It breaks my heart every time.

Last week I read an article on CNN.com about human trafficking. The story, "Recession Boosts Human Trafficking." Apparently the bad economy is actually increasing human trafficking, which I guess is no surprise but it's so disheartening to me.

"The report cites the International Labor Organization, which estimates that at least 12.3 million adults and children are victims of forced labor, bonded labor and sex slavery each year."

Did you know that there are only 525,600 minutes in a year? This means that about 24 people are trafficked every minute of every year. That's incredible to me. I am shocked by the amount of people who think that this isn't a problem, that think slavery is dead. Slavery is alive and well today, and it's probably a multi billion dollar industry when you think of how much work these poor people are subjected to.

The report released by the State Department rates countries on a Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 scale. Tier 3 countries are black list countries, countries that have a severe human trafficking problem.

"...six African nations -- Chad, Eritrea, Mauritania, Niger, Swaziland and Zimbabwe -- were put on the report's "Tier 3" blacklist of countries whose efforts to combat trafficking are inadequate.

Most of the countries are "source" and "destination" countries, the report says, meaning trafficking victims both come from and are sent there. Most are trafficked throughout Africa, but many end up in the Middle East, it says.

Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria remain on the blacklist for another year, with the report saying they often become a destination for trafficked persons who are sold into domestic servitude. Other repeat offenders on the list include North Korea, Myanmar and Fiji.

The State Department also put Malaysia in the Tier 3 list, because of its trafficking of Burmese refugees.

The report cites information that Malaysian immigration officials sold refugees to traffickers operating along its border with Thailand. When the victims were unable to pay a ransom demanded by the traffickers, the report says, they were sold for labor and commercial sex exploitation."

I don't understand how people can exploit another human being this way. Take another person's mother, wife, husband, child and force them into work or worse force them into sexual exploitation all for their own financial gain. It's disgusting. Whether you are religious or not most cultures seem to teach "treat others as you'd like to be treated" in one way or another. And if you are religious, Christian in particular, I think human trafficking is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught us, "love your neighbor as yourself." I don't think I even need to get into how human trafficking is not loving.

I guess there were some promising parts of the article, "African countries Nigeria and Mauritius are praised in the report for making strong efforts to combat trafficking." And if you're wondering how the US does on this list we currently don't rank ourselves however "The US will rank ourselves on the report for the first time next year." There were 132 trafficking investigations opened in the US in 2008 resulting in 139 arrests and 94 convications. All I can say to that is, it's a START. I guess we have to start somewhere.

If you'd like to read the article you can do so here.

If you'd like to look at the report it is provided on the US State Department's website, http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2009/index.htm.

Also, there is a great organization called Stop the Traffik and you can check our their website for more information.