International Justice Mission: Please Give Generously

December 09, 2006

In this season of faith, hope and love – and end-of-year giving decisions – I urge you to consider partnering with International Justice Mission (“IJM”), a leading human rights agency dedicated to rescuing victims of sexual exploitation and slavery, forced labor and oppression. 

The UN’s International Labor Organization estimates that, at any given time, there are 12.3 million people around the world in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor and sexual servitude.  Other estimates are as high as 27 million people.  (See US Department of State, 2006 Trafficking in Persons Report.)  Overseas relief and development workers and missionaries often can aid by providing food, shelter and spiritual sustenance, but they lack the expertise and resources to combat human exploitation.  Undertaking that mission not only requires prompting police and other local authorities to investigate and prosecute the abuses, but oftentimes involves confronting abuses of power by those authorities themselves.  Gary Haugen established IJM “to help fill this void, acting as an organization that stands in the gap for victims when they are left without an advocate.”  (See IJM History.) 

IJM is restraining evil and saving lives all over the world.  If you have any doubt about that, take a moment to watch this October 2006 Today Show feature of their work combating sex trafficking – what Haugen calls the “global trade in rape for profit.”  Then, if you dare, plan to attend an IJM benefit dinner, where you will hear gripping first hand accounts from victims and their rescuers from IJM. 

With our support, IJM professionals will conduct investigations necessary to rescue men, women and children from forced prostitution, forced labor and unlawful seizures of property.  They will ensure that emancipated victims receive desperately needed aftercare to help them heal from the horrors of their ordeal.  They will bring perpetrators to justice, seeking jail time and fines, making clear to criminal enterprises throughout the world that they will pay dearly for their wrongs.  They also will train national authorities to investigate, prosecute and deter these types of human rights violations.

Please give generously. 

Additional resources:

Gary Haugen, Terrify No More (book documenting the events leading up to, and surrounding, IJM’s raids in the notorious Cambodian village of Svay Pak where their workers rescued 37 underage victims of sex-trafficking, many of them under the age of 10).