How Human Trafficking hides in plain sight:

Human Trafficking is the process of trading humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This includes forced marriage, surrogacy and extraction of organs.

Our perception of human trafficking is distorted from its reality. When we think about coercion, we immediately relate it to its physical version, like gagging, and being bound; but the reality is quite different, it is mostly emotional manipulation that is done after isolating the victim so they do not think that they can seek help. Cassandra Diamond in her Ted Talk says, in relation to being a survivor of trafficking, “ the man who recruited me, he manipulated me into thinking and believing that he was my protector, my boyfriend, except he wasn't. He was my trafficker”.

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime states that “forced labour affects people working at the margins of the formal economy, with irregular employment or migration status”. The sectors that have been documented portraying human trafficking is the hospitality sector, the agriculture industry, even mainstream economic sectors like healthcare and contract cleaning. Cassandra Diamond states that “brothels hide in plain sight”. From her traumatic experience with trafficking, she expresses that there are many avenues of human trafficking that hide under the disguise of any well-facilitated institution like massage parlours, she says, “ They provide a façade of acceptability, safety, and option on a woman’s part”, but what is more worrisome is that these institutions have valid licences to run legally.

Education and awareness is the first step to battle a social menace, and we, at Let’s Help are going to start a conversation on the topic of human trafficking.