ConnorW

Russia V.S. America: Human Rights Violations

Many in America are currently up in arms about Russia being allowed to host the Olympics due to Russia's strong anti-gay or homophobic laws and regulations. People are going to be boycotting the olympics and avoiding supporting them because of their beliefs regarding the LGBT movement. Fair enough! We all have beliefs and we try to live by them. However, I must ask. Are those same people who are boycotting the Olympics going to boycott the Superbowl? Are they not going to watch it because of what goes on during and around the time of the game? I ask these questions because the Superbowl is known as one of the largest human trafficking incidents in the United States. First I would like to provide some background about the human trafficking that occurs throughout the world. These are men and women, boys and girls that are stolen and coerced away from their homes and families in the US and around the world. According to the A21 campaign, a organization dedicated to fighting the injustice of human trafficking, there are still 27 million slaves in the world today. It is the second largest form of organized crime, generating approximately 31.6 billion USD per year. Trafficking for sexual use generates 27.8 billion alone. There are 1.39 million victims that are used for commercial sexual exploitation. Over 25% of sex trafficking victims come from Southern and Eastern Europe. Sadly, only 1 to 2 percent of the victims are rescued and only 1 in 100,000 Europeans involved get convicted. I procured this data from A21's comprehensive report about sex trafficking. According to the Polaris Project, a group dedicated to eradicating slavery throughout the world, The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline received calls from all 50 states and Washington D.C. which were reporting sex trafficking. Read more about human trafficking trends here. The National Center for Missing and Exploited children estimates that there are 100,000 young people under the age of 18 that have been forced into the commercial sex trade in the United States. Read the report here. This issue thankfully does get fair media coverage. Washington Post Miami Herald Huffington Post However, in our modern world social media is more powerful than the news media. Visit A21's website. Share the videos! Share the images! Give money to support the end of this atrocity! Essentially, we as American's have no place to talk about the human rights violations going on in Russia. We tend to forget about major issues that happen all around us in our country, county and community! Yes, sex trafficking has happened in your state and depending on what city you live in it has probably occurred not more than a few miles from where you live! Are you going to stand up for the rights of humans both in the US and around the world? Or are you going to be a loser who lives according to some faulty code of double standard filled relativism? Slavery is still an issue! It did not end with William Wilberforce, it did not end with MLK, and it did not end with interracial marriage! It is still a thriving industry that affects millions of innocent people everyday! Think about these issues! They are important and they do affect you! The facts do not lie! Until we end what happens every day in America we can stop fussing about the rest of the world! Stop avoiding our issues, and problems! And no, please do not call me hateful for saying what is happening in Russia is not bad. It is! Any humans rights violations are bad, but Russia is Russia. They are a former communist country, responsible for the deaths of close to 100 million people. But can you make a change there? Seriously? Think about it. Russia is thousands of miles away. Aside from implementing a new form of government there is not much we as American's can do to change Russia's homophobic tendencies. That is all I have for today. Thank you for reading! P.S. I apologize for the lack of paragraphs. This is my first post on Buzzfeed and I can't figure out how to separate my paragraphs.