Recognizing January 2024 as Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the City of Philadelphia

Recognizing January 2024 as Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the City of Philadelphia WHEREAS, Human trafficking - the trade of human beings for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery, or involuntary prostitution - is a highly exploitative, deeply traumatizing, often violent practice endured by an estimated 27 million adults and children around the world and considered a violation of human rights by every international convention; and WHEREAS, The hundreds of billions of dollars in estimated annual profit generated by human trafficking place it in third among illicit international business, behind only drugs and weapons, and some researchers believe it is the fastest-growing activity of transnational criminal organizations; and WHEREAS, While traffickers exploit people with a wide range of vulnerabilities like poverty, legal status, or housing insecurity for a variety of reasons, including slave labor and prostitution, the psychological stress tactics they use - violence, threats, debt bondage, isolation, withholding of documents, false promises, and manipulation, often through drugs and alcohol - are remarkably similar, and combine to inflict complex, long-term trauma on victims; and WHEREAS, In the United States, where the prevalent form of human trafficking is sex trafficking, it has been estimated by the Department of Health & Human Services that anywhere from 244,000 to 325,000 youth, mostly girls and/or members of racially, socially, and economically marginali…