Recently TEAR Fund ran two events in partnership with Nvader – an organisation freeing those caught in the problem of human trafficking in the sex industry. Nvader focuses on rescue, prosecution of perpetrators and empowerment of victims. The events were fronted by Nvader’s founder, Daniel Walker. The world desperately needs people to know about the magnitude of the human trafficking issue and to confront it, but listening to the stories of what actually goes on can be harrowing. I want to address how we can cope with hearing such things and how we should respond.

Photo: courtesy of Nvader

Trafficking (forced slavery) in human beings is one of the largest income generators for organised crime just behind drugs and is projected to soon become the top as it is more profitable than drugs. In many countries the penalties for being engaged in human trafficking are less than being involved in drug trafficking. The bottom line is that trafficking human beings is easier and more profitable than trafficking drugs. Human beings, including children, can be an ongoing source of income as opposed to drugs, which are used and are then gone.

It should disturb any human being to hear about children as young as six (and younger) who are trafficked into the sex industry to be used and abused over and over again. In Daniel’s experience as an investigator, gathering information used to bring down brothels offering women and girls forced into slavery and rape, he has encountered that very thing and been offered children for sexual activity. His job, and the work of Nvader now, has been to document all of it and use it as evidence for local authorities to prosecute those involved and to free and empower the victims.

The events TEAR Fund and Nvader put on were designed to inform around the issue of human trafficking and give people a way to act. People were educated about the atrocities, Daniel’s investigative work and the work Nvader undertakes now. This stuff can be hard to hear and often overwhelming if you’re not familiar with it already. I know some people were rightly disturbed and shaken by what they heard – that’s a good thing. The question is, what do you do with that information so it doesn’t eat you alive?

The Problem of Evil

First we must understand that evil is real and things like human trafficking in the sex industry are the frontline of evil. It’s the coalface of human beings using, exploiting and abusing power against the vulnerable. It’s true of everyone involved in the chain from the traffickers to the ‘consumers’ – and the consumer isn’t just the person using these vulnerable women, girls and boys in the brothels, it’s also those accessing porn on their computers and watching videos created by those using trafficked slaves.

With that in mind we need to shift our understanding from this being a distant issue, to understanding that we live in a global community. There are plenty of people in our own communities helping to feed the issue.

Evil exists on a spectrum. That spectrum goes right from the smallest acts of abuse we all perpetrate against others and the environment regularly, right through to these crimes where the evil committed is considered hideous to most people. In thinking about our response, being aware of that spectrum is helpful because then the response becomes about the whole of our lives rather than simply trying to work out how we respond to this overwhelming issue.

With that sense of a spectrum of evil in mind, having an understanding of human nature is significant – a framework from which we have an awareness of where we think both good and bad actions stem from. For some this will predominantly be a theological framework, for others it will be biological and/or contextual, and for many it will be a mix of the three (I fit in that last camp). Having this gives us an answer to the ‘why’ question for the evil we see – though trying to understand individual cases of evil can sometimes be pointless because there simply doesn’t seem to be a rational explanation. No explanation will be free of emotion – we should feel emotion when confronted by evil, it’s what will compel us to respond.

An Nvader Rescue

Once we have an awareness of the spectrum of evil and our framework for understanding the human nature that drives both the good and the bad, we then have the question of response.

We Can do Something

I want to drive home an important point here. If you don’t get this and you commit your life to responding to the world’s needs (whatever they are), you will eventually cripple yourself emotionally, mentally and spiritually, if not physically as well.

Allow me to say this very clearly – you and I, we’re not the saviours of the world. We can’t solve all the world’s problems. The world will continue to turn with both its best and worst taking place whether we’re here or not.

Got it? Ok, now allow me to also say ‘but we can do something’. In order to truly be effective you need to free yourself from the idea that you have to fix it all. God has put in place a collective of people who should be thinking like this – it’s called the Church. At the head of the Church IS the Saviour, Jesus. Those of us who follow him are conduits for his love, but it’s he that saves the world and is working towards its complete redemption, reconciliation and renewal.

With the sense that we want to do something, the question then becomes ‘what?’ The answer to that involves another spectrum. Just as there is a spectrum of evil, there is also a spectrum of love. I use the word love because it is more potent than the word ‘good’ and since I believe that evil is a motivation and an action, thinking the same about love makes it the opposite of evil and the most effective response. To be motivated by love and to act in love is selfless – it seeks the good of the other.

Our real challenge is not to pick some arbitrary issue and then to do good in relation to that issue, it is to have our whole lives shaped by love so that the spectrum of our lives is a spectrum of enacted love. Our aim is to be transformed into people whose lives are lived through the filter of love – with it being our driving motivation at the source of our being from which all of our actions flow. Our lives and actions are then lives and actions of love and therefore, justice.

Love then becomes the lens through which we filter everything. Love (the desire to do whatever is best for the other) should drive how we interact with our families, our neighbours, our schools, workplaces, communities, our nation and the world. We can do nothing more and nothing less.

With this at the heart of who we are, we then have the opportunity to greet every issue with a question of love. We can and should allow our hearts to be broken by evil, but it should never end there for us. The question we should always be asking when faced with the spectrum of evil is ‘what is the most loving response I can bring to this?’ Note, the question isn’t ‘what needs to be done to completely eradicate this issue and how am I going to do it?’ Instead it’s a question that recognises our limitations but asks, ‘what can I do?’ You can do nothing more and nothing less. And sometimes our answer might very honestly be ‘nothing at this time’. And that’s ok too if the whole of our lives are being driven by love and that spectrum of love is being outworked through us in many ways.

When faced with an issue that we do feel compelled to respond to, in this day and age there are three main ways to respond.

1. Action (what can I do?)
2. Prayer (what can I pray for?)
3. Giving (How can I financially help?)

Educating ourselves on an issue can deepen all three responses. You might choose to respond with one, two or three of these. The issue of human trafficking involves clear ways to enact all three and TEAR Fund has ways you can do these. With the second two we can give you effective ways to be involved and the first we are developing.

So let’s be clear, there are ways to understand the evil you hear about. Know that you don’t have to completely solve the problem – free yourself from that expectation, but also know that you can do something and the something you can do is to shape your life through love and act out of that. Whatever you then do in life is a valid response to the problems of the world from the small to the large.

With all that, face every problem and ask the questions ‘is this something I can be involved in and if so, how?’ Nvader offers a way to be involved in the issue of human trafficking. When it comes to that and some of the world’s worst and most present problems, TEAR Fund is here to help you with the ‘how’.

Check out this infographic to get a handle on the issue of child sex tourism in the human trafficking industry and see one way you can respond…