Human Rights and Human Trafficking

After the United Nations was formed, several countries came together and decided on a few rights that were inherently given to all humans at birth. If you're not familiar with them, click here to be familiar with them.

Although every one of these rights has the potential to be violated, there are a few specific ones that are automatically violated if a situation can have the label of human trafficking on it.

The two I want to focus on for this story are the right to be free from slavery, and the right to work for pay and have humane working conditions. These rights are violated by domestic slavery, which occurs every day in the U.S. Most of the time we don't realize it; we think slavery is a thing of the past in our country, and some of the time the slave doesn't even realize it. Domestic slavery often begins as a promise for a household job, and ends with the domestic slave being forced to stay in the home and work long hours for little pay. Sometimes they are promised enough money to eventually move into their own home, but they never make enough to feed themselves and leave the home.

Here are a few stories I've collected which can allow us all to inform ourselves on this tragic reality:

Ima Matul, who was ecstatic when promised a $150/month nanny job in a household which spoke the same language she did. She soon realized the trap; the woman she was to work for took her passport, withheld all the money she earned working there, and threatened to turn her in for being an illegal migrant if she ran away from the home. 

Flor Molina, who became a victim of slavery in the garment industry in Los Angeles.

Shiyma, who lived as a domestic servant in the wealthy Northwood district of Irvine, California. Shiyma lived a tragically real Cinderella story. 

Kika Cerpa, who, promised a job as a nanny in the U.S. at 14, was really sent there to be a sex slave. 

A look inside legal slavery within our prison system (yes, this type of slavery is exactly the same. Even incarcerated individuals should, according to the UN, be exempt from any form of slavery, and yet in our American constitution it is legal for prisoners to be slaves)