Human trafficking is the act of trading in humans. The most common purpose of such is sexual slavery, forced labor, or for the removal of valuable organs and tissues. The industry as a whole represents an estimated $32 billion per year in trade.
Examples
- Bonded labor, or debt bondage, is probably the least known form of labor trafficking today, and yet it is the most widely used method of enslaving people. Victims become “bonded” when their labor is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan or service in which its terms and conditions have not been defined or in which the value of the victims’ services is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt. Generally, the value of their work is greater than the original sum of money “borrowed.”
- Forced labor is a situation in which victims are forced to work against their own will under the threat of violence or some other form of punishment; their freedom is restricted and a degree of ownership is exerted. Men are at risk of being trafficked for unskilled work, which globally generates 31 billion USD according to the International Labor Organization.Forms of forced labor can include domestic servitude, agricultural labor, sweatshop factory labor, janitorial, food service and other service industry labor, and begging.The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the single largest global provider of services to victims of trafficking, reports receiving an increasing number of cases in which victims of trafficked were subjected to forced labour. A 2012 study observes that “…2010 was particularly notable as the first year in which IOM assisted more victims of labour trafficking than those who had been trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation.
- Child labor is a form of work that is likely to be hazardous to the physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development of children and can interfere with their education. The International Labor Organization estimates worldwide that there are 246 million exploited children aged between 5 and 17 involved in debt bondage, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography, the illegal drug trade, the illegal arms trade, and other illicit activities around the world.June 2012
Scale
In 2004, the total annual revenue for trafficking in persons were estimated to be between USD$5 billion and $9 billion.
In 2005, Patrick Belser of ILO estimated a global annual profit of $31.6 billion.
In 2008, the United Nations estimated nearly 2.5 million people from 127 different countries are being trafficked into 137 countries around the world.
Drivers
Poverty and globalization
Poverty and lack of educational and economic opportunities in one’s hometown may lead women to voluntarily migrate and then be involuntarily trafficked into sex work. As globalization opened up national borders to greater exchange of goods and capital, labor migration also increased. Less wealthy countries have fewer options for livable wages. The economic impact of globalization pushes people to make conscious decisions to migrate and be vulnerable to trafficking. Gender inequalities that hinder women from participating in the formal sector also push women into informal sectors.
Globalization and the rise of internet technology has also facilitated sex trafficking. Online classified sites and social networks such as Craigslist have been under intense scrutiny for being used by johns and traffickers in facilitating sex trafficking and sex work in general. Traffickers use explicit sites and underground sites (e.g. Craigslist, Backpage, MySpace) to market, recruit, sell, and exploit females. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are suspected for similar uses. For example, Randal G. Jennings was convicted of sex trafficking five underage girls by forcing them to advertise on Craigslist and driving them to meet the johns. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, online classified ads reduce the risks of finding prospective customers. Studies have identified the internet as the single biggest facilitator of commercial sex trade, although it is difficult to ascertain which women advertised are sex trafficking victims. Traffickers and pimps use the internet to recruit minors, since internet and social networking sites usage have significantly increased especially among children.
Organized criminals can generate up to several thousand dollars per day from one trafficked girl, and the internet has further increased profitability of sex trafficking and child trafficking. With faster access to a wider clientele, more sexual encounters can be scheduled.Victims and clients, according a New York City report on sex trafficking in minors, increasingly use the internet to meet customers. Due to protests, Craigslist has since closed its adult services section. According to authorities, Backpage is now the main source for advertising trafficking victims. Investigators also frequently browse online classified ads to identify potential underage girls who are trafficked.
While globalization fostered new technologies that may exacerbate sex trafficking, technology can also be used to assist law enforcement and anti-trafficking efforts. A study was done on online classified ads surrounding the Super Bowl. A number of reports have noticed increase in sex trafficking during previous years of the Super Bowl. For the 2011 Super Bowl held in Dallas, Texas, the Backpage for Dallas area experienced a 136% increase on the number of posts in the Adult section on Super Bowl Sunday, where as Sundays typically have the lowest amount of posts. Researchers analyzed the most salient terms in these online ads, which suggested that many escorts were traveling across state lines to Dallas specifically for the Super Bowl, and found that the self-reported ages were higher than usual. Twitter was another social networking platform studied for detecting sex trafficking. Digital tools can be used to narrow the pool of sex trafficking cases, albeit imperfectly and with uncertainty.
Political and institutional challenges
Corrupt and inadequately trained police officers can be complicit in sex trafficking and/or commit violence against sex workers, including sex trafficked victims.
