January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. The next few blogs will be over Human Trafficking, What is it, How do victims fall prey, Global Statistics, Victims Advocacy, Signs of a Trafficked person and the growing modern day abolitionist movement around the world.
Modern day slavery exists all over the world. Today slavery is called Human Trafficking. It is especially prevalent in the regions of Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and parts of South America. These traffickers prey on the most vulnerable. Modern day anti-trafficking organizations face new challenges but are making advances in prevention, victim protection, and perpetrator persecution.
How Victims Fall Prey to Traffickers
Victims are often lured into human trafficking by deception. Traffickers will promise a better way of life convincing them to leave to a safer and more democratic society, for economic opportunity. Once these victims arrive at their destination, their freedom is at the will of others. Other traffickers befriend their victims, often drugging their drinks, then the victim wakes up in a brothel or work camp. Other victims are actually kidnapped by criminals and forced into labor (2010, Clifford).
U.S. traffickers will lure runaways and throwaways, girls as young as 9, by befriending them. These girls have often chosen to live on the streets rather than be abused at home. Many of the girls are from the foster care system. The pimps convince these girls they are in love with them and systematically take away their identity and hope. They get them hooked on drugs and eventually convince them to prostitute themselves. Girls who are found prostituting themselves in the U.S. have been prosecuted as criminals instead of being classified as trafficking victims. The federal Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act states that all minors found in the commercial sex trade should be considered a trafficked victim (2010, Elam). Unfortunately that has not been enforced yet in most places in the United States (2010, A.U.S.J.).
Escaping poverty is one reason some families are willing to sell a child. Parents that have no food for their family, can easily be convinced to take money from a trafficker under the rouse that their daughter is going to the city to learn a trade such as sewing. The reality is the girl is going to a brothel (2010, Clifford).
Defining Human Trafficking
It is important to define human trafficking. Transportation does not have to happen for a person to be trafficked. According to the Trafficking in Persons report by the U.S. State department, human trafficking is “when one person holds another person in controlled service”. Other terms that are associated with human trafficking are involuntary servitude, slavery, forced bondage and debt labor. A person can be considered a victim if they are born in human trafficking, coerced, tricked, or even committed a crime voluntarily at first and then forced into servitude (2010, www.stage.gov).
Luis CdeBaca, the director of the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, believes that human trafficking is a crime that is akin to murder, rape, and kidnapping (2010, Corydon).
There are different types of human trafficking, such as forced labor, sex trafficking, child trafficking, bonded labor, involuntary domestic servitude, child soldiers, debt bondage among migrant workers and forced and child marriage (2010, www.stage.gov).
Forced labor is when unscrupulous employers exploit workers through debt and coercion. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable. Women who are in forced labor are often sexually abused and exploited (2010, www.stage.gov).
Sex Trafficking happens when a person is tricked, coerced, or deceived into prostitution. Girls can be born into prostitution and debts can be held over women to be prostitutes as well. Many women are held through psychological threats or force. Sex trafficking victims are subject to devastating psychological trauma, abuse, disease, social ostracism, drug dependency, unwanted pregnancy, forced abortions, malnutrition, suicide, murder and overdose(2010, www.stage.gov).
Child Trafficking happens when children are sold or held in debt by traffickers. Many children are trafficked for forced labor while some children are trafficked into the commercial sex trade (2010, www.stage.gov).
Bonded labor happens when workers fall victim to recruiters who use debt to entrap them. These workers try unsuccessfully to work off their debt. In South Asia people are trapped in bonded labor all their life trying to work off an ancestor’s debt. Bonded labor is illegal in the United States and the Palermo Protocol calls it criminal(2010, www.stage.gov).
Involuntary domestic servitude is a form of human trafficking, which is hard to detect. Often the victims live in isolated quarters where they are away from public scrutiny. Many of these people, often women, are subject to sexual abuse as well (2010, www.stage.gov).
Child soldiers are another group of victims of human trafficking. This happens when children are unlawfully recruited by fraud, coercion, or force to serve as soldiers, or supporting roles as cooks, medics, guards, transporters, wives or sex slaves (2010, www.stage.gov).
Migrant workers are not necessarily victims of trafficking, but they often are. When migrant workers arrive and are forced to sign new contracts and/or have their immigration documentation confiscated, they are likely to become trafficked. Employers will often charge workers hidden costs that occur debt and this can lead to abuse and debt bondage (2010, www.stage.gov).
Forced marriage and child marriage happens when children are married through force, coercion or deceit. These marriages happen for many reasons such as paying off a debt, dowries, settling disputes, and poverty. This often leaves the woman or girl very vulnerable to the new family, which can lead to abuse, exploitation, domestic servitude and sexual slavery (2010, www.stage.gov).
To be continued in the next several blogs.
Reference
Polaris Project, (2010), http://nhtrc.polarisproject.org/images/nhtrcdocs/human-trafficking-statistics2.pdf
Salvation Army, (2010), Human Trafficking, http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-index/8081a4079639d55a802573e000530965?opendocument
TheA21campaign.org, (2010), http://www.thea21campaign.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=132&Itemid=305&lang=en
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