Human Trafficking

One of the significant issues confronting the global community in the 21st century is the increasing frequency and spread of human trafficking. The United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime as part of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defined human trafficking in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons. According to Article 3(a) of the protocol, human trafficking is the

recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

Included in the definition are acts of sexual exploitation, prostitution, forced labor and/or services, slavery, practices similar to slavery, servitude, and the removal of organs (including surrogacy and ova removal). Forced marriage has also come to be considered a form of human trafficking.

Internationally, there are few countries that are not affected by human trafficking problems— whether their citizens and communities are involved in the acts of trafficking of humans or whether they use the services of humans who have been trafficked. In addition, few segments of societies, involving both adults and children, are affected by human trafficking issues in some way. Despite growing international efforts to control and reduce human trafficking, it continues to threaten the foundations of human rights. This article further defines human trafficking and discusses various avenues for addressing it.

Human trafficking is not the same as human smuggling. Human smuggling, while it involves the transport of humans across transnational borders, involves victims who have given their consent to be smuggled into a country, are released upon reaching their destination, and make payment for the services rendered to smuggle them. For example, thousands of people from Central America and South America are smuggled into the United States each year.

A common scenario of human smuggling involves a victim paying a person (coyote) to get him or her across the border. Coyotes can release the victim upon payment on either side of the border. Some coyotes may release victims in Mexico and simply point north, requiring victims to find their own way. Others actually transport victims across the border. In some cases, an accomplice of the coyote will be waiting on the U.S. side of the border and transport the victims to other parts of the United States.

There can be overlap between human trafficking and human smuggling, which can blur the distinction between the two. For example, coyotes may get the victim across the border for promise of payment—and then, when in the United States, keep the victim captive and force the victim to engage in trafficking activities until payment is made in full. To keep the victim engaged in trafficking activities, the coyote might take actions to ensure that the payment is never received in full.

Sometimes, drug trafficking organizations in Central America and South America may coerce victims into trafficking activities. A common scenario is for the drug trafficking organization to get a victim to agree to take drugs across the border and then threaten the victim or the victim’s family to force them to return and take more drugs across the border. For the victim, this creates an ongoing cycle from which it is hard to escape. Smuggled migrants are particularly susceptible to being victimized and forced into trafficking activities, as many will not go to law enforcement authorities for assistance for fear of deportation.

Types of Human Trafficking

Types of human trafficking include child labor, forced labor, and bonded labor. Child labor has been reported by the International Labor Organization (ILO) to be a several billion-dollar industry involving over 152 million children (2016 data). Because of international legal and cooperative efforts, human trafficking in children has seen a slight decrease since 2000, when approximately 246 million children were trafficked. Child trafficking is most prominent in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.

Forced labor is when victims are held against their will and forced to work for the trafficker (or organization) and then turn over monies earned to the trafficker. The ILO estimated that in 2005, forced labor was a US$3 billion global industry. By 2016, according to the ILO, it had risen to a US$150 billion global industry and is expected to continue to rise. Victims are commonly found in the agricultural industry, construction, domestic roles, janitorial jobs, food services, service industries in general as unskilled labor, sweatshops, factory workers, and the sex industry. Some have suggested that most persons involved in the global pornography market (especially females) are victims of human trafficking.

The third category of human trafficking, bonded labor, is the grey area between trafficking and smuggling. Victims are forced to work in one of the aforementioned industries and repay their traffickers.

Other categories of human trafficking that are much less prevalent are forced marriages and organ removal. It is not uncommon for persons in developed countries who need organ transplants to travel to less developed countries to obtain the transplant. In many cases, the donor is forced.

Statistics

Because human trafficking is a global phenomenon, it is difficult to assess the number of people victimized by it. In 2016, the ILO estimated that there were 40.3 million victims of human trafficking in the world. The UN data (Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 2016) estimate that there are over 244 million international migrants in the world (up from 173 million in 2000), a population prone to be victimized by human traffickers. According to the UN report, in North America alone, victims of human trafficking came from 137 different countries (and these data reflect only those victims discovered by authorities).

Almost every country of the world is in some way involved and/or affected by human trafficking, either as a country of origin, transit, or destination—or all three. In general, humans are trafficked from less developed countries to more developed countries. In less developed countries, poverty is often a trigger for the victim, who sees going to a more developed country as an opportunity; a motivation easily exploited by the traffickers. The most common form of human trafficking, according to the UN report, was sexual exploitation and prostitution (72%) and forced labor (20%) among female victims and forced labor (85.7%) and sexual exploitation (6.8%) among male victims. These results could be misleading, as sexual exploitation is the most documented because it is the most open and obvious. Trafficking crimes such as organ removal, servitude, forced marriage, and labor are much less overt. More women are victimized than men or children. In a number of cases, women victims become the trafficker as a way to escape their own victimization. For example, a women being sexually exploited may be told that if she will help get other women involved, she will no longer be exploited.