Anti-trafficking agendas from different groups can also be in conflict. In the movement for sex workers rights, sex workers establish unions and organizations, which seek to eliminate trafficking themselves. However, law enforcement also seek to eliminate trafficking and to prosecute trafficking, and their work may infringe on sex workers’ rights and agency. For example, the sex workers union DMSC (Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee) in Kolkata, India, has “self-regulatory boards” (SRBs) that patrol the red light districts and assist girls who are underage or trafficked. The union opposes police intervention and interferes with police efforts to bring minor girls out of brothels, on the grounds that police action might have an adverse impact on non-trafficked sex workers, especially because police officers in many places are corrupt and violent in their operations.[55] Critics argue that since sex trafficking is an economic and violent crime, it calls for law enforcement to intervene and prevent violence against victims.
Criminalization of sex work also may foster the underground market for sex work and enable sex trafficking.
Difficult political situations such as civil war and social conflict are push factors for migration and trafficking. A study reported that larger countries, the richest and the poorest countries, and countries with restricted press freedom are likely to engage in more sex trafficking. Specifically, being in a transitional economy made a country nineteen times more likely to be ranked in the highest trafficking category, and gender inequalities in a country’s labor market also correlated with higher trafficking rates.
An annual US State Department report in June 2013 cited Russia and China as among the worst offenders in combatting forced labour and sex trafficking, raising the possibility of US sanctions being leveraged against these countries.
Social norms
Women and girls are more prone to trafficking also because of social norms that marginalize their value and status in society. Females face considerable gender discrimination both at home and in school. Stereotypes that women belong at home in the private sphere and that women are less valuable because they do not and are not allowed to contribute to formal employment and monetary gains the same way men do further marginalize women’s status relative to men. Some religious beliefs also lead people to believe that the birth of girls are a result of bad karma, further cementing the belief that girls are not as valuable as boys. Various social norms contribute to women’s inferior position and lack of agency and knowledge, thus making them vulnerable to exploitation such as sex trafficking.
Demand for commercial sex
Abolitionists who seek an end to sex trafficking explain the nature of sex trafficking as an economic supply and demand model. In this model, male demand for prostitutes lead to a market of sex work, which in turn fosters sex trafficking, the illegal trade and coercion of people into sex work, and pimps and traffickers become ‘distributors’ who supply people to be sexually exploited. The demand for sex trafficking can also be facilitated by some pimps’ and traffickers’ desire for women who they can exploit as workers because they do not require wages, safe working circumstances, and agency in choosing customers.
Approaches
Many NGOs work on the issue of sex trafficking. One major NGO is the International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a U.S.-based non-profit human rights organization that combats human trafficking in developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. IJM states that it is a “human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression.” It is a faith-based organization since its purported goal is to “restore to victims of oppression the things that God intends for them: their lives, their liberty, their dignity, the fruits of their labor.”The IJM receives over $900,000 from the U.S. government. The organization has two methods for rescuing victims: brothel raids in cooperation with local police, and “buy bust” operations in which undercover agencies pretend to purchase sex services of an underage girl. After the raid and rescue, the women are sent to rehabilitation programs run by NGOs (such as churches) or the government. Extensive evidence suggest that rehabilitation programs may be ineffective, very harmful, and jail-like. NGOs find that the women experience high rates of violence in rehabilitation and afterwards they are likely to return to sex work with no alternative employment opportunities available.
Campaigns and initiatives
The Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation was created by celebrity humanitarians Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher in 2009 in their efforts to fight human trafficking (specifically focusing on sex trafficking of children) in the U.S. In September 2010, the pair announced the launch of their “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign to combat child sex trafficking alongside other Hollywood stars and technology companies like Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” is based on the idea that high-profile men speaking out against child sex trafficking can help reduce the demand for young girls in the commercial sex trade. A press conference was held on September 23 at the Clinton Global Initiative. In 1994 Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women was established to combat trafficking in women in any grounds. In addition to campaigns led by high profile celebrities, the popular TV channel MTV started a campaign of their own to combat sex trafficking. The initiative called “MTV Exit” joined forces with Facebook to raise awareness in South Asia. MTV had hopes of educating young girls about sex trafficking via social media. The purpose of the campaign was to not only raise awareness but also to educate young women on human trafficking.Young children, and often women who come from countries that are not as advanced and developed as the United States, are in most cases more susceptible to be victims of this particular crime. The Internet may provide a line of communication when no other means of communication are available between countries.
