Jennifer Munoz doesn’t need someone to tell her that human trafficking is a global problem that can happen in the United States. To Munoz, it hits home.
Two months ago a 35-year-old football coach was indicted for pimping a 14-year-old girl at a Bowie, Md., high school, just 20 minutes from the high school where Munoz, a non-degree-seeking GW student, graduated.
On Saturday, the International Day to Abolish Slavery, Munoz, 22, decided to take a stance against human trafficking. She attended a rally to protest, publicized by two GW students who hope to bring the group Students Taking Action Against Trafficking, or STAAT, to campus.
“There’s a lot of areas (around the world) where there is really high risk,” Munoz said about trafficking, the commercial trade, or smuggling, of human beings into slavery markets for sex and unfree labor.
According to the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, human trafficking is defined as when a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or when the act is forced on someone under 18.
Saturday’s human trafficking awareness rally was held in Dupont Circle’s Provisions Library, where attendees watched an MTV documentary about human trafficking and listened to speakers from local awareness groups.
STAAT co-founder and GW senior Caitlin O’Leary said she hopes that movies about human trafficking will inspire GW’s student body to take action against this growing international problem. O’Leary said the Lifetime channel mini-series “Human Trafficking” inspired her to take up cause.
“It blows you away,” said O’Leary about the film that sparked her interest in human trafficking when it premiered in October 2005.
“Even though movies seem clich?d or whatever . (people) get very touched by things like that,” she said.
O’Leary hopes to establish a STAAT chapter at GW with co-founder Samantha Markham, a senior who interns with O’Leary at the FAIR Fund, an international organization that addresses women’s rights issues including human trafficking.
O’Leary and Markham work closely with student organizations on college campuses that promote human trafficking awareness. When they realized GW didn’t have it’s own group to promote human trafficking awareness, they initiated GW’s STAAT, which is in the process of obtaining approval from the Student Activities Center.
“I didn’t realize how many people didn’t know anything about the issue at GW,” O’Leary said.
Markham agreed that there is very little knowledge of human trafficking, not only on GW’s campus, but also across the country.
“People are either not aware of human trafficking at all or they’re not aware that it goes on in the United States,” said Markham, who knew little about the cause before she began working at the FAIR Fund.
A major goal of STAAT will be to help GW students to realize that human trafficking can take place right outside their doors.
“It’s an all-encompassing issue; it happens in D.C.” O’Leary said, adding that she hopes more students will become as active in human trafficking as they are with Darfur and AIDS awareness groups.
“(Human trafficking) is not the cool thing to be into right now,” she said, adding that only 10 people have expressed interest in joining STAAT so far.
Senior Catherine Finn said she heard about Saturday’s event because she is friends with O’Leary.
“I think it’s an important cause, but I feel like a lot of people aren’t aware of it,” said Finn, who added that she wouldn’t know as much about human trafficking if it wasn’t for her friendship with O’Leary.
Finn said that she hopes STAAT becomes popular on campus, but that sometimes it can be hard to motivate college kids.
She said, “Joining a Facebook group isn’t exactly advocacy.”
