Last year during the 2006 world cup games there were large influxes of Asian women who were brought to Germany for sexual purposes. As a country who receives approximately 200,000 human trafficking victims a year, the attention was quickly brought to the United States as well as Germany.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice addressed this issue with great eloquence, however, I cannot help but feel that our government will not take bigger strides to stop this issue. She says that the government is well aware of the issue and there has been progress regarding human trafficking. What type of progress? She does not mention this. She only mentions that $400 million dollars has been spent on trying to prevent this issue. I am not being pessimistic, rather, I simply want to hear about the results. The more government officials talk about how much money is being spent on an issue, the less serious people take it. It suddenly becomes a story of resources. “So much money has been put into this issue…” This could be true or not true, but even if there has been 3 gazillion trillion dollars put into the project and used inefficiently and ineffectively, is there a point??? Additionally, it starts seeming like a hopeless problem… and it is NOT.
The government and business are key factors to the end of modern slavery; let’s urge them to step up to the plate.
-Mai
