City in Focus: Vancouver, Canada
PRAYER BRIEFING
Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in North America. Clean, and law abiding, it is not one of the first cities that comes to mind for human trafficking. But the fast approaching winter Olympics of 2010 may force the issue.
The Olympics of the past have set powerful precedents of sexual exploitation. For instance, Greek authorities reported a 95% increase in the number of human trafficking during the 2004 Olympic games. The Olympic games can cause a spike in trafficking on two levels: first, the thousands of tourists attending the games will increase the demand for sex tourism, a demand that will likely be met by trafficked women and children. Second, the olympic tourism itself could provide an easy cover for moving trafficking victims.
Because Vancouver is hosting the next global sporting event, it has inherited de facto the debate over the legalization of prostitution. The prostitution laws in Vancouver are nuanced: prostitution is legal, but soliciting prostitution is not, a caveat that has effectively proscribed legalized brothels. But many worry that this distinction will present only a diaphanous barrier in the face of a tidal surge of sexual demand that is sure to come with the impending Olympic games.
In fact, a movement for brothel legalization has recently emerged, a Co-Op of “sex industry professionals” lobbying for sanctioned establishments for the express purpose of prostitution. Benjamin Perrin, both a University of British Columbia law professor, and founder of an anti-trafficking organization called the Future Group, is Vancouver’s own trafficking cognoscenti. His ground breaking research has been used to appeal to the Canadian Congress on behalf of the upcoming Olympics in an effort to bar the movement of the sex workers co-op. Even after a three year running start, it looks as if brothels will remain illegal, but there is still time enough before the games begin to change the laws.
Perrin’s research comes at a critical hour. He has shown an average of 800 victims of trafficking annually, with the top countries of origin being Romania, Philippines, Moldova, China, but NGO’s estimate the annual number of trafficking victims in the thousands. Canada’s first ever human trafficking conviction was in the summer of 2007, and it involved a 13-year-old girl in the Greater Toronto Area who was bought and sold by Canadian men on the popular online classified advertisement website Craigslist.
MINISTRIES
YWAM Vancouver www.ywamvancouver.com
They are planning an entire DTS for the Olympics, outreaches, and setting up prayer stations at the games.
Salvation Army www.salvationist.ca
This ministry is doing a lot of work raising awareness in Canada, incuding educating high schools, and lead nationwide weekends of prayer.
PRAYER POINTS
- Pray that God would launch a pre-emptive strike in the Spirit, that He would release a revival in Canada that would buffet the tides of wickedness.
- Ask God to raise up righteous legislators who will uphold laws that protect marriage, the sanctity of sexuality, and other Godly elements of society.
- Ask God to reverse the trends of human trafficking around global sporting events, beginning with Vancouver.
