Miyra was selling sunglasses in a Phoenix mall. It was one of three jobs the 19-year-old needed to hold in order to pay her bills and save for college. A young woman and well-dressed man approached her.

“He asked if it would be out of place if he said I was pretty,” Miyra, whose name was changed in order to protect her identity, told ABC.

The couple offered her a chance to be a model, and Miyra later joined them at a photo shoot. After she had hair, nails, and make-up done, Miyra began to speculate about their intentions.

“They used just a cheap camera you can buy, the throwaway,” she said.

Her suspicions proved true – they were human traffickers. Soon after, she was taken against her will and forced to be a prostitute.

Miyra is one of approximately 800,000 to 900,000 people of all nationalities who are annually trafficked across international borders, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

While many victims are sexually exploited through the entertainment industry and prostitution, the majority is forced into slave labor, including domestic servitude, migrant agricultural and sweatshop work. Other forms of trafficking include forced marriage, child soldiers and organ transplants.

Militaries have the children walk ahead to set off any mines, salvaging their own soldiers. Fisheries in West Africa use boys to swim underwater and release their nets because of their small fingers, and many die. Trafficking is different from illegally smuggling persons who willingly submit to their transport, and are not forced to work under inhumane conditions.

“They’re out of sight, out of mind and out of protection,” Susan Forbes Martin, executive director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, said at a University conference about trafficking.

Joint Areas Center tackled the issue of trafficking in its annual symposium through the Center for Global Studies Feb. 23-25.

Human trafficking is tied with arms dealing as the second-largest criminal industry in the world, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“You sell a drug once and it’s over,” Martin said. “You sell a woman and it’s over and over and over.”

On Thursday, Martin introduced “Criminal Trafficking and Slavery: The Dark Side of Global and Regional Migration.” Twenty-two panelists, including University professors and various specialists, discussed human trafficking in various parts of the world.

“It is a legal problem, a gender problem, an economic problem and a globalization problem,” said Phil Williams of the department of political science at Pittsburgh University.

People from all over the community including students, staff and professionals attended.

Martin said trafficking affects every American.

“It’s not just a transnational crime, it hits neighborhoods and communities” like Champaign-Urbana, Martin said. Not only are U.S. citizens trafficked, but also, around 20,000 are annually forced into the U.S.

Therefore, a global response is necessary, she said.

“We shouldn’t necessarily be pointing fingers at each other,” Martin said, “but be pointing them at ourselves.”

The U.S. government has taken steps to make it more difficult to traffic. In 2000, Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. Three years later it was strengthened, collecting $80 million in government assistance. Then another similar act, called the Protection Act, was passed making it illegal for Americans to travel abroad to have sex with a minor.

“The U.S. is way ahead of other countries (and) we’ve paved the way in many respects,” Martin said, “but we need to do more.”

Despite the United States’ efforts to combat trafficking, the American public is having trouble grappling with these issues. Many Americans have skewed perspectives of trafficking, not to mention the number of Americans unaware of the problems, the panelists explained.

Elissa Steglich, Managing Attorney at the Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights center of Heartland Alliance in Chicago, said there’s “a lack of societal support and a divorce and marginalization of the victim from society.”

Educating the public on the issue was a conference goal.

“We need to find ways to help victims speak out to the local community and break down the (victims’) stigma,” Steglich said.

In a question and answer session, Donna Hughes, professor and Carlson Endowed Chair of the Women’s Studies Program at University of Rhode Island, stood up.

“We’ve got a problem guys,” she said, addressing the room. “We have this game where know the massage parlor is a front for prostitution,” but no one says anything about it, Hughes said. “You can find them in the Yellow Pages.”

Simply recognizing trafficking and its market is not enough, Steglich said.

“It’s easy to agree that (trafficking) is bad, but it’s harder to think when we go to the grocery store, ‘Are we buying strawberries made by (the victims)?'” she said.

Sara Gilman is a sophomore in LAS and social chair of YMCA’s program, Libertas. Focusing on human trafficking, the group encourages people to take action in their communities.

Gilman said students can urge their congressmen to investigate human trafficking and aid its victims . (urge) the University to prohibit sweatshop labor . in the production of (their merchandise and) look for fair trade alternatives to some commodities.”

Wendy Nelson-Kauffman, a teacher at the Metropolitan Learning Center Magnet School in Connecticut, told her students that by purchasing products made by the trafficked, they were causing trafficking.

“They were so outraged,” she said of her students’ guilt, that they founded a group, Student Abolitionists Stopping Slavery. After the panel sessions ended Saturday, two members of the group presented themselves in a forum for high school students.

Another group of students present were from University Laboratory High School in Urbana. After their group lost government funding, they formed a Global Studies Initiative, and they pick an international issue to cover each year. After addressing it in their group, they go to professional conferences such as this and pose their suggestions and questions.

“People tell us you (children) are the future,” member Kareem Sayejk, freshman, said. “If you go out there and see what you can do in real life – that really prepares you for the future,” he said.

Panelist Mark Miller, professor of comparative politics at the University of Delaware, said he loved the fact that students attended and considered the conference “an extreme success.”

“Very important seeds were planted in the minds of kids – a tremendous outcome,” Miller said. They will create an epistemic community, and this, he said, “is the hope of the world.”