Holistic Survival #15 – Sex Trafficking is Modern Slavery

Has slavery truly been abolished in modern society? Unfortunately not. Siddharth Kara is the first Fellow on Human Trafficking with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a founding member of Harvard’s Advisory Collective on Human Rights. He is also the author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. Kara first encountered the horrors of slavery in a Bosnian refugee camp in 1995. Subsequently, he traveled to sixteen countries on five continents to further research these crimes. Kara tracked down sex slaves in brothels, clubs, massage parlors, apartments, and street corners, and other types of slaves in factories, brick kilns, carpet looms, agriculture fields, mines, quarries, and victim shelters. Across five continents, he witnessed firsthand the sale of human beings into slavery, interviewed over five hundred slaves, and confronted some of those who trafficked and exploited them. Visit https://holisticsurvival.com/podcast-with-holistic-survival.php. In his book, Kara draws on his background in finance, economics, and law to provide the first ever business and economic analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focusing on its most profitable and barbaric form – sex trafficking. Don’t miss this illuminating interview as Jason and Siddharth uncover this disturbing element in today’s society.

Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival Show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, how to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places, and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic survival show. This is episode #15 and I’m your host Jason Hartman. Thanks for joining me today. Today we are going to talk about a very disturbing subject. And I tell you, this is pretty disturbing. I’m not sure if you saw the movie Taken, but that movie really disturbed me when I saw it. And today’s show is about human trafficking. So I’ve got a well-known author that I’ve interviewed on the topic and we’ll go to that in just a moment here. Before we go to that, I want to remind you that we are all about the three pillars of holistic survival, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. If you want to focus on the profits or the money aspect, be sure you’re listening to my Creating Wealth show or watching my Creating Wealth video podcast and also the speed of money which is the short two minute long episodes that are just quick tips on home businesses, entrepreneurship, internet marketing, income property investing, finance, economics, forecasting, etcetera, in just two minutes. That’s called the speed of money. So all of those shows are available to you for free. Make sure you take advantage of them and here is the interview on human trafficking, a rather disturbing subject, but it’s important you know about it. It’s my pleasure to welcome Siddharth Kara to the show. He’s the first fellow on human trafficking with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and he is out with a new book entitled Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. And I think you’ll find today’s subject to be very disconcerting as I have. If you have seen the movie Taken, if you have children, you’ll definitely want to hear this interview as disturbing as it may be. We’re going to be talking about some interesting things and some solutions to what is becoming a very big and very profitable problem all around the world and that is human trafficking. Siddharth, welcome.

Siddharth Kara: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Jason Hartman: Well, it’s great to talk to you about this rather disconcerting subject. What is going on out there? I mean give us an overview. This is just really amazing that this happening in contemporary times here.

Siddharth Kara: Well absolutely. Taking a step back, we have to take a look at what’s going on around the world, vis-à-vis slavery in general. And sex trafficking is a component of contemporary slavery. It is in my mind the most barbaric and grotesque form of slavery. It’s also, by far and away, the most profitable. In general, there are about 29 million slaves in the world. These are people who are held captive and coerced against their will to perform some sort of work, labor, goods or services. And again, the most profitable, the most profitable and arguably most barbaric form of that exploitation is sex trafficking, people who are trafficked and coerced into prostitution for profit without the ability to walk away. And one key metric that I’d like to set forth for people to give them a sense is even though only about 4% of the world’s slaves are trafficked sex slaves, those same slaves generate almost 40% of the profits enjoyed by slave owners worldwide.

Jason Hartman: So 40% of the slave trafficking is sex trafficking?

Siddharth Kara: No, no, no. Even though only 4% of the slaves in the world are trafficked sex slaves…

Jason Hartman: Oh, okay.

Siddharth Kara: They generate almost 40% of the profits enjoyed by slave owners worldwide.

Jason Hartman: So this is without a doubt the most profitable portion of the slave trade.

Siddharth Kara: It is by far the most profitable. All of slavery in 2009 will generate profits for exploiters in excess of 95 billion dollars.

Jason Hartman: Wow. What’s interesting about that metric, I don’t know how meaningful it is to the listeners without maybe a comparison, and I’m not sure you can make this comparison, but I would just be interested because drug trafficking, arms trafficking, any other sorts of big organized illegal activity like this, how big a problem in this in comparison?

