It is no surprise that exploitation increases exponentially when natural disasters or wars occur. Right now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is sending millions of people running to the borders. Most of these are women and children, as Ukrainian men stay and fight.
These unprotected people are in extreme danger of exploitation. One of the most devastating parts of this tragedy is that predators see this as an opportunity to increase their own profits through tricking and trapping these desperate women and children in sex or labor trafficking. Disturbingly, people are actively searching for videos of this exploitation, causing the searches on pornhub for “Ukrainian girls” to increase massively since the beginning of the invasion.
While millions are fleeing war and thousands are rushing in to exploit, Unbound is sending teams into the crisis.
We have the tools, connections and experience to provide frontline trafficking support. We have invitations from organizations on the border of Poland and Ukraine, asking us to bring them on-the-ground trafficking prevention and response training as they provide shelter and process the flood of people coming. We have materials in Ukrainian for how to travel safely. We have years of experience monitoring borders from our team in Mongolia who work with the national police to intervene with Mongolians being trafficked out of the country.
The first of two initial teams are already on the way. We will send more over the coming weeks. As their work unfolds, we hope to send teams regularly to continue to assist the Ukrainian refugees and the people serving them for as long as we can be useful.
We need $15,000 to send these first two teams of front line responders. They will land with work to do through pre-existing connections with humanitarian workers on the ground who are asking Unbound to provide the trafficking education they need as a first step to protecting the vulnerable and identifying traffickers and victims. Please support our teams in prayer, and click HERE to give directly to this work.
By Jessica Sykora, Unbound Global Director of Development