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Guest Blog: To Fight the Spread of Cybersex Trafficking, Anti-trafficking Organizations Need to Innovate

Colleen O'Day, writer and anti-trafficking advocate

Colleen O’Day

Controlling the spread of human trafficking is a monumental challenge. Traffickers are innovating in the tactics that they use to exploit millions of victims, underscoring the difficulty of responding to an international epidemic that can look completely different from case to case and country to country. The rapid expansion of internet access across the globe, for example, has enabled people who would otherwise have limited ability to engage in exploitation to participate in the victimization of child trafficking victims from the convenience of their home.

A recent investigation by The Associated Press highlights the nature of cybersex trafficking and those who profit from this exploitation. Chronicling the bust of David Deakin, an Illinois native who relocated to the Philippines, the AP piece exposes not only the means that many of these perpetrators use to exploit children, but also the mentality of many traffickers and the customers who engage in this specific form of trafficking.

Similar to victims of other forms of trafficking, cybersex trafficking victims often come from impoverished communities, with children in particularly vulnerable positions. Where there is a great deal of sex trafficking in general, such as in countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, there is likely to be a great deal of cybersex trafficking.

In many instances, parents or older family members exploit children and force them to perform sex acts for predators living in other countries. Families who need money rationalize their actions by pointing to the barrier of the internet.

“There seems to be this notion of morality; people splicing the definition of sex,” says Annalisa Enrile, an expert in human trafficking and professor at the University of Southern California’s online MSW program. “They rationalize their behavior by thinking, ‘It’s not really sex because it’s happening via the internet.’ This simply isn’t true.”

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Help the CLC Celebrate World Day Against Child Labor at Our June 16th Event Featuring Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi

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Join NCL’s Child Labor Coalition for a Congressional Briefing

US Policy and its Impact on Child Labor and Trafficking with 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi

In cooperation with the Congressional Caucus on Human Trafficking

When: Friday, June 16, 2017 | 1pm – 2pm
Location: Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2172

Please join the Child Labor Coalition, the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, and the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, for a briefing in honor of the World Day Against Child Labor (June 12), featuring Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi. The briefing will discuss child labor, child slavery, and child trafficking, and explore solutions that will help eliminate these blights on society. Mr. Satyarthi will speak on the need to protect children from child labor in times of crises.

Keynote: Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Featuring:

  • Ana Flores, Recently a child worker in North Carolina’s tobacco fields
  • Jo Becker, Advocacy Director of the Children’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch
  • Kevin Willcutts, Deputy Director of the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking

Satyarthi has been a tireless advocate of children’s rights for over three decades, and recently launched the 100 Million for 100 Million Campaign – history’s largest global youth-for-youth mobilization. He has liberated more than 86,000 children from exploitation and developed a successful model for their education and rehabilitation. In 2014, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Malala Yousafzai.

RSVP to Shasti Conrad at shasti@satyarthi.org.

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About the Child Labor Coalition

The Child Labor Coalition was established in 1989 by the National Consumers League and today is co-chaired by NCL and the American Federation of Teachers. It has 35 member organizations that represents consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights and labor rights groups, child advocacy groups, and religious and women’s groups.