Black Information Network
By Cherranda Smith
January 24, 2022
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. To better understand this tragically pervasive issue and learn more about the critically important efforts being made to curtail it, the Black Information Network spoke with Anita S. Teekah, Esq. of Safe Horizon.
“National Human Trafficking Prevention Month is a month that commemorates a crime that happens every single day, all over the world,” Teekah, who serves as the Senior Director of Safe Horizon’s Anti-Trafficking Program, said.
“This month is meant to shine a light on and raise awareness on a wide-spread victimization that a lot of people have heard of, but don’t really understand the complexities of,” Teekah added.
“Human trafficking can affect everybody,” the expert explained, “and it requires everybody be aware so that we can do our part to mitigate it.”
When asked about how Covid-19 impacted human trafficking, Teekah said, “the one constant is that human trafficking existed before Covid, continued during Covid, and will be here after Covid, unfortunately.”
Teekah explained that a lot of trafficking is linked to labor exploitation and that before the pandemic, there wasn’t such as much awareness on the essential workers who keep global economies moving, but who are also at risk of labor trafficking.
“The pandemic really highlighted the inequities that a lot of those workers face and we do see human trafficking and labor exploitation in a lot of those fields where we have our direct essential services coming from” Teekah said.
That includes people who work in child care, food care, domestic work, delivery drivers, factory workers, agricultural farm workers, and more who are often “invisible” when discussing the “fragility of supply chains.”
But those workers, Teekah explained, “are often the ones subjected to labor exploitation and labor trafficking.”