World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

Damayan will continue fighting and organizing to eliminate labor trafficking and empowering labor-trafficking survivors in this 2023 World Day Against Trafficking In Persons and on every single day. To encapsulate this year’s theme, “Reach every victim of trafficking, leave no one behind,” Damayan reminds all members, allies, and supporters that Labor Trafficking can look like many different things. To truthfully reach every victim or survivor and to fully leave no one behind, every single individual needs to be alert in spotting signs of labor-trafficking. Labor-trafficking does not just look like being in a cage or with handcuffs, but can look like a nanny who can only go to the park with their employer’s children and not anywhere else, or an employer taking the caregiver’s passport and withholding their contact with family in the Philippines.

However, Damayan asserts that human trafficking is the consequence of larger-systemic challenges—global capitalism and the resulting American imperialism that prioritize high profits over individual’s rights over their own body. Global capitalism and U.S. imperialism equates to nations like the United States relying on cheap labor from developing nations—nations the US previously colonized and underdeveloped. This created a vulnerable, feminized workforce, that employers and traffickers abuse easily, because enforcement systems and current structures of laws are incapable of fully protecting these low-wage workers from abuse and violence.

Damayan also stands with survivors of other forms of human trafficking, from sex trafficking to child trafficking. All individuals have the right to not just live—but thrive—in a safe world, free from abuse and free from systems that prioritize profit over bodies. This World Day Against Trafficking In Persons and everyday, join Damayan in fighting and organizing against human trafficking and empowering survivors!