Siddharth Kara: Slavery is second to the drug industry in terms of global illicit enterprises. I mean total profits from drug trafficking, the latest data from the UN, United Nations office on drugs and crime, is around 150 or so billion dollars in profit. Slavery comes in at about 95 billion dollars in profit, but that doesn’t tell you the whole picture. Because slavery, the exploitation of human beings, is much more profitable. What that means is as a business enterprise. The exploitation of human beings as slaves is actually more profitable than any form of illicit activity in the world.

And you might say now what does that mean? How can that be? Let’s took a look at a trafficked sex slave. This would be an individual, young woman, girl, maybe even a boy, who is taken from some area, could be a poor area, refugee camp, someplace where there’s any sort of conflict or corruption or lawlessness and they’re trafficked and put into some brothel and forced to have sex 15, 20, 25 times per day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And every one of those hundreds and eventually thousands of forced sex acts generates profit for the exploiter, which is why slavery and especially sex trafficking is so profitable.

Jason Hartman: When you sell a batch of illegal drugs that you’ve smuggled, it’s a one-time sale. But this is a repeat, I hate to say it, but residual income, isn’t it?

Siddharth Kara: Well, that’s exactly right. It is of course a grotesque human rights violation, but looking at it somewhat coolly and clinically as a business enterprise, because that’s also what it is, human beings can be monetized, especially for commercial sex, many, many hundreds if not thousands of times. And there’s a near limitless supply of other vulnerable, dislocated, poor individuals who can take the place of the person you’re currently exploiting when they eventually perish.

Jason Hartman: This is disgusting. I mean my blood pressure’s rising just thinking about it. Maybe before we get into some regions and parts of the world where this is especially prevalent and they all have sort of different dynamics that I can’t wait to hear you tell us about, maybe one part of this is for anybody listening who is a parent, they have got to be just tremendously concerned about this. Do you offer any tips here on how these scumbags are doing this type of thing? I mean I remember I saw a show or something on it a while back where they were posing as like a modeling agency and they would tell these girls that they could be models but they’d have to go to this other city and have their photos taken, and this was all a big pretense for this human trafficking. What are they doing and what can people do to really safeguard themselves or the children or whatever?

Siddharth Kara: Well, in general, slavery and trafficking are thriving in the world because it’s a very high profit, low risk enterprise to be involved in. Now there are any number of ways in which these exploiters acquire more slaves. And you mentioned one, defeat. In this case, it was a false modeling offer, a false job offer. So deceit is a very common tactic used to acquire slaves. Could be a false job offer, false marriage offer, false study abroad, any sort of ruse that’s used to ensnare someone who’s vulnerable and desperate to find a job or to get married or to go abroad for some reason and maybe their current country is racked by civil strife, the economy is corroding, there’s no jobs or opportunities, whatever. Okay, so deceit is a primary tactic used to acquire individuals and traffic them into exploitation. There are other tactics used as well. Sometimes family members are so desperate and poor that they sell a child. Sometimes agents find vulnerable young women and profess love and shower them gifts and convince them to migrate, and of course that’s a one way ticket into exploitation. And sometimes former victims become allies of slave exploiters and go back to their home regions to recruit new slaves.

Jason Hartman: Former victims? That is amazing to me.

Siddharth Kara: Well, it’s a tough one to swallow, but take a step back and imagine for a moment you’re a young child, let’s say you’re 15 or 16, 14, or maybe you’re even a young adult, 20, 21, 22, and you get trafficked to some brothel and you suffer 10, 15, 20+ counts of rape every day. And anytime you object, well you’re beaten, punished, tortured and starved. So eventually you accept that one evil better than another. And you may ultimately then…How do you survive this? You come to terms that this is the life you have. It may be the best life you have. And if you behave a certain way, you can at least survive, and maybe that means becoming even an ally of the person who’s exploiting you.

Jason Hartman: It’s almost like a Stockholm syndrome.

Siddharth Kara: Like a Stockholm syndrome type transformation. Well, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but I’ve seen it enough that those same people then become allies of the exploiter and will be dressed in nice, fancy clothes, given big pocketfuls of money, and told that if they go back to their home area, they’ll get a commission for each person that they can recruit. And of course they go in with deceit and the false offer of some opportunity to make good money in the big city.

Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. Okay, go on.

Siddharth Kara: Well, all that to say there are a lot of tactics that are utilized and they are very successful. Even when people know the risks, a lot of people argue well we need awareness campaigns so that people know that they shouldn’t take these offers of risky migration or possible false job offers. Unfortunately, even when people know the risks, they are in a condition that’s already so desperate that they hope and pray that this is the legitimate offer and nothing bad will happen to me. So this is why traffickers meet with great success when they go into poor areas, areas where there’s virtually no opportunity or maybe refugee camps, wherever they can find a captive group of very desperate people, they meet with great success at recruiting potential slaves.

Jason Hartman: So as the economy worsens, even from that perspective it gets worse because like even in America, a job offer, appealing to someone’s ego of the modeling thing and that kind of glamour, and then of course refugee camps in very affected countries around the world, I mean boy, this is a scary subject, no question about it. So that’s the ruse that these people do to do this. And they’re pretty organized, aren’t they? I mean they would have to be to do this type of thing. Is this like mafia groups or…

Siddharth Kara: Yeah. Well, one of the things I try to put for us, now I have a background in business and law, so I tried to sit back and analyze slavery as a business. This stand of business and economics of these human trafficking networks and the business model of modern day slavery. And increasingly, you do have very sophisticated organized crime networks that have erected highly complex modes and mechanisms of trafficking individuals all over the world. They’ll have front organizations and very sophisticated ways of acquiring individuals from the origin areas and then complete seamless transportation networks, reallocating those people to some area where they can be exploited, and of course they’ve got other organizations on the back end of that, whether it’s brothels or construction or manufacturing plants or domestic servitude networks. They have all kinds of retail operations on the exploitation side. So they’re vertically integrated is the business term. And acquiring, transporting, and exploiting human beings as slaves and more and more this is the province of very sophisticated organized crime networks were attracted to this business of human exploitation because it’s a high profit, low risk business venture as it stands today.

Jason Hartman: Two questions for you. You mentioned manufacturing facilities. What do you mean by that?

Siddharth Kara: Oh. Well, you can imagine just about any product that requires some kind of manufacturing, and there will invariably be either some form of extreme labor exploitation or out and out slavery involved in it. For example, everything from fireworks to plastic toys to textiles, anything that requires some sort of manufacturing process, assembling, putting together, there are more and more organized crime networks and sophisticated slave operations that utilize and exploit human beings in that manufacturing process, everything from pig iron that goes into mattress spring to the fireworks that people use for their various holidays around the world.

Jason Hartman: Okay, so it’s hard for me to grasp that one, and I don’t want to get off on a big tangent here, but you remember I’m sure a while back when Kathy Lee Gifford was accused of employing sweat shop laborers in, you know, China or whatever it was. And now it seems like everybody’s kind of looking the other way because they want their cheap stuff from Wal-Mart, but it’s hard for me to reconcile that sort of thing where these companies, as little as they pay, they are offering jobs in these factories, in China and so forth. Are some of those just out and out slavery?

Siddharth Kara: Yes. Some of it is out and out slavery. There’s no doubt about it. And some of it is what we call labor exploitation or extreme exploitation. Slavery is the worse form of labor exploitation. What does that mean? Well, without getting too far of point, countries around the world have legally stipulated minimum wages for various locations. Now can argue that in many cases those minimum wages are actually not livable, not even sustainable and need to me raised. But putting aside that argument, very often not even that is paid. And in that case it might not be slavery, but it’s at least extreme labor exploitation. And some people will argue, well, what’s the difference really between paying someone 0 and paying someone 10 cents a day? Maybe that 10 cents a day also should be considered some form of enslavement as well, but that’s another academic argument.

Jason Hartman: Right, right. I know it is. And just one more note is just to play devil’s advocate with you. Of course there are those on the other side that argue that minimum wage actually creates more unemployment. I’m sure you’ve heard that argument. You’re welcome to answer that if you like or we can move on.

Siddharth Kara: Yeah, let’s carry on with…

Jason Hartman: Okay. So the one other question I had for you, and you’ve mentioned it a couple of times is this is very low risk. So this is lower risk than being a drug dealer for example or drug smuggler I should say?

