Human Trafficking: Recommended Reading

Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

“Trafficking” is modern-day slavery and is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or taking of people by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them.

The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people are trafficked annually. The U.S. State Department estimates an even higher number: about 12.3 million adults and children “in forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution around the world.” It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, is a global health risk, and fuels organized crime.

Victims of trafficking are forced or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Labor trafficking ranges from domestic servitude and small-scale labor setups to large-scale operations such as farms, sweatshops, and major multinational corporations.

Sex trafficking is one of the most profitable forms of trafficking and involves any form of sexual exploitation, such as prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and the commercial sexual abuse of children.

I’ve posted on human trafficking before. To help you get informed and inform others, here is a reading list on the topic.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

A CRIME SO MONSTROUS: FACE-TO-FACE WITH MODERN SLAVERY

Benjamin Skinner, 2008

Journalist Benjamin Skinner reports on current and former slaves and slave dealers in Haiti, Sudan, Romania, India, and suburban America.

THE SLAVE NEXT DOOR: HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND SLAVERY IN AMERICA TODAY

Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter, 2009

Scholars and activists Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter document routine coercive slave labor in domestic service, prostitution, farm labor, factories, light industry, prisons and mining operations.

DISPOSABLE PEOPLE: NEW SLAVERY IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Kevin Bales, 1999

Going undercover, Bales investigates contemporary slavery around the world and reveals how it is linked to the global economy.

“TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT” (FREE REPORT)

U.S. Department of State (annual reports from 2001 to 2011)

This is the U.S. government’s principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking. It is also the world’s most comprehensive resource of governmental anti-human trafficking efforts.

SEX TRAFFICKING

SEX TRAFFICKING: THE GLOBAL MARKET IN WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Kathryn Farr, 2004

Farr looks not only at the victims but the sex trade’s main players, organized crime structure, economic conditions, and role in which various militaries perpetuate its demand.

SEX TRAFFICKING: INSIDE THE BUSINESS OF MODERN SLAVERY

Siddhartha Kara, 2010

Kara author penetrates seedy underworlds and forced labor markets in made India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Albania, Moldova, Mexico, and the United States. He witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed over 400 slaves, and confronted some of those who trafficked and exploited them.

THE NATASHAS: INSIDE THE NEW GLOBAL SEX TRADE

Victor Malarek, 2005

A journalist reports on the most recent wave in the global sex trade and the exploitation of women and children from Eastern Europe.

SOLD

Patricia McCormick, 2008

A fictional account of a 13-year old girl from Nepal who is sold to a brothel by her step-father, based on the author’s research and interview of numerous former sex slaves.

THE SLAVE ACROSS THE STREET

Theresa Flores with PeggySue Wells, 2010

Flores tells her true story about how she was enslaved as a 15-year-old in the world of sex trafficking while living in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit.

ESCAPE AND RESCUE

GOD IN A BROTHEL: AN UNDERCOVER JOURNEY INTO SEX TRAFFICKING AND RESCUE

Daniel Walker, 2011

Walker is an undercover investigator who infiltrated the multibillion-dollar global sex industry for the purpose of freeing women and children from sex trafficking. I reviewed this book for The Gospel Coalition.

TERRIFY NO MORE: YOUNG GIRLS HELD CAPTIVE AND THE DARING UNDERCOVER OPERATION TO WIN THEIR FREEDOM

Gary Haugen

In a small Cambodian village outside of Phnom Pehn, little children as young as five years old were forced to live as sex slaves. Haugen writes about the efforts to rescue these young girls. His team infiltrated the ring of brothels, gathered evidence to free 37 young girls and children, and secured the arrest and conviction of several perpetrators.

RADHIKA’S STORY

Sharon Hendry

A first-hand account of a survivor of human trafficking in India.