Chapter 1

SAAN ANG LAKBAY MO?

A Research Paper Presented to 

The Faculty of the English Resource Center

School of Multimedia Arts 

Asia Pacific College

Magallanes, Makati City

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements of the Course

ERESWRT-Research Writing

Bleistine Baybay 

Stephanie Sergio

2015

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

A. Rationale of the Study

The world evolved and the technology's scope widened as years passed by. It seems that everything changed except that there are still victims of Human Trafficking up until now. With the advanced features the world is offering us, our private and personal space can be easily invaded in a second. In this chapter, we will discuss the first few concepts you need to know about Human Trafficking. What are the means and ends of it.

The target audience of this blog would be everyone especially teenagers and parents. Few concepts of Human Trafficking will be broken down for you to easily take them in. The goal of this chapter is to somehow open you eyes in the dirty and dark part of the world which was never defied since then. 

B. Background of the Study

Human Trafficking is an illegal crime that includes trade and harassment to humans. This crime is deemed the most dangerous as it transports its victims to a lot of places auctioning them to different people that will sexually harass them, make them slaves and/or imprisoning them for an unjustifiable reason. My inspiration for this research is the movie "Taken", a 2008 film directed by Pierre Morel which perfectly describes the process of  Human Trafficking.

Previous studies from humantrafficking.org said that during 2012, cases of children trafficking are rising. In this article entitled IOM reports child trafficking and labor trafficking are rising  said that aside from the increasing number of female victims, there are also male victims that are used for labor exploitation. 

With that said in the article, I must say that not only females are the target victims of traffickers that helps me not to focus much on females hence focusing on the "children" and "teens" part as it is general but it is still obvious that there are a lot more female victims in this crime. The reason for this is that females are less stronger and they can be easily captured. However, why are men captured as well? Men have a greater capability to work because of physical features. These men can be used from labor but a few of them are sexually harassed as well.

An article named A Short History of Trafficking by f3magazine.unicri.it shows a very relevant history for human trafficking. An early form of trafficking is "slavery". Slavery has been there from the start, during that prehistoric hunting society. Up until now it is present but in a wide, dangerous, variety of forms making it one of the most unstoppable crimes to ever exist.

Human Trafficking is a global phenomenon. It turns a large number of lives to live under the life of a prostitute, forced laborer and slave.  The victims are deemed criminals at times making the crime very dangerous and the worst.

C. Statement of the Problem

Human Trafficking brought a large damage to humans especially to their morality and emotional stability. The victims of this crime either commit suicide or isolate themselves from the society because of the trauma they acquired. In this part, the study will identify the problems of human trafficking. This research aims to answer the following questions:

1. What is Human Trafficking

2. What is the effect of Human Trafficking to the victims.
3. How rampant is Human Trafficking in the Philippines?
4. How does media affect Human Trafficking?
5. How does final project help in the issue of human trafficking?

These questions will be answered by the end of the research and will be further analyzed to show how can we give an answer to these questions.

D. Objective

Human Trafficking is a crime where trade of humans exist. Exploitation of different human activities happen here such as slavery, forced labor, rape, and prostitution. Alongside these, drugs are also used to effectively and easily manage the kidnapped victims. Human Trafficking in general is an illegal act of selling victims to diffeent individuals globally.

The aim of the study is to help oneself to protect him/herself from human trafficking and help a victim from his/her trauma acquired from the crime. Through our art project which is exhibiting a Photo Narrative, we will explain the emotions and stories of victims that have experienced a brief form of human trafficking. This study and our project attains to obtain the expected audience's opinion and realization about human trafficking. We also aim to open their eyes about self-consciousness while being exposed in the media.

The study also aims to come up with ideas that will encourage the victims to one again stand up and get back on their feet by using the emotional trauma they acquired as an inspiration that they survived and escaped from the crime.

Along with these mentioned objectives, the study will also identify the effect of media to human trafficking but now, it will focus on how media can help in the issue of human trafficking. Media is a very wide piece of technology. We are now able to access it online or offline depending on what piece of media it is. Through media, missing victims of human trafficking can be posted there for easier search. With the growing range of technology, locating oneself can be easily done with the use of GPS technology. CCTV cameras can also be used to capture kidnapping moments that will easily track down criminals.

Also, the study aims to raise an individual's awareness to his/her surrounding to prevent him/herself from being a human trafficking victim. Traffickers might have ideal victims but most of the time, anyone will do as long as they're easy to kidnap. To raise awareness, the study will identify results of the common actions teens usually do in the public that might be a key to being victimized in human trafficking.For the final project, its aim is to show the targeted audience the story behind human trafficking. The story will be told using photographs that embody the vibe of human trafficking. The project is classified as a simple "Photo Essay"exhibit. 

E. Significance of the Study

The research and the project is beneficial to students, parents and victims. How is it beneficial to the three?

Students - the project is beneficial to the students as it help them to be open minded with the processes included in Human Trafficking. It makes them self-aware and conscious with how they act on media and it will give them an idea how to protect themselves by setting personal rules to avoid dangerous encounters with traffickers.

Parents - the project will be helpful to parents as one of the main victims of human trafficking are children. With this project and research, it might give them an idea how to protect their young sons/daughters from being abducted and will make them much more closer. These parents could also teach their sons/daughters some lessons regarding human trafficking from our final project.

Victims - this project and research is beneficial to the victims as this project is based from them as well. Through their own experiences, the project will help them get over it in a light-hearted way without forcing them too much from escaping the trauma. 

I must say that this project is completely beneficial to our expected audiences. The project is worth supporting because it will help a lot of people to prevent themselves from being victimized by human trafficking. Just by a simple project, a lot of lives will be saved from being exploited into sexual harassment and slavery. On the victims' side, there would be somehow, a hope given to them for them not to isolate themselves from the society.

F. Scope and Delimination

The scope of this study is about the protection and encouragement of non-victims and victims. We are analyzing both as it is the main highlight of our project -- Prevention and Protection. This includes protection from human trafficking in the media like internet, social networking sites, and personal space protection. We are also highlighting the encouragement of victims. However, we will not be including one subject which is "How to stop human trafficking" as it is pretty obvious that we cannot stop it on our own. The crime is very wide and contains a lot of underground work - meaning processes that cannot be seen or processes that we have no idea how traffickers do it - and even the government cannot stop this activity until now. Lastly would be the chosen gender of victims which is female. The study chose female as they are common victims of this crime and are the targeted victims to successfully start the process of human trafficking. We also included here the status or state of Human Trafficking in the Philippines which will add awareness to the individuals.

For the deliminations, we chose to include "media" in the topics as most human trafficking happens online now. Also, teenagers and most people in this generation uses media to connect with other people making them meet unfamiliar people through the media. We chose this as people are now indulged into using the media which is why we think everyone can relate to this easily. The study did not involve men or males to be a target in this research as females are the common targets of Human Trafficking and the inspiration, the movie Taken, revolves around the protagonist's daughter making it easier for the study to relate.