Siddharth Kara: Yeah. Well, we can talk about sex trafficking since that’s kind of the focus here. Right now, I’ll explain what I mean by way of example. Right now the penalties associated with the crime of sex trafficking in various countries around the world are quite anemic. In a country like India, the fine for exploiting trafficked sex slave is around $45. In a country like Italy there’s no fine.

Jason Hartman: Are you kidding me? Why would this be this way?

Siddharth Kara: Well, no one had sat down and bothered to analyze what the benefits were of these types of crimes. And in the absence of knowing what the benefit is, you can’t possibly design an effective penalty. So you can generate thousands of dollars, 10 to 12 thousand dollars per slave per year for sex trafficking in a country like India, you can generate about 100 to 150 thousand dollars per slave per year in western Europe or North America and that the penalties may be a few years in prison and a small fine or no fine. Even in countries where there are fairly high economic penalties stipulated in the law like the United States or Albania or Netherlands, the level of prosecution and conviction is virtually nil, so the real penalty or the real risk as I call it is still virtually nil.

Jason Hartman: Right.

Siddharth Kara: So imagine you’re a criminal. You’re looking out in the world of possible criminal activity. You don’t have any morals or qualms or sensibilities or very low ones, and you look at this new business of human trafficking, and in particular, sex trafficking, and the opportunity to generate thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit with almost no risk. Or even if you are caught and convicted, the penalty is so low, it’s still a good business model. So that’s what I mean by virtually no risk or low risk, very high profit, high benefit business model.

Jason Hartman: That is very scary. And you know what, you’re really saying that these countries are de-facto complicit in this activity because these rules have no real teeth. These laws have no real teeth. I mean no fine, minor fines, very unlikely prosecution if there is any. They’re just complicit in the whole thing, aren’t they?

Siddharth Kara: Well, that’s one of the main dilemmas, one of the main head scratchers relating to slavery. We agreed, as a human civilization, more than 150 years ago, that slavery should not be a part of the human condition, right? This is not an argument anyone debates anymore.

Jason Hartman: Sure.

Siddharth Kara: Maybe a couple of centuries ago we had to fight that argument to convince people no, no, you shouldn’t have slaves. We don’t have to make that argument anymore.

Jason Hartman: Absolutely.

Siddharth Kara: However, it is still the case that there are at least 29 million slaves in the world and there is a burgeoning phenomenon of human trafficking, meaning acquiring, reallocating, and exploiting human beings with a level of speed and efficiency and profitability that we’ve never seen with slavery before. And yet the level of attention on the issue, the resources that are deployed to deal with the issue, and the intelligence that goes into designing laws and tactics to intervene and make what should be the case to be the case. That is there should be no slavery in the world. The anemic level of intelligence and resources put into this issue is really hard to fathom.

Jason Hartman: It is. And certainly books like yours, movies like Taken, programs and so forth are raising awareness. And I think awareness is usually the first step to getting action and making people angry enough and careful enough to hopefully put a real dent in the problem. But just out of curiosity, why do you think these countries have such anemic laws? They just haven’t thought about it? Or is it good for their economies? Or are officials just corrupt and are they being paid off?

Siddharth Kara: Well, I think part of it is again the fact that no one had bothered to sit down and really analyze and quantify what’s going on. There was just a lot of anecdotal information out there in the world about trafficking and slavery. And in the absence of really knowing what the benefit is, the design of penalty and the design of penalty and the designs of intervention were very much on target, very much under target. So with my book and the kind of analysis I’m doing, we’re starting to get a sense of here’s how this thing works as a business, here’s what the benefits are economically. Slavery is, yes, a human rights violation, but it is an economic crime. The essence of slavery is economic. That is it seeks to maximize profits by minimizing or eliminating the cost of labor in any business. That’s what the formula for slavery is. If you’re going to effectively intervene and penalize an economic crime, you need to understand what the magnitude of the economic benefit is. So we hadn’t had that kind of analysis before. That’s the main work I’ve undertaken. So that’s step one, knowing how the business works and what the benefits are economically, then step 2 is how do you then design better measures and policies and, in particular, laws, to respond to the very nature of this crime we’re seeking to eliminate? And I think now the main thing is will the global community, will lawmakers do what needs to be done? Other issues get a lot of attention, terrorism and the environment, as well they should. For some reason, slavery doesn’t seem to get the same level of attention and the same level of resources and the same level of analysis as some of these other problems in the world. And it’s hard for me to quite understand why. But hopefully the kind of work I and some others are doing will shift the needle of it.

