one night I was very bored and I decided to watch Hulu and saw a movie called No Exit. It was brand new so I thought I'd watch it. When I was around 30 minutes into the movie something big happened, this girl realized there was some little girl in the back of this van. The girl then goes inside to warn others, and they said she was probably getting trafficked and the movie goes on. It shows that the little girl was taken from her home and they were holding her for ransom. This really made me think about trafficking and I started to wonder what are we doing to stop this. How can we help put an end to human trafficking I think that the world isn’t doing nearly enough to stop human trafficking. So I'm going to talk about ways people can help stop trafficking. What is our government doing to stop this, and the statistics of all of it. 

 First, ways people can help stop trafficking-as claimed by the US Department of state encourage your local schools to raise awareness. Having meetings or having teachers teach students the dangers and how to be safe. The biggest way to tell if someone is being trafficked is people around at the person's school. That is where most kids are, and if people live in a bigger city, there is a higher chance someone is getting trafficked than in a smaller area. It can be for any reason whether it's for money, child labor, or, even sex, says Priceonomics.com.

 That gets me to my next point, people need to educate themselves. Ask someone to educate people of the indicators of human trafficking. Which is one of the main ways people catch human trafficking. According to the US Department of State, some of the indicators are a kid that doesn't show up to school or rarely does show up or has a weird schedule. Someone may be showing signs of abuse, even common tiredness can be a sign. Bruises or scratches are another common sign. Another sign is the wrong clothing for the weather, for example wearing shorts in the winter. If they have rips or dirty clothes could show signs. Rehearsed responses, like they might have practiced what they are supposed to say to questions.

Second, what is our government doing to stop this? Not enough of it all. We signed a law with many other countries enforcing tighter law enforcement on the border to help stop trafficking. A lot of trafficking happens around the border, often trying to get to another state or country. One thing we did was increase the jail time to a minimum of 10 years with potential life in prison, also it is now a federal crime. The fines could add up to 1.5 million dollars, but remember all this depends on the situation and seriousness of it.

Third is the statistics of it all- the international labor society claims that 40.3 million people are victims of human trafficking globally. Girls account for 71 percent of victims, and the average age is 15. Forced labor generates almost 150 billion dollars of illegal money per year. The top cities in the country are Houston, Texas, Washington, New York, California, and Georgia according to priceconomics.com. 3.8 million adults are trafficked per year for sexual exploitation. In 2019 according to Fox 9 News, 26 defendants were convicted for sex trafficking.

In conclusion, I learned about sex trafficking through a movie and realized how bad it really was. I thought what are we doing to stop this?'' I also thought “what can I do to help stop it?”.  I talked about ways people can help stop trafficking, what is our government doing to stop this, and the statistics of all of it.