At the recent G-7 Summit in Schloss Elmore, Germany, the EU, and the G-7 leaders identified five key areas in which the two organizations hoped to make a difference: Ukraine, food security, energy, climate, and health.
Noticeably absent from the list of the leaders’ concerns was the humanitarian scourge of human trafficking, an evil sustained in large part by demand from the U.S., Great Britain, and Italy, among others.
President Biden, at the outset of this meeting of the world’s preeminent economies, sought to adorn himself with the cloak of moral leadership. His partners quickly, and rightly, reminded him of that painful, nagging issue of abortion – taking away the constitutional right of millions of Americans.
Trafficking of women and children is the fastest-growing illegal international industry that generates 32 billion dollars in profits annually. I noted earlier that this is not just an international phenomenon; it’s a domestic problem as well. I am referring specifically to the $150,000,000 child pornography industry in the United States. And the former was before the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. More than four million refugees have fled Ukraine following the Russian invasion, the vast majority of them unprotected women and children. Ukrainian males between the ages of 18 and 60 were restricted by Ukraine’s government from traveling. They were needed to fight the Russians at home. Those defenseless millions of frightened, weary refugees crossing Ukraine’s western border into Poland, Moldova, and other neighboring states are vulnerable to traffickers because they lack resources or a place to go. Often, they believe offers of support, food and shelter, are genuine.
It is public knowledge that the preferred markets for trafficked women, especially from Eurasia, are the U.K. and the U.S. where clients place their orders for victims as blithely as they would for fruits and vegetables in a supermarket. The difference, however, is that this is a human market with real lives and futures at stake.
Why was the issue of human trafficking omitted from the agenda? Let’s assume it was subsumed under “Health.” If so, why? Human trafficking is a form of global pestilence the G-7 should confront head-on. It may be embarrassing, but it is no less important because it continues to be one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet. The Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe has called for “increased international cooperation in protecting women and children from traffickers.
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It may be embarrassing, but it is no less important because it continues to be one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet. The Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe has called for “increased international cooperation in protecting women and children from traffickers.
The leaders of the world’s greatest democracies are keenly aware of the perfect storm of global conditions that daily produce millions of destitute, homeless, and helpless women and children vulnerable to human trafficking: regional wars, global starvation, the pandemic, climate change, and mass migrations of displaced people. UN organizations, NGOs, and community-based organizations remind us daily that we must shift resources from winning the war against these conditions to saving the lives caught up in them.
President Biden and his G-7 partners stood atop the world’s most prestigious platform and failed to include trafficking on their agenda. They could have called for greater vigilance to reduce demand on “policy, legislative, and practical levels.” They failed to do so as the world watched. Why?
