PPAG Reports

PPAG attended Making Human Trafficking Visible Locally (Peel) and Globally at the Sexual Assault/Rape Crisis Centre of Peel

Here are some key points:

• Trafficking of persons is not just an issue faced globally but also one that occurs in Canada and in the Peel region.
• Trafficking is often thought of in terms of migration and forcing another across state boundaries but can also include forced labour and sexual exploitation that occurs domestically.
• Trafficking as defined by the U.N includes “ the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or the use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”
• The difference between prostitution and trafficking are, when someone is trafficked there is a genuine fear and threat of leaving that situation made by the trafficker.
• Peel Regional police officer noted that many young girls (aged 13-25) who are in vulnerable positions in society become the target for traffickers who over a period of time are groomed to work in prostitution where the threat and fear of the trafficker inhibits the ability to leave the situation.
• Increasingly the online world has been an aid to traffickers who use sites like Craigslist and Kijiji as a place of recruitment.
• Participants at the roundtable noted that when they have been able to help women escape from traffickers they end up in the same vulnerable position in society increasing the chances of being trafficked again.
• Who is being trafficked?  Men, women and children all are the victims of traffickers. Women in poorer communities affected by poverty and homelessness may turn to sex work to make ends meet putting them in a potentially harmful situation with traffickers. Refugee and migrant workers whose non-status and lack of knowledge of Canadian Laws make them more vulnerable as well. 
• For more information and resources you can check out http://ccrweb.ca/en/trafficking

What Can PPAG members do to help?

• Learn as much as you can about human trafficking
• Understand how gender, race and class operate in stories of those who are trafficked
• Continue towards eliminating poverty

Jessica Henwood