Brooklyne+S’s+2016+OpEd+Article

= Impact of sex trafficking on women = = =

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“She remembers being given so many drugs that she would sometimes drool on herself. The drugs kept her loose, so she wouldn’t be able to fight or escape. She remembers the men who came to her door, bringing cash, expecting se x. She wasn’t allowed to refuse. She remembers being forced to watched those men tie another young woman to a chair and beat her. The beating was a warning: She’d get the same if she tried to run”- Lynda Marie Oddo, sex trafficking victim.

It’s hard to relate to something as extreme as sex trafficking or compare your life to that of a sexually exploited victim. It’s unreasonable for you to appreciate your freedoms to the fullest extent when you’ve never had them ripped out from under you. It’s difficult to be trapped in a situation where you are violated, lied to, threatened, abused and sold into a state of bondage with no one to turn to and no way out.

Unfortunately, women and young girls are being kidnapped, assaulted and even killed for the purpose of progressing cheap labor and sexual pleasure by being forced into modern days form of slavery. The repulsive practice of enslavement and perversion is prominent in countries like Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Nepal, along with other undeveloped regions where there is a large gap between the urban and the rural, and the rich and the poor.

An estimated 4.5 million people are trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally.

Sex/human trafficking is the second largest criminal enterprise in the world, succeeding drugs smuggling and arms dealing, and has be distinguished as the largest human rights violation in the history of humanity.

Sex trafficking is not a hypothetical situation that solely exists outside of America’s borders, due to the fact that it is occurring in our own country, in our own state, in our own city.

Sex trafficking involves the coercion, the deception and the oppression of women into prostitution, in which the perpetrator involved in “recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person” forces females to sell their bodies largely for the purpose of paying off debts.

“Uneducated, marginalized, and discriminated against, these women may be lured by traffickers promising employment opportunities abroad...Some women are tricked into leaving home through love or friendship and others are kidnapped. Once captured, these women are forced into labor or sexually exploited.”

As citizens of this world aren’t we entitled to our fundamental individual rights to bodily integrity, equality, health, security, dignity, and freedom from violence and torture? Isn’t that why The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established? Isn’t that why representatives of different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world came together to set a common standard of achievements for all people of all nations? Don’t the principle ordinances engraved within this declaration stand for anything?

==== All women deserve the **right to personal liberty and self-rule**. All women deserve the **right to bodily integrity**. All women deserve the **right to freedom of movement and expression**. All women deserve the right to **freedom from torture or inhumane treatment**. All women deserve the **right to be free from forced labor and slavery**. ====

===="When people tell me that women choose this life, I can't help but laugh. Do they know how many women like me have tried to escape, but have been beaten black and blue when they are caught? To the men who buy us, we are like meat. To everybody else in society, we simply do not exist" - Ayesha, Indian victim of sex trafficking.====