Jason Hartman: We’ve got maybe another 8 minutes or so here. Can you drill down a little bit on some of the different regions around the world? I know that your book does. You sort of divide it up. I mean it’s sort of a take on a different flavor in different regions. What’s going on geographically?

Siddharth Kara: There’s a lot of information that comes out when you start to analyze things from a geographic standpoint. So I mean just some important topline things to know are that, for example, the highest number of sex trafficking victims in the world, highest gross number, are in South Asia. But on a per capita basis, meaning as a percent of population, Europe has higher levels of sex trafficking than any other part of the world.

Jason Hartman: Here in your book, you call out Italy and Western Europe, which actually surprises me. I thought that would be more of an Eastern European thing.

Siddharth Kara: Well, remember, what is trafficking? Trafficking has a few components to it. There’s the area in which people are acquired…

Jason Hartman: Right, in in and out migration, sure.

Siddharth Kara: And then they’re moved some distance, could be inside a country, could be halfway around the world. And then of course they’re exploited somewhere. So one of the chapters in my book is titled “Italy and Western Europe” as the receiving end of this network, this flow of human beings, out of Central and Eastern Europe in the sort of post-Cold War, fall of the Berlin Wall era, so Italy has a huge oceanic border and it’s one of the first wealthy West European nations you come to when you’re traveling from east to west in Europe. So it is almost like a central processing hub of trafficking victims coming out of Central and East Europe into Italy. They may be exported in brothels and villas and clubs in Italy, street, what have you, and then re-transported by these same criminal networks into other West European countries, whether it’s the UK, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, what have you. So the reason I highlight Italy is it has that sort of stepping stone towards the rest of Western Europe as the flow of human beings has materialized itself across the last 10 or 15 years. And when you go to other geographic regions you have similar dynamics. Thailand, for example, receives a huge number of such trafficking victims from the surrounding Mekong sub-region nations, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, as well as Vietnam where there’s a ready, made, custom-tailored sex industry, sex tourist industry in places like Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and you’ve got then, as a result, sophisticated networks that traffic people from those surrounding areas where people are very poor or there’s war torn regions or other types of oppression when you’re talking about Burma or from rural Thailand, hill tribe people who are disenfranchised and lack educational and economic opportunities, they get trafficked into these brothels where there’s a whole system now for decades of sex tourism established in Thailand.

Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. Okay, so more on the regions, any others you want to mention? I mean you mentioned the United States which is…

Siddharth Kara: Yeah. Well without question the sex trafficking into and within North America, the United States, not nearly on the levels as you have in some other parts of the world obviously, but there is trafficking here for all kinds of reasons, not just commercial sex, but also agriculture, manufacturing, domestic work. So there is still slavery and human trafficking here in North America in the richest, most powerful country in the world.

Jason Hartman: How would they possibly get away with this in a country like the United States? I mean you would think that the victims of this heinous crime would just speak out or they would come in contact with the general population and say “Help!” to somebody.

Siddharth Kara: Well the same thing is true here and it is true in the rest of the world which is there will be a lot of barriers that are sent forth against you, a victim, from ever opening your mouth. The chief one would be threats against your family members. So you’d be told if you ever say anything to anyone, I know where your mother lives, your father lives, I know your child, whoever, whatever, right? They’re done. So that threat in and of itself is something that will be taken very seriously and you’ll keep your mouth shut.

Jason Hartman: But a threat I guess to a scared and gullible younger person, your threat may seem real, but I’m wondering how real that threat is. I suppose it just depends. Everything’s an individual case by case basis. But at some point, wouldn’t they just sort of believe that that threat isn’t that significant? Or I don’t know. Maybe not.

Siddharth Kara: No, on the contrary, remember you’re talking about the person who is deploying this debt against you has successfully acquired and trafficked you from your home region to the other side of the planet. So their ability to do what they’re saying is absolutely valid. They have agents in your home village. That’s how they found you, that’s how they tricked you, and that’s how they trafficked you. And those same people can inflict harm and they do inflict harm. And examples will be provided to you. Now, that’s just one thing. You will also be beaten and tortured and held captive and other things that make you terrified of ever trying to escape. You’re a young child. You might be told the police will execute you because you’re in this country illegally. You wouldn’t know any better.

