This week, while most of this nation’s attention is focused on the temporary separation of about 1,000 children a month from their parents or adult traveling companions when they are apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally, about 200,000 people globally - 75% them women and children - will be abducted or lured into a life of prostitution and/or slave labor.
And perhaps as many as 825,000 of them will be transported this month to their new, horrible living and working conditions aboard commercial airliners.
That’s why the world’s airlines have launched a global awareness and industry-wide training program called #EyesOpen. It has two aims. One is teaching flight attendants, gate agents and other airline personnel to spot people who are being unwittingly lured or forced to travel as part of the fast-growing $150 billion-a-year global human trafficking criminal enterprise. The other is increasing the public’s awareness of the crime that happens thousands of times daily around the world, typically right in front of us.
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View The #EyesOpen YouTube Video
Nearly 25 million people – roughly equal to the combined populations of this nation’s five-largest cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix – will become human trafficking victims this year according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Though hard data is elusive the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that 60% of those victims - roughly 15 million people - are transported across international borders. And because airlines are, by far, the most common means of international travel, it could be that as many as 10 million or more of those trafficking victims this year - nearly 200,000 a week or around 28,500 a day – will be moved around the globe via commercial flights. (Note: previous versions of this story overstated these numbers.)
Airlines – and their staff – also often represent the last line of detection and defense against the heinous crime. That’s because once victims get off of the airplanes on which they’re flown into modern slavery they tend to disappear from society and become extraordinarily difficult to trace and rescue.
IATA, the airline industry’s global trade association and lobbying group, has produced a YouTube video as part of its #EyesOpen campaign. Earlier this month the group’s 280 airline members from 120 nations unanimously approved a resolution denouncing human trafficking and committing themselves to a implementing anti-human trafficking training programs and instituting operational steps to detect and stop more cases of the crime. And law enforcement around the world apparently needs all the help they can get: less than 15% of the world's nations recorded more than 50 convictions last year for human trafficking crimes.
Speaking two weeks ago at IATA’s annual general meeting in Australia, IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac, said, "Aviation is the business of freedom, flying 4 billion people to every corner of the earth last year alone. Some, however, try to use our networks nefariously. Trafficking in people creates misery for millions, and funds criminal gangs and terrorism. As a responsible industry, our members are determined to help authorities stamp out human trafficking."
U.S. flight attendants, who man the frontline in airlines’ battle against human traffickers, have launched, through their unions, awareness programs. And most U.S. carriers already have added, or are in the process of adding human trafficking detection and reporting procedures to their initial and refresher training programs. Some also are extending that training to airport gate and ticket agents. Other airlines around the world also now are lining up to add human trafficking detection and reporting to their training regimes.
In August of 2017 an American Airlines ticket agent in Sacramento who'd been through human trafficking detection training noticed two girls in their early to mid-teens exhibiting some of the behaviors she'd been trained to look for. The agent notified her local Sheriff’s department. Upon questioning the girls told officers that they were flying to New York for a weekend of modeling set up by a “friend” they’d met online. The girls were shocked to find out that the tickets their “friend” had sent them were one-way only tickets and that they likely were going to be abducted and sold into the sex slave trade outside the United States. The ticket agent, Denise Miracle, was lauded publicly in February by her airline superiors, law enforcement and the media for her intervention.
"I'm proud of Denice and how she put her training into action to save these children," said Aleka Turner, General Manager of American’s station in Sacramento. "She is a testament to the critical role our frontline team members play each and every day in the operation and the lives of each person they come in contact with."
There are also new efforts underway to popularize in this country a technique used by girls and women in the United Kingdom and several other European nations to send a silent signal to airport security officers that they are being forced to travel against their will, either for human trafficking purposes to be sold by their families as a child bride. Girls are being advised to hide the spoon in their underwear if they suspect they might be abducted or forced to travel against their will, yet don’t know for sure if or when that will happen. A spoon was chosen as the signal device not only because its metal will set off security alarms at airports but also because a spoon can be easily in a girl’s underwear and be worn all day without discomfort.
Beginning about six years ago security experts in Britain began suggesting that teenage girls use the hidden spoon technique. If she is made to walk through an airport security checkpoint, triggering an alarm, she will moved to a private location for a more thorough search and questioning. Once there, and separated from the person abducting her or forcing her to travel against her will, the girl can inform security officers of her situation. The technique has been credited with saving a number of British and European girls from becoming sex slaves or being sold by family members as a child bride.
(Note:Previous versions of this story overstated the estimated numbers of trafficking victims transported on commercial airliners.)
