This is a guest post by Patrick Hubbard. Patrick is the Founder and President of Living Bread Ministries. The vision of LBM is to expand an interdependent church planting movement among the global poor. In this post, Patrick explains how their vision of planting churches in impoverished areas is an important step towards ending slavery.
The trafficking of human beings for sexual exploitation and forced labor is possibly the greatest humanitarian tragedy the world has known.
The United Nations estimates that there are over 2.5 million people in forced labor, including the sex industry, at any given time. This horrific practice affects 161 countries, essentially every nation in the world. Women are primarily the victims of trafficking averaging two out of every three people. The average age is between 18 and 24, but it is estimated that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year.*
Often victims of trafficking are tricked into captivity with promises of job opportunities. However, they are often sold into slavery to pay family debts or provide money to care for other children. There are even cases where the poor voluntarily give their children to traffickers believing they have found a family to “adopt” them and provide a better life. Regardless of how it happens it is clear that one of the leading contributing factors to human trafficking is poverty.
