How to Help Stop Human Trafficking
We know you are passionate about the issue of anti-trafficking work, but do you sometimes feel like you don’t know where to start or how to help?
Trafficking is a complex issue that involves large, well-organized syndicates of criminals, which means that the anti-trafficking movement needs to be just as focused and organized.
At International Sanctuary, we’re committed to doing our part in fighting against human trafficking by offering focused rehabilitation for survivors. We need your help to truly make a difference!
The Complexity of Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is a complex system involving multiple criminal actors. Often a different trafficker is involved in each stage of the trafficking process. Each stage of the process involves a different type of criminal:
The Recruiter - An individual or group of individuals who target young women to bring them into servitude.
The Transporter - Victims of human trafficking are often removed from their local area and carried across their country or across international borders by transporters.
The Exploiter - An individual or group of individuals who keep victims in service. Victims are often exploited in plain sight without fear of repercussion.
The coordination among criminal actors to make this process possible is elaborate, and their syndicates are large and well-organized.
Preventing Human Trafficking Takes a Sophisticated Network
Leaders in anti-human trafficking have long since noted that the sophistication of the criminal trafficking network must be matched by an equally sophisticated network of anti-slavery organizations if we are to be successful in our efforts. Just as no single trafficker is responsible for the entire trafficking process, no single anti-trafficking organization or individual can effectively work in the entire spectrum of abolition responses.
Organizations are wiser to focus on their particular expertise, ensuring that their work is done with passion, integrity, and effectiveness while remaining coordinated with the larger anti-trafficking network.
The Four Major Divisions of Anti-Trafficking Work
Within anti-trafficking work, there are four major divisions: advocacy, prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation.
Advocacy involves telling the stories of human trafficking in order to raise awareness, to create better laws and policies for survivors, or to attain more resources for them.
Prevention often gets less attention, but it is a critically important piece in reducing the number of victims simply by eliminating the reasons that people are enslaved in the first place.
Intervention is focused exclusively on the removal of a victim from a trafficking situation and involves law enforcement, the criminal justice systems, and emergency services.
Rehabilitation is the most resource heavy and largest division of anti-trafficking, and it is concerned with a survivor’s journey from escape to full reintegration into their community. This division involves case management, health care, legal services, education and job training, economic empowerment, and family reunification among other things.
International Sanctuary’s Role in the Anti-Trafficking Movement
International Sanctuary is an organization nestled inside of the rehabilitation division of anti-trafficking. Our mission is to empower women and girls escaping human trafficking to find their true identity and worth.
Through our social enterprise, PURPOSE Jewelry, we provide more than just a simple job-readiness program. We also provide steady employment where our participants handcraft our beautiful pieces of jewelry in a safe, supportive, trauma-informed workplace community.
How You Can Make a Difference
Oftentimes, those who are not directly working in law enforcement, social services, or survivor-focused NGOs feel like they have no real part to play in the work of freedom. We at International Sanctuary disagree. The network that must be built and sustained must include all of us who care about freedom for modern day slaves. Each of us has a role.
While we work directly with survivors of human trafficking, our donors and customers have a critical role to play in anti-trafficking as well. When PURPOSE jewelry is purchased, 100% of the profits of that sale goes back into the sanctuaries where the women are employed.
Purchasing a beautiful piece of PURPOSE jewelry supports our on-the-ground work and provides the opportunity for human trafficking survivors to be employed in our sanctuary.
As International Sanctuary plays our part, we invite you to join us through your donations and purchases, knowing that in doing so, you too become part of the solution.
