The State Department’s annual report on human trafficking (“Trafficking in Persons Report”) found that the current economic crisis has increased the worldwide trade in human beings — including young children — for sex and labor. The report, released this week, estimates that at least 12.3 million adults and children are victims of forced sex and labor every single year. This number is almost certainly too low as most victims live and work out of sight — in the outskirts of society and humanity. More than half of all victims are women and girls.

In today’s Washington Post, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, wrote about the devastating effects of trafficking and of her experiences holding “12-year-olds who had been trafficked and were dying of AIDS.” To many of us, myself included, the problem of human trafficking seems like a distant one, a problem limited to other parts of the world. It is also a problem that is too disturbing and wretched to think about and simply easier to ignore.

But human trafficking is not a distant problem, limited to certain parts of the world. It infects every country, including our own. A global pandemic of sorts borne out of human frailty, greed and callousness. Those who buy and sell human beings must be stopped. To do so will take a united, global effort. That requires all of us to take off the blinders, put ourselves in the victim’s shoes (what if that were my son or daughter?) and think about how we can eradicate the world of this terrible scourge.