Human Trafficking

Every once in a while the news revisits the topic of human trafficking, saying how terrible it is, how many victims there are, or how hard people are trying to prevent it from happening. And although I found these news to be interesting, they usually don't do that great of a job in helping me recognize the seriousness of the issue. It's usually the same "cops busted a human trafficking scheme", "the head of a human trafficking group was captured and is now awaiting for trial", "girl got kidnap and sell to another country years ago survived and returned"...These news only give us surface information, things that don't really shows how terrible this issue has become. So I decided to dig a little bit deeper to see what really happen inside human trafficking, how big is it in today's society, and why is everyone, especially parents, are concerned about human trafficking?

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today. That’s the highest recorded number of slaves in history

So let's start from the beginning: What is human trafficking? It's basically the same thing as slavery. You kidnap someone, bring them with you, and then exploit them for your own needs. The only thing different is that these perpetrators now have ways to lure poor, innocent people into their trap by promising them of a "bright future". Those people then got sell off to some foreign countries where they are forced to engage in commercial sex or provide labor. In fact, those are the two main things human trafficking is involved in: sex or labor. One other, less common, one is organ harvesting. But today I’m going to mainly focus on the most common thing that human trafficking involved in: sex exploitation.

Approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation.

So what really happened to girls who got taken away against their will to then be sexually exploited? Well first they got captured by dealers. Then they either get sold to someone right after that, or they have to go through the “training phase”. This is when someone would beat and raped them so they can learn sex techniques. When they are ready, dealers would force them to become prostitutes, where they have to have sex with other people even if they want it or not. If they disobey, sex traffickers would use a variety of ways to bring them under control, which includes “subjecting them to starvation, rape, gang rape, physical abuse, beating, confinement, threats of violence toward the victim and victim’s family, forced drug use, and shame”. This results in numerous victims either died during the process or commit suicide to escape their life.

”An estimated 30,000 victims of sex trafficking died each year from abuse, disease, torture, and neglect.”

Since human trafficking is a hidden crime, it’s hard to obtain accurate statistics. But one thing is certain: human trafficking is a huge industry. “Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry (behind illegal drugs and arms trafficking). It reportedly generates a profit of $32 billion every year. Of that number, $15.5 billion is made in industrialized countries.”This is incredible. People are making billions of dollars from exploiting other people. And half of this money came from industrialized countries. Wow! Who knows rich countries contributes so much into human trafficking. It’s amazing how a business that is considered illegal and violated the most basic of human rights can create that much money. Oh where has our society come to?

“Human trafficking has been identified as the largest human rights violation in the history of mankind”

Now we’re getting to the scary part. Do you remember back when you were young and your parents always said “Don’t follow strangers, honey!” and you would never listen because your mind is busied elsewhere? Well it’s a good thing you are still here today because the age group target for human trafficking is getting smaller and smaller. This means that these traffickers are looking for younger girls to kidnap and to turn them into sex slaves. That’s right! You’ve heard me. YOUNG FREAKING GIRLS!!! As in little middle school students who haven’t even fully developed yet. And human traffickers are targeting them? That is just sick and wrong is so many many many ways. I’m actually feeling really uncomfortable typing these words out. Freaking little kids! And it’s not just one or two kids; it’s an estimate of 13 million worldwide. 13 million kids around the world are being forced to engage in commercial sex right now. Just imagine the damage it can bring to those sweet, innocent minds. They may be scar forever because of this. Some might even think about ending their own lives. A part of humanity who is involved in human trafficking might have already lost their human features because they make kids have sex to gain money. It’s depressing to hear how some people can be so low to even do such a thing. It’s just unbelievable.

 

According to a 2009 Washington Times article, the Taliban buys children as young as seven years old to act as suicide bombers. The price for child suicide bombers is from $7,000 to $14,000.

So how can you stop something that big and that horrifying? Well as a student, I don’t think there is much we can do except spreading the knowledge and donating for organizations who fought everyday to prevent human trafficking from happening to as many people as they can. I think the best thing we can do now as students is to inform everyone about the human trafficking and make sure that everyone is well-aware of the danger. Doing this can help people avoid being victims to this horrible tragedy. Even if we can’t save people who already got caught up in human trafficking, we can still protect our family, our friends, and our love ones from falling into the hands of these evil, cold-blooded, inhumane, money-crazed, and disgrace people we call human traffickers.

