No one wins when a modern world allows human trafficking to persist.
Human trafficking is deplorable and rampant. Unfortunately, it is not well understood. Passive observers argue that the number of trafficking victims is “inflated” and “incalculable” due to its clandestine nature.
My rebuttal is simply this: “Even ONE slave is too many!”
Unrestrained, illegal, barbaric: human trafficking forces, frauds, coerces, exploits or induces children, women and even men into selling or relinquishing their skills, bodies or body parts. Trafficking dehumanizes and victimizes by making people into objects, currency, pleasurable gadgets or machines. In an effort to expose this violation of human rights, Ohio State University is proud to offer a new course, Human Trafficking, to provide Coursera learners an opportunity to become more informed and engaged agents of desperately needed change.
Human Trafficking is a free, four-week, intensive course that examines domestic and global trafficking from both a conventional and social-work perspective. The purpose of the course is to offer and share information, and to engage in candid, thoughtful discussions related to trafficking between thousands of enrollees worldwide. The assessments are designed to test your knowledge related to the issues, and provide an opportunity to create and share an impactful Public Service Announcement (PSA)! The goal for each of us–separately and together—is to significantly increase awareness related to the epidemic of human trafficking.
As a learner in Human Trafficking, you are not simply watching a news piece passively about a child forced into becoming a sex slave, or discussing the atrocities of deadly working conditions among a group of friends. In this course, you are collaborating with a community of like-minded peers that are eager to make a change for the better. This course empowers you to join a movement in making your community and the world a better place.
Imagine: if the work accomplished in this course leads to even one person escaping victimization, it is worth it.
The course serves as a unique platform to examine human trafficking from a global perspective, discuss anti-trafficking efforts, generate solutions and serve as one prong among many in the fight to eradicate human trafficking. Ultimately, our shared goal in the anti-trafficking arena is to obliterate human trafficking—to expose it and to force the criminality of it so far underground that the system collapses from its own weight and the weight of the masses who demand justice.
Trafficking is a lose-lose situation for the victim as the trauma inflicted on trafficking victims is so potent, that even trafficking victims grow confused about whether or not they are being trafficked. Their oppression, isolation and marginalization result in long-term biopsychosocial consequences that demand the attention and help of those committed to a slave-free world.
I invite you to a global discourse on human trafficking, where not only will your personal voice be heard, but your voice will speak and fight for those who cannot do it on their own.