The majority of traffickers are transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). Human trafficking is a global enterprise, with TCOs sharing resources, logistics, personnel, and intelligence resources. TCOs that were once confined to a specific region or area of the world are expanding into worldwide markets. Just as with drugs, weapons, and money laundering, human trafficking is simply a commodity to these organizations.

Efforts to Address Human Trafficking

Efforts to reduce or eradicate human trafficking can take various approaches, including legislation, advocacy, and recommendations from the UN.

Legislation

According to the UN definition, human trafficking has three elements: the act, the means, and the purpose. The act, or what is done, includes harboring, receipt of persons, recruitment, transportation, and transfer. The means, or how it is done, includes abduction, abuse of power or vulnerability, coercion, fraud, force, and giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim. The purpose, or why it is done, are the specific uses of the persons, which can include forced labor, slavery or similar practices, using the victim for purposes of prostitution, and removal of organs.

As part of the definition (and in Article 5), the UN requires that states enact legislation that incorporates the elements of the definition. Because nations have different legislative systems, adopting the definition verbatim is not possible, but each nation is expected to incorporate the essential elements of the UN definition into its laws. Also expected to be criminalized are acts consisting of an attempt to commit a trafficking offense, participation as an accomplice, and organizing and/or directing others to engage in human trafficking. In addition, laws should include and differentiate trafficking across and within borders, include the range of exploitation (not just sexual), and clearly include men, women, and children. Moreover, laws should recognize and include nonorganized crime actors. However, given that the UN is an advisory body, there is no mechanism to force nations to enact and enforce such laws.

Therefore, in order to eradicate human trafficking, nations need to enact joint laws and court systems that can take stern criminal measures against TCOs and others involved in human trafficking and not provide a sanctuary or safe haven for criminals engaged in human trafficking. Much like war crimes, nations need to develop an international standard of conduct, trial, and punishment for engaging in human trafficking.

Advocacy

In the United States, as elsewhere in the world, human trafficking is a significant problem. One of the leading advocate groups fighting human trafficking in the United States is the Polaris Project, a nonprofit volunteer group that fights human trafficking on a variety of fronts, and whose stated mission is to eradicate modern slavery and human trafficking. It also operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline (1-888-3737888) and Polaris BeFree Textline (text “BeFree,” 233733), which victims can use to receive help and assistance to escape the bondages of modern slavery. In addition to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline, Polaris operates global hotlines, has services for victims of trafficking, works with governments to introduce legislation, conducts extensive data analysis on human trafficking, and provides interventions to disrupt and stop human trafficking. Their efforts use a three-step model to disrupt and stop human trafficking: (1) respond to victims, (2) equip communities and others to prevent human trafficking, and (3) disrupt the business of trafficking using targeted campaigns.

Using limited data from the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline from phone calls, e-mails, texts, and online reports, in the first half of 2016 (January 1–June 30), the states with the highest contacts from victims were California, Texas, Florida, Ohio, New York, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, and North Carolina. The most frequent contacts were for sexual exploitation (73%), forced/bonded labor (13%), and a combination of sexual exploitation and labor (3%). In terms of sexual exploitation, the top venues were hotel/motels (11%), commercial front brothels (11%), online ads, venue unknown (5%), residential brothels (5%), and street-based contacts (1%). For labor exploitation, domestic contacts were most common (21%), followed by agriculture (11%), traveling sales crews (9%), restaurant/food service (8%), and health and beauty services (4%).

UN Recommendations

Given the scope, complexity, severity, and extent of the problem of human trafficking, the UN recommends several efforts that may help to reduce and stop human trafficking. The first recommendation is to gather accurate and comprehensive data to gain a comprehensive picture of human trafficking. Only then can legal and educational efforts be undertaken to manage and stop human trafficking. The second recommendation is to interrupt and stop TCOs and other international criminal organizations involved in human trafficking. The next recommendation is for nations to make solving the problem of human trafficking a priority. It is easy to give human trafficking a back seat, given the myriad of problems faced by nations, especially developing nations. Many of these issues, however, help foster an atmosphere conducive to human trafficking. The fourth recommendation is for nations to undertake comprehensive programs to raise public consciousness of the problem and to prevent human trafficking at its points of origin. The fifth recommendation is to fully implement the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children internationally. The sixth recommendation involves establishing relations between nations, especially the end countries (original and destination), as nations have to understand the symbiosis between each other and enact joint programs to make human trafficking unacceptable to all. Finally, it takes the efforts of everyone together— nations, organizations, law enforcement, and support groups—to reduce the impact of human trafficking.

References:

1. International Labour Office. (2017). Global estimates of child labour: Results and trends, 2012–2016. Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_575499.pdf
2. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2000). Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20080410140453/http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/protocoltraffic.htm
3. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2016). Global report on trafficking in persons. Retrieved from https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/2016_Global_Report_on_Trafficking_in_Persons.pdf

Websites

1. Polaris Project. Retrieved from https://polarisproject.org/