The High Toll of Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a $150 billion a year global problem, and ending it requires a global response involving governments, the private sector, and philanthropists, contends Mary Hedahl, head of philanthropic partnerships at the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery. “When it comes to human trafficking, we need to do more than put Band-Aids on the problem,” she insists.

Hedahl has heard countless stories of individual suffering—men, women, and children being exploited and abused across the globe. The story of Moira spotlights a frequent precursor to being trafficked: the vulnerability that comes with poverty. Moira is from Bangladesh, and when she learned from a local recruiting agent that he could get her a well-paying job abroad, she was eager to sign on. She wanted a better future than she could otherwise provide.

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She paid the agent BDT 20,000 ($235 USD), dreaming of a better life for her children and herself. The reality turned into a nightmare when she was trafficked abroad. She received only a fraction of the wages she had been promised, was forced to work without pay in the homes of others to whom she was not contracted, and was physically and mentally abused. At the end of her two-year contract, she was threatened for asking to return to Bangladesh and labored for another six months without pay until she finally managed to escape. But that wasn’t the end to her ordeal.

Once home, Moira struggled to reintegrate. She was owed nearly $1,500 USD in the wages she had never been paid, and that meant she had no money to support her family. On top of that, she now battled the debilitating mental and physical scars from her experience abroad.

With support from The Global Fund, the Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) stepped in to help her receive counseling and medical treatment. She also received life skills training to help her cope with the deep trauma she had experienced.

Caritas, another organization that the Global Fund helps support, provided Moira with education and job skills, empowering her to earn the money she needs to support her family.

Moira is doing well today, but there’s a truly unsettling part of Moira’s story. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), there are more than 40 million victims of modern-day slavery. “Only the tiniest fraction of them ever escape,” says Hedahl. “Moira was one of the lucky ones.”

The Global Fund to End Modern Slavery seeks to combat modern day slavery everywhere it exists. Working in collaboration with partners in the field, they have implemented many approaches. One is to disrupt the system of fraudulent “recruiting” agencies, such as the one that ensnared Moira. With funding from the Global Fund, labor traffickers have been brought to justice, ethical recruitment firms are safely placing migrant workers in jobs without fees, and survivors are receiving the support they need to forge their own futures.

Moira's experience represents only a tiny part of the overall picture of the human trafficking industry. Hedahl and The Global Fund want to mobilize the resources and deploy them globally to make the trafficking industry non-viable. This means exposing what is happening, bringing perpetrators to justice, supporting survivors, and developing sustainable solutions to replace exploitative systems.

Hedahl and The Global Fund are working to make this happen.