Wellstone Action!

posted by Lstevens

JANUARY 11, 2010

Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day and the Sheila Wellstone Institute would like to bring awareness to the $70 billion dollar a year industry that includes sexual slavery or forced labor for millions of women, children, and men.  The most common forms of sex trafficking are prostitution, mail order brides, and sex tourism.  

In 2008 the Sheila Wellstone Institute held Camp Sheila for Forgotten Victims:  Trafficking and Prostituted Survivors to train on effective grassroots organizing tools and lobby their legislators at the Capitol.  What we learned at Camp Sheila was the average entry age for prostitution was 11 years old.  That nationally, 450,000 teens run away every year and within 48 hours of leaving home will be lured into prostitution.  And that the survivors of prostitution and trafficking are unheard because it is a shameful crime for the communities and community members would rather prosecute than protect.  We learned that getting a job after 15 years of prostitution is almost impossible when asked about job experience and what you did to support yourself during that time.  

We learned that women and children who are sex slaves are often beaten, raped, and forced to work with health related conditions that they could not seek medical care for because someone may ask questions.  Often the contact they did have with medical staff or law enforcement did not result in intervention but rather a conviction for prostitution which lands them in jail or court with a record.  

The health risks to women and children who are prostituted and used as sex slaves are enormous and is a human rights violation when there is no access to safety or health care.  The health risks include bodily injury, stress, sexually transmitted diseases, disability, unwanted pregnancies, HIV, AIDS, miscarriages, abortions, and murder.  While we bring awareness to the issues of health care in our country we must remember the health concerns of those who are not at the policy making table to advocate for themselves until we humanize the forgotten victims of sex trafficking and sex slavery.  

Senator Paul and Sheila Wellstone worked hard to bring the issue attention and put it on the public agenda.  Calling human trafficking "one of the most horrendous human rights violations of our time", Paul felt that passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) marked a major shift in policies protecting human rights. 

On the day Congress passed TVPA, Paul went to the floor of the Senate and said, "I believe with passage of this legislation...we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle for these women and girls and sometimes men forced into forced labor.... This is the beginning of an international effort to go after this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse."  

Today, the Sheila Wellstone Institute is committed to advocating and organizing for policies that protect survivors of sexual trafficking and end the practice.   We encourage you to volunteer at a local shelter that serves prostituted women and girls, donate funding to your local shelter, volunteer to work with prostituted teens, and work with organizations to expunge felony records for prostituted women.  

Most of all, make a difference for those who have not found their voices yet.

Please click below to read an article from Suzanne Koepplinger, SWI steering committee member and the Director of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, who is making the difference for hundreds of Native women every night in Minneapolis.

>> Native Women Travel a Violent Road by Suzanne Koepplinger

photo courtesy of IOM, Ukraine