Justice

I was reading through my twitter feed when I came across this article via Compassion. IJM (International Justice Mission) is a cause that has recently broken my heart. And this article- just sealed the deal. You see, tonight while I am watching The Bachelor with my roommates, there are one million children that are sitting in detention centers waiting to go to trial, most for minor offences. Nearly two million children are being exploited in the commercial sex industry. Twenty-seven million people are trapped in modern day slavery. Over 50 percent of these slaves are children. And yet- here I am. Sitting in my dorm room. Comfortable. Wasting time by watching The Bachelor. And yet--there is something more. There are women and children living outside these walls that are being forced to do horrible things. While I'd like to imagine it only is happening in third-world countries- it's happening here in the US, too. It's just not as accepted here. When people get caught, they go to jail.

But in other places around the world, the governments are far more corrupt than Washington. Even when cases are filed and the law enforcement try and send someone to jail- there aren't enough prosecutors to cover the cases. According to one source, it would take 350 years for Mumbai, India to catch up on the court backlog in their books. We need to work on helping these governments fix the corruption problem and help strengthen legal protections for the poorer people of the world.  IJM says, "We can no longer stand by as billions in this world are daily ravaged by lawlessness. Without functioning public justice systems we will never make human rights meaningful and international development sustainable."


And that, my dears, is my plea for you guys to join in on this advocacy journey. One easy way: HERE. IJM is trying to get 25,000 signatures on a petition to send to President Obama to help fight modern day slavery. If we get enraged about what happened all those years ago in America, why can we not get enraged about what is happening right now?