What can you do to help change the attitudes of society toward labour and sexual exploitation of children and women?
First we need to raise public awareness regarding the plight of those who are exploited in both sending and receiving countries and the negative consequences that labour and sexual exploitation have on their own society. The public need to realize the problem exists in their country. At the same time we need to show the positive benefits their society would experience by eliminating the demand for the services and products provided by those being exploited. Second, we need law enforcement officials, the judiciary, and society at large to recognize that many working in the sex trades, sweatshops, factories, construction sites and domestic workers are not there of their own choice, but have been coerced and deceived. Those individuals are victims and should be treated as such. Indeed anyone under 18 working in exploitative, slave-like of near-slave like conditions including the sex trade is a victim of trafficking, regardless of whether they were deceived or coerced.
