Hope!

How did you honor National Human Trafficking Day yesterday? I spent most of the day in bed sneezing (and, let's be honest--rooting for the Chargers to lose), but had time to read a quick book on how Shared Hope International came to be and what experiences Founder Linda Smith has seen in the world of child sex trafficking. The book is called “From Congress to the Brothels,” and I underlined a few things within the pages to share with you that I’ll post sometime either later tonight or tomorrow.

In the meantime, Nicholas Kristof has no shortage of good material to read/hear/watch/learn from. On Saturday he posted an article on “Striking the Brothels’ Bottom Line,” and looked at how the Cambodia sex trade has changed over the past few years. This is probably the most encouraging thing I’ve read in a long time. The brothel business, at least in Poipet, is becoming more difficult to sustain--and more importantly, less profitable. Increased pressure from aid groups, the media, and the U.S. State Department have made the practice more risky.

While brothel owners seem to think violence and enslavement have their competitive advantages, Kristof reports that

"Brutality has its own drawbacks as a business model, particularly during a crackdown, pimps say. Brothels that imprison and torture girls have to pay for 24-hour guards, and they lose business because they can’t allow customers to take girls out to hotel rooms. Moreover, the Cambodian government has begun prosecuting the most abusive traffickers.

'One brothel owner here was actually arrested,' complained another owner in Poipet, indignantly. 'After that, I was so scared, I closed the brothel for a while.'"

Kristof writes,

"Sexual slavery is like any other business: raise the operating costs, create a risk of jail, and the human traffickers will quite sensibly shift to some other trade. If the Obama administration treats 21st-century slavery as a top priority, we can push many of the traffickers to quit in disgust and switch to stealing motorcycles instead."

I never thought I'd be in favor of stealing expensive personal property... but if it means the definitive end to exploiting precious, living little girls for profit, then I'll raise a toast to that.

Image by Albert Ip