Can something as simple as a lack of access to clean water lead to human trafficking and modern day slavery? It sure can. The global water crisis contributes to poverty and disease, holds back gender equity advancement, and affects the use of enslaved and exploited labor in commercial agriculture. These problems and others make millions of men, women, and children vulnerable to modern-day slavery.

Today is Blog Action Day, which brings together thousands of writers from around the world to unite our voices, this year about water. Here are five ways a lack of access to clean water leads to modern-day slavery:

1. Lack of water access keeps people in poverty. Around the world, 2.6 billion people live without a sanitary toilet and 884 million people without access to clean drinking water. This lack of access means means families are exposed to more diseases, children may not be able to go to school, and small farms and family businesses suffer. Together, these problems keep people in poverty. And when people are poor and desperate, they are more vulnerable to human trafficking.

2. Fetching water can put women and children at risk for trafficking. In many poor and rural areas, people must walk miles to fetch clean drinking water. This job usually falls to women and children. Pimps and traffickers gather in communal places like wells and make offers of work abroad, in city factories, or in private homes. But those jobs turn out to be modern-day slavery.

3. Lack of water keeps women from becoming equal. Water is critical to life, so ensuring her family has clean water is a poor woman's first priority. Because clean water is often far away or must be boiled and treated to make it safe to drink, women spend huge quantities of time and energy just making sure their children have access to clean water. That's time they're not spending educating themselves or their children, taking leadership positions in the community, or developing a business. Human trafficking thrives in places were women aren't equal, and a lack of water access keeps them from becoming so.

4. Unsafe water and unsanitary living conditions cause disease and death. 80% of diseases are caused by dirty water. When water or a lack of sanitation makes someone living in poverty sick, the cost of medicine can force parents to send a child away to "work" in order to get money for the medicine to save another one's life. Traffickers prey on families in this situation, offering up-front payments in exchange for a child. When unclean water causes the death of a parent, children are left orphaned and more vulnerable to slavery.

5. Industrial agriculture enslaves people made poor by lack of water. One of the biggest clean water hogs on the planet is the industrial food system. On average, it takes 16,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of beef. Other food stuffs like coffee and produce also use up vast amounts of water. And the more clean water the agricultural industry takes, the less is available for people. That same industry then takes advantage of the poverty caused by a lack of clean water and exploits and enslaves millions of workers around the world.

If you're serious about ending human trafficking, then you also need to be serious about ending that which helps it thrive. And a lack of access to clean water contributes to modern-day slavery around the world. Take a stand for clean water by supporting an international treaty to provide clean water to everyone, everywhere.