While globalization fostered new technologies that may exacerbate sex trafficking, technology can also be used to assist law enforcement and anti-trafficking efforts. A study was done on online classified ads surrounding the Super Bowl. A number of reports have noticed increase in sex trafficking during previous years of the Super Bowl.For the 2011 Super Bowl held in Dallas, Texas, the Backpage for Dallas area experienced a 136% increase on the number of posts in the Adult section on Super Bowl Sunday, where as Sundays typically have the lowest amount of posts. Researchers analyzed the most salient terms in these online ads, which suggested that many escorts were traveling across state lines to Dallas specifically for the Super Bowl, and found that the self-reported ages were higher than usual. Twitter was another social networking platform studied for detecting sex trafficking. Digital tools can be used to narrow the pool of sex trafficking cases, albeit imperfectly and with uncertainty.
‘End Demand’
End Demand refers to the strategy and efforts of different institutions that seek to end sex trafficking by eliminating and criminalizing the demand for commercial sex. End Demand is very popular in some countries including the United States and Canada.Proponents of the end demand strategy support initiatives such as “John’s schools” that rehabilitate johns, increased arrests of johns, and public shaming (e.g. billboards and websites that publicly name johns who were caught). John’s Schools were pioneered in San Francisco in 1995 and now used in many cities across the U.S. as well as other countries such as the UK and Canada. Some compare John’s Schools programs to driver’s safety courses, because first offenders can pay a fee to attend class(es) on the harms of prostitution, and upon completion, the charges against the john will be dropped. Another initiative that seeks to end demand is the cross-country tour “Ignite the Road to Justice,” launched by the 2011 Miss Canada, Tara Teng. Teng’s initiative circulates a petition to end the demand for commercial sex that drives prostitution and sex trafficking. End Demand efforts also include large-scale public awareness campaigns. Campaigns have started in Sweden, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Atlanta, Georgia. The Atlanta campaign in 2006 was titled “Dear John,” and ran ads in local media reaching out to potential johns to discourage them from buying sex. Massachusetts and Rhode Island also had legislative efforts that criminalized prostitution and increased end demand efforts by targeting johns.
Sweden criminalized the buying of sex in 1999, and Norway and Iceland have later introduced similar laws. The laws were aimed at combatting trafficking. Iceland also banned strip clubs in 2010.
The Anti-trafficking Policy Index
The ‘3P Anti-trafficking Policy Index’ measures the effectiveness of government policies to fight human trafficking based on an evaluation of policy requirements prescribed by the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The policy level is evaluated using a five-point scale, where a score of five indicates the best policy practice, while score 1 is the worst. This scale is used to analyze the main three anti-trafficking policy areas: (i) prosecuting (criminalizing) traffickers, (ii) protecting victims, and (iii) preventing the crime of human trafficking. Each sub-index of prosecution, protection and prevention is aggregated to the overall index with an unweighted sum, with the overall index ranging from a score of 3 (worst) to 15 (best). It is available for up to 177 countries over the 2000-2009 period (on an annual basis).
The outcome of the Index shows that anti-trafficking policy has overall improved over the 2000-2009 period. Improvement is most prevalent in the prosecution and prevention areas worldwide. An exception is protection policy, which shows a modest deterioration in recent years.
In 2009 (the most recent year of the evaluation), seven countries demonstrate the highest possible performance in policies for all three dimensions (overall score 15). These countries are Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and the US. The second best performing group (overall score 14) consists of France, Norway, South Korea, Croatia, Canada, Austria, Slovenia and Nigeria. The worst performing country in 2009 was North Korea, receiving the lowest score in all dimensions (overall score 3), followed by Somalia. For more information view the Human Trafficking Research and Measurement website.
References and Resources
- “Human trafficking for organs, tissue removal” (PDF). Retrieved 2012-12-30.
- “Human trafficking for organs/tissue removal”. Fightslaverynow.org. Retrieved 2012-12-30.
- “Human trafficking for ova removal or surrogacy”. Councilforresponsiblegenetics.org. 2004-03-31. Retrieved 2012-12-30.
- Haken, Jeremy. “Transnational Crime In The Developing World”. Global Financial Integrity. Retrieved 25 June 2011.
- “Convention on Transnational Organized Crime”. Unodc.org. Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- “United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime And The Protocols Thereto” (PDF). Retrieved 2012-01-21.
- “UNODC – Signatories to the CTOC Trafficking Protocol”. Treaties.un.org. Retrieved 2013-03-16.
- “Economic Roots of Trafficking in the UNECE Region – Regional Prep. Meeting for Beijing”. Unece.org. 15 December 2004. Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- “Forced Labor and Human Trafficking: Estimating the Profits”. Cornell University ILR School. 2005-03-01. Retrieved 2011-06-25.
- “UN-backed container exhibit spotlights plight of sex trafficking victims”. Un.org. 2008-02-06. Retrieved 2011-06-25.