January 11: National Human
Trafficking Awareness Day
Tomorrow is a
special day. Not because of the numeric coincidence of 1-11-17. But
because of the large number of human beings who remain victims of human
trafficking, one of the most degrading, harmful and illegal injustices known on
earth, and we have to be reminded of it.
In 2007, the U.S.
Senate designated January 11 as the National Human Trafficking Awareness Day --
making it the 10th year
the world has virtually ignored it. If we knew the real costs of this
global injustice we would not need to be reminded. This crime is not just
costly. It has deadly and potentially catastrophic consequences for us
all.
The Senate marked
this day not just to generate awareness, but to generate action. Now they need
to take it. Remind them with a phone call, email, tweet, hand written
letter, or personal visit. Why? Because the only thing that remains
missing is the political will to end it. The political will to create a
global structure and system with the means to dismantle trafficking networks
and assist survivors in rebuilding their lives, and sometimes their nation.
There are three
fundamental ‘self-evident truths’ that will persist in our new ‘post-truth’ era
when dealing with nearly any global problem.
1) A
comprehensive approach is required - no nation alone can effectively address
the underlying conditions of global poverty, war, injustice, discrimination,
and ignorance that drive most problems.
2) A new source of
adequate funding is required.
3) Sufficient
‘political will’ to do both of these requires more than compassionate
motivation. It will require our knowledge that protecting our own national
security and fundamental freedoms requires global justice.
Why? Because
international human trafficking is often linked to ‘networks’ trafficking in
drugs (growing globally), arms (think WMD proliferation and terrorism), and
money laundering (involving kleptocrats, banks, offshore accounts and protected
entities even within the US). Some gangs are involved in all of these.
Some specialize and avoid expanding into the specialty of other criminal
groups or institutions. A few violently compete with or eliminate them.
Innocent lives are rarely protected.
Basically, there
are three sources of people being trafficked globally today. The first is refugees
fleeing armed conflicts. The second is “economic refugees” (people migrating
from often lethal economic conditions, ethnic/racial tensions, and/or
gender-based discrimination within their home country. A third category – or a
subcategory of economic migration – is the sex trade. Usually women, but
also innocent children.
With ever-tighter
immigration policies in many countries, would-be migrants seek “passers” -
individuals or groups that offer services’ into other countries, facilitating
cross border travel by assisting migrants in avoiding both legal and physical
barriers. These passers are rarely nice people like those assisting black
American slaves using the underground rail road crossing state border lines in
the 1860s.
Modern human
trafficking is lucrative and will continue to grow without strong globally
enforced counter measures instituted everywhere. Non-governmental
organizations can help many but are virtually powerless to stop the flow,
without joining with all of us in creating the political will here and abroad
for concrete action.
There is another
important need -- psychological healing. Too often women and children who have
been trafficked into the sex trade have a disrupted or violent family life. And
often have a poor image of their self-worth. This is where non-governmental,
non-profit institutions can best serve those in need.
But aside from
human suffering there is another vital reason to shut down this transmission
belt of migrants, drugs, weapons and illicit money. Our national
security. Walls won’t stop the damaging and potentially lethal
consequences of illegal drugs, infectious diseases, or the proliferation of WMD
taking the same pathways as trafficked people.
This takes us back to ‘self-evident truths’. U.S. citizens must
advocate for sufficient economic investment in prevention of the conditions
that fuel migration. That means funding and achieving the globally agreed
upon 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030. Together, these goals
represent the most comprehensive means of preventing most the problems we
face.
The single
greatest barrier to overcome is funding. More accurately, the ‘political
will’ needed to find the financial resources and then most effectively apply
them. Most governments are in dire debt and unlikely to cut their own
domestic programs to fund improvements in desperate global living standards.
Those of us who advocate for global justice need to get creative.
We don’t have to look far.
The very problems
driving migration often generate trillions
of dollars for a powerful few. The powerful few who aquire their
ill-gotten gains and bank them in off shore accounts and/or shaded investments
in more protected nations, including the United States. Researchers
at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, Natalie Duffy and Nate
Sibley, quote the International Monetary Fund which calculates “as much
as 5 percent of
the world’s gross domestic product is laundered money, and only 1 percent
of it is ever spotted.” These moneys could be preventing the unjust
factors that drive migration and human trafficking across borders.
