$112 Stops One Trafficking Victim with John Molineux

Yeah.

One of the, the stats also that I think is, is-- e-that explains the scale of this, 'cause this was an eye-opening m-moment for me, and I think you have this on your website.

You said fifty million people are living in modern slavery.

This is one in every hundred and fifty people, yeah, on the planet.

So vulnerable people are trafficked into slavery through deception, exactly what you had mentioned.

I think one of the initial questions that I feel like humans would have at hearing this is like, why is this a thing? Why is this a problem that the world, an atrocity that the world is facing? Like, what is the reason behind it? [laughs]

Yeah.

That's a tough one.

I don't know if there's a single reason.

Just the depravity of man, the tendency of those who in power or those who are able to exploit the weak and the vulnerability of certain people.

Certainly, like poverty is one of the, the things that creates the vulnerabilities that leads to human, human trafficking.

But a lot of human trafficking, not all, is sex trafficking.

Typically, young girls are trafficked for sex work, and a lot of it is also labor trafficking.

It, it is, for the most part, it's an economic crime.

It's motivated by those who can, exploiting those who are not able to protect themselves.

Yeah.

And I think the next logical question is what are governments doing or what is already being done or not being done that caused the need for, for LJI to have to be created and be founded and have your focus as an organization be towards ending this trafficking? Are you seeing involvement from those governments in those countries that you guys have expanded to over the years?

Yeah, we are.

And slavery is illegal in every country in the world today, even as it's practiced and exists in every country in the world today.

And obviously, things like corruption and bad governance and a failure of law enforcement can be things that, that cause it to not get addressed.

But one of the things that, that I would say is that in many ways, human trafficking is like the ultimate crime without a constituency, in the sense that if people are moved from one country to another place, in the place in which they end up being exploited, where the crime exists and can be exploited, they don't have a sort of a political voice.

So it's very difficult for them to ever become a law enforcement priority.

And actually, in the places where they're in transit, where they're passing through, which is often the best place to intercede and where our work focuses on, you're literally talking about somebody from over there going over there.

Law enforcement just doesn't have it that necessarily on their radar as a priority because it's not necessarily a crime that affects anything locally.

And in source areas, of course, in a source, it is a priority.