Across the world, traffickers supply millions of human beings for use in forced labor activities such as domestic service, or work in rice fields, sweatshops, cocoa plantations, or mines. Some are trafficked into the commercial sex industry. Trafficking touches every single nation – America, Europe, Africa, Asia & more. There are an estimated 27 million people enslaved in our world right now. And human trafficking is the third most profitable illegal activity, right under arms dealing and drug trade.

“In a war, the normal codes of civilized behavior are suspended. It would be unthinkable in so called normal life, to go into someone’s home, where the family is grieving over the death of a loved one, and spend long moments photographing them. It simply wouldn’t be done.”

Kathleen Hennessy is the Director of Photography at the San Francisco Chronicle and has just joined PhotoPhilanthropy as the Activist Award Director for 2010.

I asked her everything that came rushing into my head. What is your editing process like? And how do you think photography creates social change? And what advice do you have for people submitting photo essays to PhotoPhilanthropy? Here’s what she said.

The UNHCR has partnered with Ben Affleck to bring awareness to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The public is encouraged to share the short film and photos of the living conditions of the refugees in order to help raise money and awareness of the humanitarian crisis.

Voices of Sudan, a photography book by David Johnson, hopes to raise awareness of the daily strife of the victims of the genocide in Darfur. 100% of the profits go directly towards constructing wells and supplying medicine to refugees in the region.

Links from around the web relating to photography and social change

During the recent post-election riots in Kenya, bloggers and other “citizen journalists” began an online project to map the locations of attacks and violent outbreaks, and Ushahidi.com was born

PhotoCastNet has an interview with Zoriah, a war photographer recently stripped of his privileges to document the war in Iraq. Similarly, The Big Picture (boston.com) has a photo essay of the war in Iraq, now 5 years running.

Zoriah is a freelance photojournalist who recently lost his permissions to be an embedded reporter due to his reluctance to remove controversial photos from his blog.