January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. It was established in 2010 by President Obama to raise awareness about human trafficking and educate the public on how to identify and prevent this crime.
President Biden has proclaimed January 2022 as National Human Trafficking and Prevention Month, reaffirming his Administration’s commitment to protect and empower survivors of all forms of trafficking, prosecute traffickers and bring an end to trafficking in the United States and around the world.
In alignment with our purpose and the initiatives of the MJ Foundation, MJ features a non-profit monthly to help raise awareness amongst our constituents. Hope For Justice is committed to ending all forms of human trafficking throughout the world. This organization was founded in the United Kingdom in 2009 and is an international charity with operations across five continents. Hope For Justice is dedicated to helping victims and survivors and bringing about long-term change through partnership with law enforcement, governments, businesses and the general public.
Embracing humanity is one of MJ Foundation’s four paths to making a difference and MJ is committed to supporting humanitarian causes to bring about lasting change. Although humanitarian endeavors can seem daunting, it’s critical to educate ourselves on the issues to know how we can help make an impact.
Hope For Justice’s mission is both inspiring and powerful – to bring an end to modern slavery by preventing exploitation, rescuing victims, restoring lives and reforming society. To understand their work, it’s essential to define the crime of human trafficking.
Human trafficking is a crime where one person exploits another for labor, services or commercial sex by using force, fraud or coercion. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining a human being for these purposes and in these ways also constitute the crime of human trafficking.
This crime is included under the umbrella term “modern-day slavery,” where the victim cannot leave their situation of exploitation and are controlled by threats, punishments, violence, coercion or deception.
To contextualize the scale of this global problem, here are several statistics provided by Hope For Justice:
- $150 billion is made each year from modern slavery – equaling almost $5,000 every second
- 7 in every 10 victims are women and girls
- Many U.S. businesses have modern-day slavery in their supply chains without even knowing it
- Victims are told law enforcement is corrupt and that seeking help leads to being deported
- The National Human Trafficking Hotline received 136,990 reports are potential trafficking in 2019
- Traffickers make threats against victims’ families, using fear and shame as weapons
- 1 in 6 endangered runaways reported are likely to be sex trafficking victims
How can you help? Visit the Hope For Justice website to discover ways to get involved. You can donate to the cause, share facts and statistics to help raise awareness and learn how to spot the signs of human trafficking.
Hope For Justice also has an ancillary organization called Slave-Free Alliance designed to help businesses – particularly those in the supply-chain industry – protect themselves against human trafficking through expert consultancy, training and policy recommendations.
With a problem as heinous and pervasive as human trafficking, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or discouraged. But if every individual decided to take one action step, the potential collective impact would be significant, and our world would be closer to being free of modern-day slavery. Visit the Hope For Justice website today and learn how you can help end human trafficking.
