Trafficked

I remember watching the movie Taken for the first time and feeling absolutely HORRIFIED that these events not only HAPPEN but they are a common occurrence in our world TODAY!  Women all around the world are being tricked and trapped in situations where they at the mercy of EVIL on epidemic scales. 

:There are more slaves in the world today than at any other point in human history, with an estimated 27 million in bondage across the globe. Men, women, and children are being exploited for manual and sexual labor against their will.

In response I googled, searched, listened, SPENT hours into the early morning researching what was happening around the world and what people were doing about it.  From the sex tourism industry that is so rife in my grandparents home country of Greece, to South East Asia, Eastern Europe…monstrosities were occurring to innocent women ALL OVER THE WORLD!!

What were people doing about it?

I found a couple of organizations- one being the A21 Campaign and heard an interview with it’s founder- Australian Greek, Hillsong Church minister, Christine Caine.  She shared her journey of discovering what was happening while on a visit to Greece and how SHE decided to respond to it.  I heard her share of a story where she rescued a woman and told her she had come because she cared about her- this complete stranger!! And the woman replied with “if you cared so much, what took you so long?!”

 This information falls on my ears while my hands were in a sink of warm bubbly water, 

washing my designer dishes 

in my beautiful home

 in New Zealand.  

Tears started running down my face as the urgency of the calling hit me and I remembered the stories I had just recently heard while I was in Ethiopia at Women at Risk.

But the stories I had heard didn’t seem so brutal.  The stories I heard were covered in cultural nuances and traditionally accepted practices.  

"Bride snatching...it's common here in some parts of Ethiopia with twelve year old girls especially."

Yet their lives seemed just as trapped.  Maybe God would use me again to find and help women like this one day I thought- MAYBE there is a woman just WAITING for someone to rescue her.  One who might even say to me “What took YOU so long?”

I sat next to a trafficker once.  He made my skin crawl as he arrogantly admitted he was an “employment agent” here to help women attain jobs in Saudi Arabia- his home country.  These were the women who lined the streets outside the immigration office that we sat in and filled it with their young, rural, innocent lives.  4000 a day, they were in number.  Believing for a better life.  Believing that THEY would be the ones to help their families from afar.  Yet this man who was helping them to get there, was dreaming of coming to New Zealand to study English.  He had a translator with him from Somalia who filled the gaps for me during our short conversation in the immigration line.  Somewhere in that conversation he had the balls to ask me if I wanted a job too! His motives were purely selfish and his heart deathly cold.  I guess that's the way it needs to be when you are sacrificing human lives.

Recently I came across a study of human trafficking in Ethiopia.  While I knew that we wanted to help these women out of prostitution, I had read an article someone had posted once about the difference between prostitution and trafficking.  Prostitution was definitely where the heart of our ministry was.  The author talked about how everyone is trying to jump on the Trafficking "band wagon" to get more sympathy, more attention, perhaps even more FUNDING! 

Trafficking is not a band wagon I ever wanted to jump on.  Why would I want the situations of these women to be any worse than they already were.  But after learning more about Trafficking, what it means and how it is disguised, I realized that this IS indeed the work we are getting ourselves into. 

This, not because these women are being locked up and raped as we have seen in movies such as Taken.  But because the definition of Trafficking is:

Human trafficking is the movement of someone by deception or coercion by another person for the purposes of exploitation such as forced prostitution, forced labour or other forms of slavery. It is an organized criminal activity in which human beings are treated as possessions to be controlled and exploited.

Domestic trafficking in Ethiopia, in my opinion, is endemic.  

"A large number of women and children suffer from different types of inhuman abuses and exploitation as a result of trafficking within Ethiopia. Existing studies indicate that trafficking in women and children from rural areas to urban areas is a prevalent and steadily increasing practice in the country." Reads this study on domestic trafficking."

Trafficking here extends far into the fabric of society.  It rips up the potential of the women and children it targets and throws them into the deep pit of hopelessness.  There is a heart cry from the corners of eternity that call US to do something about it. It's found in Isaiah 58:6-7 and goes like this...

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to SET THE OPPRESSED FREE

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

It's talking about fasting...and maybe that fast is from food...or maybe it's from the comfortable life you live, the safety of your own country...to extend into the dark corners of the world to bring rescue.

Someone has to....