L.A. Conference Will Focus Grassroots Attention on Human Trafficking
by Ed Thomas
November 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - - The goal of an upcoming conference in Los Angeles is to inform, motivate, and activate the public in response to the problem of human trafficking. Sponsoring organizations hope to take advantage of a recent TV miniseries on the Lifetime network -- a drama that one pro-family spokesman is commending for helping to bring the issue into the spotlight. The two-part original miniseries, simply titled Human Trafficking, aired on Lifetime October 24 and 25 and focused attention on a problem that many are calling the world's largest money maker next to gun running and drugs.
One Christianity Today article states that each year two million women and children worldwide are forced to engage in sex with strangers after being kidnapped and threatened with death. And according to UNICEF statistics, children are being exploited by the sex trafficking industry the tune of $10 billion a year.
Meanwhile, lest Americans suppose human trafficking is an industry carried on only in faraway, exotic locales like Bangkok, Thailand, or in the slums of Cambodia, a New York Times article reports that the Central Intelligence Agency believes "that 50,000 women and children are being trafficked into the United States annually." And one human rights group's report on this issue notes that a gang in California "kidnapped and enslaved girls between the ages of 11 and 14 for purposes of prostitution and trafficked them across state lines."
This worldwide tragedy is the topic of an important event scheduled for November 9, a gathering called the "Preventing Abuse Conference: Protecting Women and Children from Human Trafficking, Abduction and Commercial Exploitation for Sexual Slavery." Tony Nassif is with the Cedars Cultural and Educational Foundation, one of many groups in the Los Angeles Human Trafficking and Child Prostitution Task Force sponsoring the event.
Nassif believes the Lifetime TV miniseries Human Trafficking was a public service, providing a necessary alert to a problem that is national, international, and spiritual in scope. He feels bringing the general public into the loop is central to the solution.
The idea of next week's conference is not to reinvent the wheel, the Cedars foundation spokesman says, but to bring together in cooperation everyone who can help to effect change. "Our mission is to review the various organizations and bring them together under a canopy, on one end, and bring the 'John Q. Public' into the same canopy on the other, merging and mixing them," he explains.
Nassif feels it is particularly important for this conference to include the Church, which he considers the most effective community-mobilizing force to be tapped in seeking the solution to the human trafficking crisis. "The Church is the largest grassroots organization ever known," he asserts. "It can never be re-created by man's doing."
Also, Nassif contends, the Church is perhaps the most cost-effective resource available to address society's problems. "Relatively speaking, the administrative costs of faith-based church organizations is fractional compared to the government," the pro-family spokesman says. And another important consideration, he adds, is that the Church is "motivated by a heart passion and not a job."
The Preventing Abuse Conference will also feature speakers from the State Department, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The government officials will join other well-known anti-trafficking activists and community leaders for the one-day conference.
Registration for the Preventing Abuse Conference is complimentary. The event is being held November 9 from 8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