Instead they fuel “Illicit cross-border financial flows estimated at
$1 trillion to $1.6 trillion per year. A 2012 study put
the total private wealth held offshore at up to $32 trillion and suggested
that, since the 1970s, elites from 139 low-to-middle-income countries had parked
as much as $9.3 trillion in offshore accounts.” The Hudson
Institute researchers claim “Some of the money is hidden right here.”
That the US has been a “driving force behind global economic reform for the
past three decades” but has also “played an important role in the rise of the
globalized kleptocrat” and “become one of the leading
secrecy jurisdictions.”
They state that “Delaware, South Dakota,
Wyoming and other states do not require disclosure of corporate ownership,
meaning that kleptocrats aren’t parking their assets just in exotic locations
like the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands anymore.”
Our own
government’s resistance to effectively addressing these global problems
urgently and comprehensively is a serious threat to nearly every aspect of our
nation’s security. Waiting for problems to reach our cities, or trying to
stop them at the border is reactionary and expensive - ultimately
depleting finite and precious tax dollars away from vital domestic needs like
health care, critical infrastructure, and our national economic solvency (all
vital to US national security).
We urge U.S.
citizens this January 11 to use the crime of human trafficking to understand
how our whole world is irreversibly interconnected and dependent on the
‘self-evident truths’ referenced in our Declaration of Independence. To fully
grasp that the fundamental human right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness” is universal, and, that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
acknowledges this ‘self-evident truth’ by detailing the essential precursors to
stability and sustainability.
Our nation is not going to outright institutionalize global justice putting
human rights above states’ rights -- as we agreed to do after the Civil War
within our own nation. So, for now, the least we can do to prevent most
threats to our national security is achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
before 2030.
And time is NOT on
our side. The acceleration of change, largely driven by unprecedented and
barely imaginable advancements in powerful dual-use technologies (cyber, bio,
nano, robotics…), These ubiquitous and affordable technologies capable of
advancing grandiose objectives or monstrously horrific destruction, is NOT
being matched by changes in national or global institutions or effective
systems governance.
Whenever systems
and structures are not designed using fundamental principles -- expect
catastrophic consequences. Before 2010 Haitians built most of their structures
using cement without re
bar. That fundamental flaw costs more lives in 15 minutes than the both
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Those who built the US
Constitution failed to incorporate the fundamental principle of ‘inalienable
human rights’ into that foundation document. That costs more US lives
than both World War I and II combined.
‘We the people’ of
the US, and the world cannot, cannot continue making this same fatal
error. 11117 (Jan.11, 2017) is our ZIP code for speeding the global
delivery of ‘life, liberty and justice for all’. It’s that, or prepare
for the lethal, expensive, and sometimes catastrophic consequences of failing
to incorporate this self evident truth.
Finally.
Remember that most of our global problems from the threat of infectious
diseases, war, genocide, climate change, species extinction… can be prevented,
or more quickly responded to if we globally apply these fundamental
principles. They won’t change. We must.
**********
A grand Thank You!
to Rene Wadlow, a Global Justice Corps participant, who alerted our ‘435
Campaign’ to this important issue and offered a first draft for inspiration.
US Global Justice Corps
(the views expressed below are the authors and not necessarily the
views of endorsing organizations)
ENDORSING
ORGANIZATIONS (as of 12-24-16):
FYI: “Endorsement”
represents an origination’s moral and verbal support (and active support when
they deem it appropriate) to forward the 435 Campaign’s commitment to creating
‘political will’ in every U.S. Congressional District for “global justice”
through achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
“Science
is my passion, politics my duty.” Thomas Jefferson
"It should be the highest ambition of every American to
extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not
only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its
influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or
misery on ages yet unborn." -- George Washington
(1732-1799) Founding Father, 1st US President, 'Father of the Country'
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against
every government on earth, general or particular,
and what no just government should to rest on inference." -- Thomas Jefferson