Facts about human trafficking:  

http://facts.randomhistory.com/human-trafficking-facts.html

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/human_trafficking

http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview 

What you can do to help?

http://hq.salsalabs.com/o/5417/p/dia/action3/common/public/index.sjs?action_KEY=18162

 

International Trade

You might not have notice, but international trade accounts for many things you consume and use every day. Foods ,technologies, clothes, books, instruments, furniture, etc., the exchange of goods and services between countries has make it possible for people to acquire different goods and services all around the world.So the next time you wanted some Cambodian tobacco, Albanian footwear, or maybe some Mexican marijuana, you maybe able to find it in the area near you (I'm just kidding about the marijuana, don't do drugs!).

So international trade sounds cool, isn't it? To be able to purchase things originates from differnt parts of the worlds to me is just amazing. But international trade does have some negative sides. An article from fte.org said:

"Trade issues occasionally dominate and are a continuing theme of the international scene: the global market, sweatshops, child labor, trade deficits, the euro, sanctions, tariffs, embargoes, and the EU, NAFTA, WTO – the seemingly endless alphabet of interest groups, treaties, organizations, and trade agreements."

We see that there is a wide variety of issues relating to international trade, from markets to labors to currency values and even to world organizations. What makes this an issues is that many countries in the world depend on trades to operate (either through import or export). So when an event affects the flow of international trade, that creates issues. And it is a big issues nevertheless.

With many problems that can affect international trade, one would think that someone need to do something to prevent it, right? Well that's what the organizations mentioned above are for. EU (European Union), USTR (United States Trade Representative), and WTO (World Trade Organization) are organizations dedicated to regulates international trades between nations. They aim to promote a free movement of people, goods, services, and capitals while also to maintain regulations on trade.

One well-known example of an organization that is dedicated to international trade is the WTO. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. With only 640 staffs but an overwhelming 160 member states, it's amazing how WTO can provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements and a dispute resolution process based on WTO's agreement

There are many good benefits that WTO brings like promotes world peace, disputes are handles constructively, trade raises income... But with an organization this famous there's bound to be some bad side to it. People are saying that WTO develop dispute (by allowing countries to sue each other), own way too much power,and is not shy to enforce its power on those who goes against it.

And exactly how can they use it? The answer is sanction. Major worldwide organizations like the UN sometimes use sanction to economically punish a country for various reasons. It can be describe as a sort of carrot-and-stick approach to dealing with international trade and politics. Although this is use to put on pressure to a country's economy with an attempt to solve disputes, sometimes these sanction can cause even bigger problems. I only remember one time in history where a sanction can cause big problems. After WWI, Germany was heavily punished economically. And you know what is the result of that? WWII. So sanction may not be such a good thing at all.

It is true that there are still many problems regarding international trades. Problems that not even international organizations an fully solve. Trade imbalances, competitive advantages, embargoes, tariffs...these are just some of many issues that international trade is facing. Currently there's no way to solve these issues regarding each and every countries in the world because the economy is different between countries and is always changing. But the good new is that while organizations maintain the condition of international trade, many individuals have been studying ways to solve these economic problems. 

So if you are thinking about pursuing a career in economics, study hard and start thinking about problems regarding trade and may be one day you'll be able to solve international trade issues. And for everyone else, lets hope that one day, issues regarding international trades will be solve and it will bring prosperity and happiness to our society.

What is international trade?: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/112503.asp
Problems of international trade: http://www.preservearticles.com/2012022923898/what-are-the-problems-or-difficulties-in-international-trade.html
In depth international trade: http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/tradelessons/
Benefits of WTO: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/10ben_e/10b00_e.htm#10benefit_menu
Bad side to WTO:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/globalism-destroys-america-10-reasons-why-the-world-trade-organization-is-bad-for-the-united-states-economy
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/dark-side-of-the-wto.asp
Sanction: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/10/economic-sanctions.asp

Health Care

Everybody wants to live forever. But unfortunately science can't make that happen YET. So for now we're just trying to live as long as we could. And why would we want to prolong our life? To be with your family and friends? To experience all walks of life? To avoid death as long as possible? Well, those are a few of many many reasons why humans would want to have a long life. But the question is how? *hint: the answer is somewhere in the title.

