Originally published on the CGS blog on January 11, 2016.
It is truly frightening to think that there are more slaves in the world today than ever before in history. Exploiting human beings for sex or labor is a highly profitable and thriving enterprise in almost every country in the world, including the United States.
What’s being done to combat this global problem?
January 11 has been designated by the UN General Assembly as a day to develop awareness of human trafficking. Awareness has been growing, but remedies are slow and uncoordinated. Effective solutions often are not accessible to victims of trafficking owing to gaps between setting international standards, enacting national laws, and implementing these laws in a humane way.
The international standards have been set out in the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crimeand its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The Convention and the Protocol standards are strengthened by the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. The world-wide standards have been reaffirmed by regional legal frameworks such as the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings.
Despite clear international and regional standards, many countries have poor implementation due to limited government resources and infrastructure, a tendency to criminalize victims, and restrictive immigration policies.
Trafficking in persons is often linked to trafficking in drugs and arms. Some gangs are involved in all three; in other cases agreements are made to specialize and not expand into the specialty of other criminal networks. These networks often act with a high degree of impunity from government services.
There are three main sources of trafficking in persons. The first are refugees from armed conflicts. Refugees are covered by the Refugee Conventions supervised by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the country of first asylum. Thus Syrian refugees are protected and helped by the UNHCR in Lebanon, but not if they leave Lebanon. As a quarter of the population of Lebanon now consists of Syrian refugees, the Lebanese government is increasingly restricting Syrians’ ability to work in Lebanon and to receive schooling, medical services, proper housing, etc. Many Syrians therefore try to leave Lebanon to find a better life in Western Europe. Refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan follow the same pattern.
The second category are people leaving their country for economic reasons, sometimes called “economic refugees.” Migration for better jobs and a higher standard of living has a long history. Poverty, ethnic and racial oppression, and gender-based discrimination are all factors in people seeking to change countries. With ever-tightening immigration policies and a popular backlash against migrants in some countries, would-be migrants turn to “passers”—individuals or groups that try to take migrants into a country, avoiding legal controls.
A third category—or a subcategory of economic migration—is the sex trade, usually of women but also children. A Human Rights Watch study notes, there are an estimated 150,000 non-Japanese women employed in the Japanese sex industry, primarily from other Asian countries such as Thailand and the Philippines. These women are typically employed in the lower rungs of the industry either in “dating” snack bars or in low-end brothels, in which customers pay for short periods of eight or fifteen minutes. According to the study,
Abuses are common as job brokers and employers take advantage of foreign women’s vulnerability as undocumented migrants: they cannot seek recourse from the police or other law enforcement authorities without risking deportation and potential prosecution, and they are isolated by language barriers, a lack of community, and a lack of familiarity with their surroundings.
We find similar patterns in many countries.
The scourge of trafficking in persons will continue to grow unless strong counter measures are taken. Basically, police and governments worldwide do not place a high enough priority on the fight against trafficking unless illegal migration becomes a media issue.
Real progress therefore needs to be made through non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There are four aspects to this anti-trafficking effort. The first is to help build political will by giving accurate information to political leaders and the press. The other three aspects depend on the efforts of the NGOs themselves. Such efforts call for increased cooperation among NGOs and capacity building.
The second aspect is research into the areas from which children and women are trafficked. These are usually the poorest parts of the country and among marginalized populations. Socio-economic and educational development projects must be directed to these areas so that there are realistic avenues for advancement.
The third aspect is the development of housing and of women’s shelters to ensure that persons who have been able to leave exploitive situations have temporary housing and other necessary services.
The fourth aspect is psychological healing. Very often women and children who have been trafficked into the sex trades have a disrupted or violent family and have a poor idea of self-worth. This is also often true of refugees for armed conflict. Thus, it is important to create opportunities for individual and group healing, such as teaching meditation and yoga. There is also a need for adult education services so that victims may continue their broken education cycles.
There are NGOs who are already working along these lines. Their efforts need to be encouraged and expanded.
