forced to work on farms without pay, long hours, under armed guard, and constant violence or threat of violence against them.
