Designers Against Child Slavery is a Design Collective that enables creatives from all over the world to rise up against the sex trade. We want to see how effective artists can be when they start breaking the boundaries of culture, race, religion, and backgrounds to unite for a just cause, and use their unique styles and talents to give a voice to the voiceless.

Over the past few decades, sex trafficking has reached epidemic proportions. Its estimated that one third of the worlds sex trafficking takes place in Asia, and 30% of the victims are children. Hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are believed to be enslaved in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and other countries in an underground industry that inflicts horrible emotional and physical pain to these young lives.

There are an estimated 2 million children enslaved worldwide, with approximately 225,000 women and children being trafficked out of South East Asia annually. The average age of the victims is between 10 and 18 years old, but children have been found as young as 5 years old. These victims are often required to have sex with as many as 15 men a day. If they refuse they are threatened, beaten, and starved. It is estimated that 50-90% of children rescued from brothels in parts of Southeast Asia are infected with HIV.

Although many people are removed forcibly from their families for the purpose of trafficking, many others go willingly, choosing to believe their traffickers promise of a better life. This deceit is all too common. A Cambodian study found that 85 percent of victims were trafficked by someone close to them, someone from within the family, a friend, neighbor or boyfriend.

There are many reasons for the dramatic increase in the trafficking of women and children such as globalization, domestic servitude, cheap labor, marriage, adoption, prostitution, child pornography including the more recent practice of live internet child abuse, and child sex tourism. Weak law enforcement and lack of community awareness as well as the lure of easy money have helped to make this industry boom.

Here are some of the pieces that great-hearted artist made for the project. For more of these works and more information about this collective you may visit DACS website at http://www.dacsunited.com. You should really take a look at these and support the cause. Children all over the world will thank you.

Bram Vanharaen

Diego Rodriguez

Grzegorz Domaradzki

Mike Harrison

Mike Speero

Richard Roberts

Sarah Blake

DACS Exhibition