This is part two of a five-part series. Read the first part here and the third part here.
Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission (IJM) cites 45 million slaves worldwide; President Trump cites 27 million slaves; Ivanka cites 20 million slave. They are all in the same room and yet, these are their discrepancies.
Kevin Bales concocted the 27 million number years ago. By 2012, International Labor Organization (ILO) claimed 20.9 million. That number never took into consideration the internet that was reported and exposed as the elephant in the trafficking arena by Homayra Sellier in 1999, and by this journalist in 2000. The 45 million is a number used by an Australia NGO to which Bales has consulted.
Poverty, hunger, mass migrations, war zones, terrorists groups, corrupt states, lack of education and other factors, including earthquakes and tsunamis are fertile grounds for human trafficking. If you analyze how many live on $2 a day, that is almost half the planet.
UNICEF claims 10 million child prostitutes worldwide. UN claims approximately 120 million street children globally; 10 million orphans in Africa due to AIDS, 250 million Dalits in India alone, and somehow – the so-called human trafficking experts claim anywhere from 20 – 45 million slaves. Hardly plausible.
Years ago, David Batstone of Not for Sale, when challenged why he then posted 27 million on his website, apologetically stated that he could not get a seat at the table unless he went along with the US anti-trafficking cabal’s narrative. That alone makes this coercive data. That is why ethics is needed in this arena.
Innocents at Risk claims, “In Washington DC, trafficking innocent children is a $100 million industry.” U.S. local NGOs claim their cities are “the” hubs. Yet, Gary Haugen now claims that human trafficking really flourishes in 12 primary countries. How does that compute if poverty is a factor and 2 billion live on $2 a day, according to Haugen in his TED talk?
In 2014, Jean Baderschneider, another Global Fund architect, gave a speech to the ILO, citing their own outdated numbers.
While none of them seem to agree on the landscape, they do agree that a $1.5 billion fund is needed for data they contradict! US congressional teams say that they too believe that these large U.S. NGOs are only interested in money. It only seems logical to ask – Who has the gall to ask for $1.5 billion when they contradict each other, but who would possibly think this was a sane idea to award $1.5 billion to anyone whose data is wrong?
Or, are there other reasons behind their motives? Are these large US NGOs tired of raising monies, and now, they want a hedge fund like monopoly for their financial sustainability to hijack human trafficking for political agendas? Is not that the very globalization issue that “candidate Trump” campaigned against? With no blame to the Trumps here at all, these large US NGOs are tenacious and clever as they have built their cottage industry cabal for the last 17 years, but they have proven their model of self-sustainability financially is not doing the job. Bigger is not better with this particular social issue. If anything, it should be run like a business fighting a business of crime.
The 2012 ILO numbers do not incorporate the massive upside down world we live in which contributes to the increase in human trafficking – the implosive effect by the internet, Arab Rising ramifications, increase in mass migrations unknown since World War II from West Africa across Northern Africa and the Middle East, from the Arabian Peninsula into Central Asia, onto Europe and even landing in the Australian-paid detention centers in Nauru and Papa New Guinea. ILO does not take into consideration the parades of unaccompanied children headed north from Guatemala into Mexico and transported and trafficked along the way on the beast trains to the U.S. southern border. ILO does not count ISIS and the blood, organ, sex, and labor spikes even in Libya, or the Yemen torture chambers, the tens of thousands of children gone missing in Europe, the Boko Haram girls, and the spike in public auctions.
The data today does not take into consideration the massive underbelly of transnational and trans-criminal human trafficking enterprises that engulf terrorism on a scale not witnessed in human history, while transported over the internet by images, and buried in the Dark Net internet recesses of Tor and Bitcoin. The data does not take into consideration the opiate issue in the US and Australia where homeless children engage in survival-sex to get their next fix. Recently, in Maryland, a 15 year old girl, hooked on heroin, was sold by her own mother in state and across state lines.
None of these figures fully grasps the nearly 2 million homeless children in America where homeless shelters for youth close at 5 or 6pm and they have no place to go unless they negotiate a trick for a bed, nor those 65 million migrants worldwide. Nor does it address children at risk who are institutionalized, disabled, in foster care, or recycled through jails, who were repeatedly raped starting at four or five years of age when the suffering began that Philadelphia psychiatrist, Dr. Jean Langberg, calls “compounded trauma” that spirals their lives out of control.
This U.S. NGO cabal leading this Global Slush Fund has no shame because they know their narratives and facts are inconclusive. We need brazen ethics, critical thinking and analysis to grasp the breath and width of this global phenomenon, not promises of funds. No one is addressing the child rape that leads to lives spent in spiritual, physical, and emotional in pain, mental illness, broken relationships, and cycles of human trafficking, except the older survivors whose lives have been impacted for years. In the background, is the ever present Internet that normalizes what in decades past was not accepted normal human behavior, yet the hypocrisy is played out with these large U.S. NGOs because they fall short of fully demanding a zero tolerance of Silicon Valley because they accept their donations.
ILO numbers should be questioned fully. The ILO is a UN agency. The UN still does not fully address their own human trafficking issues. They still have employees and contractors engaged in food for sex trafficking models. While the UN Global Impact wants corporations to take the deep dive on their internal supply chains, the United Nations to date has never cleaned up their own internal contribution to human trafficking. Nor, have these NGOs ever cleaned up their contribution to this disinformation campaign. Instead, they lead with what sells. Instead of reality.
Homayra Sellier, Founder and CEO of Innocence in Danger in Europe challenges the hypocrisy of these US NGOs,
“The UN must go beyond their declarations of child protection claiming they stand for fighting all forms of abuse and trafficking. It is a fact that UN soldiers abuse children in countries and war zones where they are commissioned to protect marginalized communities. If the UN ceases to stand up for the very values it was created for, then the UN’s utility is in question. All member states should stop financing an organization whose priorities are no longer to keep populations safe. The UN must be held accountable for fueling the very child abuse that they publicly denounce. Institutionally, they are no different than any other institution. We are not what we say. We are what we do!”
Rivers Teske, Founder and CEO of Hidden Choices of Westport, Connecticut also challenges them, “It is time to acknowledge that big is not better, that small NGOs on the ground do the work, and that these larger U.S. NGOs want to take credit for their work. We need results. We need ethics front and center. Too many children and families are being profoundly harmed. The internet must be challenged for the sake of humanity.”
Christine Dolan is an investigative journalist, and the former CNN Political Director. She is an authority on human trafficking globally having covered it for over 17 years. She is the author of Shattered Innocence – The Millennium Holocaust, and In the Name of God, two authoritative investigations on the global phenomenon of human trafficking.