Hunger And Human Trafficking.

In his book "Children Of Hope" Vernon Brewer asks "What would you do if your children were so weak from hunger, so in pain but too weak to cry? Would you do whatever it took to feed them?" The question answers itself really. But would you steal? Would you sell your body? Would you be susceptible to every false promise? Would you be susceptible to being trafficked? Would you consider selling one child to save four others? What would you do if these were your children....




Kevin Carter's Pulitzer prize winning picture of a starving Sudanese child.  Below children eating bugs to survive.




And because they are not our children. Because they are far away, with dark skin, in countries whose names we cannot pronounce. Do we care less? Or maybe not at all?

Hunger and hunger related illness kills 40,000 children a day. 14 million children a year. That's the equivalent of eighty-five Boeing 747s crashing everyday and killing every passenger. Or 34,000 crashes a year. That would stay in the headlines. Every headline, of every news show, every day. But starvation doesn't. Human Trafficking. Doesn't.

The desperation that those statistics represent is the daily reality for a fifth of the world. It is one of the gravest factors that leads to exploitation. If we are going to stop human trafficking in our lifetime we are going to have to remove the precipitating factors that create the environment where the cancer of trafficking thrives.

I almost didn't post the picture below. To be honest I hoped it was a fake. A photo-shopped piece of journalistic propaganda. Apparently not. You may not want to look. It may make you ashamed to be human....I know it does me...

Hunger, that makes a child do this, should not be able to exist in a world where so much excess and waste exist. This is not ok.


Here are some organizations that fight global hunger:

Stop Hunger Now

World Vision

World Food Programme

Bread For The World

Food For The Hungry

Relentless.

Tomorrow I will address a group of students in a human rights class about human trafficking and specifically what can be done locally to combat this evil globally. One concern the professor expressed was a growing frustration among some of the students, it seems they are somewhat overwhelmed by the hugeness of the problem and a bit disheartened as to how they can do anything of any significance to stop it.

Recently I had a chance to interview IJM's Gary Haugen. As a member of the UN’s Center For Human Rights Haugen was charged with the horrific task of gathering evidence against the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. This included the exhumation of mass graves of tortured victims. I asked Gary how he kept from becoming desensitized to suffering?

"By relentless focus on the humanity, beauty and infinite dignity of the individual person."

I believe his answer also speaks to the helpless impotency those students and many other activists feel at times. But if we can somehow turn that answer into a lens to see this crisis through, we might once again find ourselves encouraged, emboldened, and enlivened to the cause of freedom.

For the rest of his answer to this question and for the rest of our interview with Mr. Haugen stay tuned!!! And as always...From all of us at COH...Thank you for being a voice for the voiceless.