Written by Madison Pigford, Student Volunteer
While Youth4Abolition® works year-round to prevent and raise awareness for human trafficking, the United States government has designated January as Human Trafficking Prevention and Awareness Month.
The United States government began to recognize human trafficking as an important area of focus in 2000 with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). This started the initiative to combat trafficking both domestically and internationally. Then in 2010 President Obama declared January as the National Slavery and Human Trafficking Month.
This is important because presidential declarations increase awareness and increase legislation around the issue. We have seen this more in recent years. In 2017, the state department launched its largest anti-human trafficking initiative and in 2021 they released an additional updated National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking.
Human Trafficking also has a designated National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11th. Prevention of Human Trafficking is associated with Blue. Many people wear blue on the 11th and post in blue to support awareness and prevention.
The awareness day in 2023 had the theme of “Reach every victim - leave no one behind”. This was a theme set by the UN to go along with awareness day. This works in conjunction with many non-profits to raise awareness. A big awareness platform is the Blue Campaign which works to raise awareness all year about human trafficking.
We at Y4A recognize January as Human Trafficking Prevention Month and will continue spreading awareness through this month. We celebrate Human Trafficking Prevention month by encouraging all our chapters to highlight awareness through their student body as well as the broader community.
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