Health care is a very important factor in determining how long a person can live. For anyone who doesn't know what it is, health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in human beings. So the idea is that life expectancy of a person is determine by what kind of health care he or she is receiving from the government. So the better the health care system of a country is, the longer the people can live.

Thankfully, my friend Thien have created a Prezi presentation about the types of health care systems in the world and issues that they are having. That means less words you'll have to read. Yay Thien!!!


Although there are many problems relating to a country's health care system, I primarily focus on three things: the quality, the cost, and the waiting time. These three factors determine how good a health care system is.

Living in Vietnam, a developing country, i got to witness how quality, cost, and waiting time heavily affect my country's health care system. Unlicensed doctors, careless procedures, high cost, shocking amount of patients... there are many factors that are dragging Vietnam's health care system down. And it's not like this is a new thing. Poor health care system have been around for years, but the government still haven't been able to solve this problem yet. Mainly it's because of lack of funds, facilities, trained professionals, and conscience of people.

So how can issues regarding health care system be solve? For one thing, the government need to work on improving their health care system, increasing the quality while also making it available for everyone. But this isn't just a one side thing. The people have to help too. I have seen how misbehaving individuals can affect the quality of health care of hospitals and therefore making it hard for medical treatments to be make. So people have to improve the way they are behaving so that it would not affect the health care procedures of medical centers.

Solving health care problems is not easy. But if the government and the people all working together to improve the country's health care system, it would result in a huge benefit not only for our lives, but also the lives of society's future generations.

Drugs

I think we can all agreed that too much of something is never a good idea. Especially something as addicted as drugs. A drug is, in the broadest of terms, a chemical substance that has known biological effects on humans or other animals (except for foods). If consume with the right amount, drugs can be use for treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of diseases.

Believe it or not, cocaine can be use for medical purposes (meth too).

But wait a minute, isn't that the same as medicine? Well yes and no. From a chemistry point of view, the two are basically the same thing. However, our society and the law have create a clear distinction between the two. The differences between medicines and drugs are:
1. Medicines are safe to use as their toxicities are negligible. Drugs on the other hand can have serious side effects once consume.
2. Medicines don't cause addiction. Drugs do.

Don't get addicted to drugs. Think about your love ones.

If they have side effects and can cause addiction, why would someone use drugs? It's usually because of curiosity, peer pressure, or the feelings that drugs can bring. Those feelings were created because some drugs can affect the central nervous system and they can really mess up your senses and thinking. Alcohol, nicotine (in cigarettes), and caffeine are the most widely consumed psychotropic drugs worldwide.

Commonly known drugs (looks like breakfast to me)

Believe it or not, drugs were discovered by humans a long time ago. Ever since the beginning of civilization, humans have discovered many organic substances that can provide them with sensational feelings by consuming them. Examples of this are blue lotus, pythia gases...

Ancient drugs (some are still available today)

If people have been doing this for millenniums, why is it that governments all around the world are working on preventing the use of drugs now? It's simple. Nowadays drugs have much more extreme effects than those used by the Egyptians and Greeks. Even something as widely known and use as marijuana have serious long term effects. Also, as I've mentioned above, drugs are addicted. So excessive use of drugs can turn you into an addict, and that's no good for society. So now you know why governments are trying to prevent people from abusing drugs. So you, your family and friends, and the society can avoid the consequences that drugs can bring.

A song about drugs by non other than Eminem

Cocaine and meth use for medical purpose: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/22/why-we-need-medical-meth-cocaine.html
Difference between medicine and drug: http://www.differencebetween.net/language/words-language/difference-between-drug-and-medicine/
Top 10 drugs and their effects: http://listverse.com/2007/09/27/top-10-drugs-and-their-effects/
Ancient drugs: http://animalnewyork.com/2012/12-drugs-from-ancient-cultures-and-where-to-get-them/
Effects of marijuana: http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/marijuana/short-and-long-term-effects.html