The Women's Center hosted a panel last night to discuss human trafficking, focusing on information about different aspects about trafficking and forms of prevention.
The United Nations defines human trafficking as "an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them."
Nancy Hopkins, who works with The Asia Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to encouraging peace in the Asia-Pacific region, said to combat trafficking, people need to understand the factors which make people vulnerable, including economic hardship, a lack of legal status and abuse in the home.
Julie Seiwell, Virginia state director for Not For Sale, an anti-human trafficking campaign, said the human trafficking industry yields $32 billion each year, which surpasses the annual profits of Google and Starbucks. Hopkins added that this is the most lucrative underground practice after the trafficking of guns and drugs.
Human trafficking is a "high profit and low risk crime," Seiwell said. Participants can buy a person for $90, she said, showing that "people are seen as disposable."
She said there is a high rate of human trafficking in Virginia - it is one of the top 10 states for trafficking. She added that 64 percent of victims in Virginia are children.
An important area of intervention is prevention through education, Hopkins said.
One way to accomplish this would be by creating "safe migration campaigns at transportation hubs for migrants to give them information about their rights and help them understand questions to ask about the legitimacy of job opportunities," she said.
Second-year College student Alison Celello said the lecture provided important insight into how widespread human trafficking is.
"I appreciated the emphasis on discussing human trafficking from both an international and domestic perspective," she said. "I think there is a temptation to view it as a problem found only in third-world countries, but the fact that Virginia is among the top 10 states for trafficking made me realize just how pressing it is as a local issue as well"
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