Earlier this month Nicolas Kristof, a long time advocate on all forms of modern slavery, wrote a piece entitled, Girls on Our Streets, in which he sought not to bring attention to modern slavery itself, but to the plight of young girls right here in our own backyard. American teenage girls continue to work the streets largely because of the lack of interest shown by authorities and society as a whole.
The issue of modern slavery is nothing new; it has been making headlines for some time now. In general as a society we have become more open and aware of the issues of modern slavery, and if you ask someone do they know about modern slavery, they do quite often know, but the issues isn’t that they are aware of modern slavery it is what aspects they are aware of and what they are not aware of. The response is most often you mean like what they have in Russia, or Asia, and if they are thinking of slavery here in the United States, they are thinking of immigrant girls and women sold in to sex slavery, and all of course this is all a harsh reality, but it is not the only and full reality.
However were we have continued to remain in the dark is in regards the slavery which is covering our own streets. The real face of modern slavery is not one face; the face of modern slavery could be anyone of any class and race, however we often fail to see the many faces of slavery which are lost in the crowd. The faces of young American Latino and African American girls on our streets are seen instantly as prostitutes, they are not looked upon as victims of slavery; however the average of entry into prostitution in the United States is 12-13 years-old.
We live in a world of denial…“it doesn’t happen to here…”, or “it couldn’t happen to me or someone I know”, but the reality is that it does happen here, and it could happen to anyone. Therefore to answer the question, “Are we still clueless about modern slavery?”, “Yes”, but “why” is the question that we really need to answer. We have allowed pimping and a Hip Hop culture to glamorize the pimp life style and thus we as a society have allowed ourselves to turn a blind eye to modern slavery on our streets and in our backyards. The business of pimping is the business of slavery, and as a society if we see slavery as outlandish on the streets of Bangkok, then why are we not outraged to see it on our own streets? If we begin to look through the lens of slavery without the glamorized tint we would see that pimps are nothing other than slave owners.
Slavery is defined as someone, held by force, fraud or coercion…Pimps on the streets of New York, as in the brothel owners in Phom Pen, use the same tactics, each prey on the more vulnerable members of society, they use false relationships of friendship, family and love to lure and hold young girls, while slowly wearing that their mental fiber. Once their hold begins they increase their strength and hold with the use beatings, the threat of violence…they instill fear and use humiliation to chain their ‘slaves’.
Self-esteem is both the chain that binds girls to slavery, but it is also the key that can free them. An impressionable then, or adult for that matter, can find either hope and joy, or suffering and pain, thanks to those who guide them in life. In the wrong hands an impressionable child can become a weapon of war, a tool or a commodity. However in the right hands they can become quite literally anything they want to be. The key to the future…the key to unlocking the chains of slavery is empowerment and self-worth, is the foundation of empowerment. If girls, or any person, are led to believe that they are not worth anything, then they no longer strive for anything further. When day in and day out you are told you cannot reach the high shelf you soon begin to believe it, and maybe you couldn’t reach the top shelf, but in time you would either grow on your own, or given encouragement you would soon begin to seek ways and solutions to help you reach it. Therefore if one is held down for too long no longer do you try to reach, thus you no longer strive for better things in your life.
Pimps and traffickers know that empowerment is detrimental to their ‘business’, thus why they seek out and prey on the most vulnerable, so that they can easily manipulate and breakdown their victims’ and turn them into one of the most profitable commodities in the world. So how does this dynamic continue to grow in spite of the obvious detrimental and illegal nature? Has our society literally kept its self in the dark despite the fact that modern slavery is the second leading trade over the arms trade, surpassing the drug trade, and it is estimated that in two years that the human trade will be number one?
it is the reality of some 100,000 and 3 million minors involved in prostitution every year in the United States (Department of Justice estimates). No longer can we look at these girls as criminals, but we must see them for what they are victims and treat them as such, so that they may become survivors. Please see GEMS to learn more about the program, and how you can support Rachel and all the very young girls who have been victimized by sex trafficking in the United States.
Then how do we permanently turn on the lights and show the full scope and detriment that this plague, this human flesh trade, has become? We must continue to increase awareness that it is a crime that affects us all, seek to address demand, increase funding for rescue and restore programs, including police training and task forces, and most importantly to brake the cycle of the trade we must invest in the empowerment of both at-risk populations and survivors.
If you have reason to suspect that someone is a victim of human trafficking, please call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline on 1-888-373-7888. Multilingual call specialists are on standby 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All calls are confidential.
“I believe the best service to the child is the service closest to the child, and children who are victims of neglect, abuse, or abandonment must not also be victims of bureaucracy. They deserve our devoted attention, not our divided attention.” 
We are happy to inform you that the Foreign Policy Association’s Children’s Rights Writer/Blogger, Cassandra Clifford, will now also be writing on Human Rights for the Examiner. Cassandra will not be leaving the FPA, but working with the Examiner to expand upon the reach and awareness of Human Rights using a unique local perspective. Cassandra is the new DC Human Rights Examiner, for which she plans to cover events and conduct interviews with those working on the ground in the Greater Washington DC area.
April is 
The other night I spent the evening screening two documentaries on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which were focused on the extensive use of rape as a weapon of war in the countries long going conflict. The evening was centered around one of the DRC’s woman’s activists, 
One doesn’t have to think hard about how difficult life can be when you do not have access to appropriate healthcare services and facilities. The developing world and countries at war are continually burdened and the ones who pay the heavy price for this strain are most often women and children. In many societies an added problem comes from gender inequality and a lack of adequate education on healthcare, in particularly female issues, including childbirth. On such preventable and treatable medical condition that thus plagues many women and girls is fistula.
Help women and girls this International Women’s day, go to the 
Around four children a day in the U.S. die as a result of child abuse and neglect every day. An estimated 906,000 children are victims of domestic violence and abuse every year.
