It is a shocking but true.
Slavery is the third largest crime in the world today. 

Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Every year, over two million women and children—as young as three years old—will be sold into prostitution for as little as $10. Estimates count up to 27 million live enslaved, many of whom are subject to rape, torture, forced abortions, starvations, and threats to family members. The average slave in 1850 cost the equivalent of $40K to purchase; today that figure is $90. 

Though the situation is staggering, many are empowered to use their time, resources, and skills in a meaningful way to stop this horrific crime. The Somaly Mam Foundation (SMF) is fighting to end human trafficking around the globe. This epidemic is prevalent on our shores. A recent New York Times story revealed modern day slavery in our very backyard (http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com). It is so common it occurs under our very nose, and the fact is, we have not educated enough to recognize the signs of slavery when it is paraded before us.

Public awareness changes everything—from attitudes to laws—and for Somaly Mam, the fight against modern day slavery is a moral imperative and civic duty on behalf of those whose voice has been silenced. Somaly Mam was born into a tribal minority family in the Mondulkiri province of Cambodia around the same time the Khmer Rouge took hold of the nation. By the time Somaly was 5 years old, over 1.5 million people had been killed under Pol Pot’s regime. Against a backdrop of terror, torture, and decimation, Somaly was a mere 12 years old when a man posing as her grandfather sold her into sexual slavery.
 
Forced to work in a brothel along with other children, Somaly was brutally tortured and raped several times a day, week after week, month after month, for years. Then one night, she was forced to watch her best friend viciously murdered. Fearing she would meet that same fate, Somaly escaped with the help of an aid worker and fled to France in 1993.

Though she is universally recognized as a visionary for her courage, dignity, ingenuity, and resilience, Somaly’s success has come at a price. She and her family have faced terrifying death threats and violence. Asked why she continues to fight in the face of such fierce and frightening opposition, Somaly resolutely responds, “I don’t want to go without leaving a trace.” Somaly to this day lives among the women and children she rescues and stays by their side as they walk the difficult path to recovery and freedom. Somaly Mam has emerged from a life of slavery and has become a heroine for women’s rights.

With the launch of The Somaly Mam Foundation (SMF) in 2007, Somaly has established a funding vehicle to support anti-trafficking organizations and to provide victims and survivors with a platform from which their voices can be heard around the world. SMF is dedicated to ending slavery around the world with a results-oriented, three-step approach: survivor services, survivor empowerment (programs), and eradication of slavery (awareness and advocacy). SMF has liberated over 7000 women and children from sexual slavery, and works tirelessly around the globe to rehabilitate survivors.

It is these survivors that Conde Nast photographer Norman Jean Roy has documented in his book TRAFFIK (powerHouse Books). As Marianne Pearl writes in the introduction, “Somaly brings the girls to school, and teaches them skills like sewing and cooking. She tells them that she’s been there, that life can begin again, that not every man is evil. She is the person the girls write to when their pain is unspeakable. She is their role model and they all want to be just like her, a beautiful woman who speaks to the world and who smiles so we will listen.”

And just as we listen to Somaly’s story, whether delivered in person at countless talks or written in her heart wrenching autobiography, The Road to Lost Innocence, so to we must look upon the faces of those whose lives have been recovered. Norman Jean Roy’s photographs have an ineffable poignancy, one that burns with the tension between the stillness of the photograph and the maddening horror these women and children have suffered. We cannot know, we cannot imagine, we cannot ever begin to fathom what it is to be treated as chattel, to be locked up and taken out only to be raped over and over again. We cannot understand what it is to be a slave for our lives are built on the promise of freedom from cradle to the grave.

As Roy writes in the afterword, “TRAFFIK is not meant to be any one particular story, but rather a collective one. It is a visual slice of this hideous world of human trafficking and the people at the center of it…. At the rehabilitation center, there is a large but modest open-air structure, built up on stilts, housing looms for weaving, manual sewing machines, and a kitchen area. But I am especially struck by the presence of so many young girls…. I am in awe of their ages—seventeen, thirteen, eight, event a little girl of three. All I can think is—How? Why? Why would someone want to rape these girls? How could someone harm them so terribly? Where are their protectors, their teachers? And where are we?”

There is a pain and a pride and a silence that belies every one of these images. Words may never be able to explain the force of destruction that misogyny breeds. Roy’s photographs make us look closely at our assumptions—about women, about sexuality, about slavery—and question what we believe to be true. The world’s oldest profession is not prostitution; it is pimping. Once we consider revising our myths, we begin to understand the damage they have inflicted.

To look upon these women is a to understand that the shame of their degradation is a global burden. Slavery is real, and it is happening today. Not just in Southeast Asia, but in so-called “free” countries like yours and mine.

Somaly Mam will be in New York on May 17 for the launch of Project Futures, a program designed to empower a passionate network of socially-engaged volunteers, activists and young professionals to raise awareness and funding to combat human trafficking worldwide. To purchase a ticket please visit :
http://futuresnylaunch.eventbrite.com