Displaying items by tag: ijm

When locusts descended on the American Midwest in 1875, they didn’t just devour crops and forests. They destroyed years of hard-earned progress from settlers struggling to build a better life. In the same way, everyday violence is destroying the efforts of millions trying to rise out of poverty today and, because they are unsafe, the poor cannot benefit from the world’s best efforts to help them thrive. There is an undercover plague that the world is ignoring or has failed to see. The violence crisis is silently undermining the fight against poverty. For the poor, violence is as much a part of life as hunger, illness or unemployment - but it is less visible. Without effective justice systems to protect them from violence (like rape, trafficking and police brutality), the world’s poor live in a state of constant fear.

International Justice Mission is a global organisation that protects the poor from violence in the developing world. Their global team includes more than 750 lawyers, investigators, social workers, community activists and other professionals at work through 17 field offices.

Pray for IJM as they fight a new but devastating form of slavery in the Philippines: the cybersex trafficking of children. It involves the live sexual abuse of children, most under the age of 10. Before the internet, predators had to physically go to into a bar or a brothel to purchase sex. Now, paedophiles can abuse children without ever leaving their home. For this, reason, cybersex trafficking is harder to track down than traditional trafficking, as the abuse can happen anywhere there is an internet connection and a webcam, or simple a mobile phone. Find out more here.

• Pray for the IJM investigators as they work with police to locate the abuse, and that they would be able to successfully rescue and protect these children.
• Pray for the physical and emotional healing of those who’ve already been rescued, and for specialised aftercare facilities that can meet the long-term needs of both these young girls and boys.
• Pray that we would be able to catch not only the traffickers in the Philippines, but the paedophiles around the world (including from the UK), who are paying to direct the abuse.