The Salvation Army has designated Sept. 28-30, 2007, as a weekend to pray for victims of sex trade trafficking. Salvation Army General Shaw Clifton, World President of Women’s Ministries Helen Clifton, and Chief of the Staff Robin Dunster are calling the worldwide Salvation Army to join in the weekend of prayer for sex trade trafficking victims, whose numbers have multiplied over the past decade.

Human trafficking is a lucrative worldwide business worth up to US $10 billion per year. It is estimated that over two million people are trafficked every year with 1.2 million children being affected by trafficking. Sex trafficking is the movement of women and children, usually from one country to another but sometimes within a country, for purposes of prostitution or some other form of sexual slavery. Most sexual trafficking also includes some form or coercion - such as kidnapping, threats, intimidation, assault, rape, drugging or other forms of violence.

“Over the last 10 years, the number of women and children [who] have been trafficked have multiplied so that they are now on par with estimates of the numbers of Africans who were enslaved in the 16th and 17th centuries,” wrote Dr. Laura Lederer, who has been studying the issue of sexual trafficking for 20 years at Harvard University, according to The Salvation Army website.

Experts estimate that 10,000 children between 6-14 are virtually enslaved in brothels in Sri Lanka.

An estimated 10,000 women from the former Soviet Union have been forced into prostitution in Israel.

And between 18,000 to 20,000 of victims are trafficked into the United States and includes men, women, and children trafficked into forced labor and sexual exploitation, according to the Trafficking in Persons Report 2003 USA Department of State.

Asian women are sold to North America brothels for as much as $16,000 each.

Authorities have infiltrated trafficking rings that have imported children and youths from every continent in the world to work as sex slaves in Canada. Every major urban centre in Canada has records of children and youths working as prostitutes, as escorts, in strip clubs and in pornography. Thousands of children are believed to be currently engaged in the commercial sex industry nationally.