Jason Hartman: Right.

Siddharth Kara: you may not speak the language. You may not know what to do and where to go. So there’s any number of things that keep you feeling very powerless, very threatened, very vulnerable, and very much willing to just submit to the exploitation for some period of time as opposed to face the possible consequences.

Jason Hartman: In the United States of America that’s going on, that’s amazing. It really is incredible. What else do you want listeners to know about this? I mean your last chapter is entitled “A Framework for Abolition: Risk and Demand”. And you’ve touched on that already I believe when you said the risk was low, the demand and the profits are high. But what can be done to end this problem?

Siddharth Kara: Well, you’re right. I make a fairly comprehensive tactical argument of what can be done to eliminate the problem of sex trafficking in y book. And in a series of other books, I’m gonna make similar arguments for other forms of slavery. And there are various components to the response. There’s things that individual people can and must do, as well as governments, international organizations, nonprofit sector, etcetera. So the things that individual people can do differ from what governments need to do, but awareness and an understanding of what’s happening is obviously of chief importance, not just knowledge that there’s slavery in the world, but how does it work? How is it functioning? Why is it thriving? That kind of knowledge is critical for individual people to have. Because ultimately, the next thing they need to do is form together with sufficient critical mass and awareness to present some sort of outcry based on an argument of what lawmakers, politicians, governments, the UN, etcetera, need to do. And their whole set of activities is ultimately where we’re gonna actually eliminate this problem from the world, and that gets to deploying the kinds of tactics and interventions and policies and better and more effective laws to turn the formula upside down from low-risk high profit to making it a very risky, perilous, and costly business enterprise, and a very low profit and minimally rewarding business to be involved in. And if we can do that, just as quickly as all these criminals have flocked to this business of sex trafficking and other forms of human trafficking and slavery, they will flock back to other activities. We have to really put our foot on the throat on this business of slavery and make it a toxic enterprise to be involved in. And we can do that with more effective policies and laws and the kinds of things I identify and argue for in my book.

Jason Hartman: The book again is entitled Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. Siddharth, are there any resources or websites? Of course the book is available on Amazon, I’m sure it’s all the bookstores, but what other websites do you want people to know or resources do you want them to know about?

Siddharth Kara: You know, one of the things that we have a deficiency of with the antislavery movement is good analysis. So, unfortunately, I can’t point people to a whole list of excellent websites that are predicated on good analysis and information. But the United Nations has a group, a division that’s focused on this, The UNODC office on drugs and crime and an initiative within that called UN.GiFT, Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking, you can go to those websites and there’s a lot of good information and some reports there. The state department has an office to monitor and combat trafficking and slavery and they produce an annual report that comes out every June that has a global sort of picture of what’s going on around the world? And that’s a good place to get some knowledge and further analysis of kind of what’s happening with trafficking and slavery around the world.

Jason Hartman: I’m sure there are charities set up around this who are raising money to combat the problem. Are there any good ones that you give out or recommend?

Siddharth Kara: Sure. Well, there’s a lot of NGOs around the world that have popped up to try to deal with this issue, and many of them focus on helping victims which is very important word. Some of the more prominent US based NGOs that are dealing with this issue. I serve on the board of directors of one of them called Free the Slaves based in Washington D.C. The Polaris Project is another well regarded NGO. International Justice Mission is also another well regarded one. So there’s a handful here that deal with the issue, and then of course abroad, whether you’re talking about Europe or Asia. There is literally scores and scores of NGOs that are trying to help mostly get their lives back on track with education and employment opportunities and training and other kinds of things that they need so that they don’t remain vulnerable to being re-trafficked and re-exploited.

Jason Hartman: Well, good information. Thank you so much for being with us today and that’s illuminating some of this very disturbing problem. Anything else you’d like the listeners to know in closing?

Siddharth Kara: No. I think this has been a great conversation. And the main thing your listeners can do is to continue to inform yourselves of the real functioning of this crime around the world.

Jason Hartman: Good. Well, Siddharth Kara, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope everybody listening will go out and get the book.

Siddharth Kara: My pleasure, thank you.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places, and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth show which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search Jason Hartman on ITunes. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional, information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Top image: Flickr | indi.ca)

The Holistic Survival Team

Transcribed by Ralph