Prevention In Countries of Origin
Prevention in Countries of Destination
One of the most controversial questions of how to reduce trafficking for sexual purposes pertains to prostitution policies. There is a fierce debate over whether the legalisation or prohibition of prostitution is the best strategy against trafficking. Proponents of legalization argue that prohibition drives the sex industry underground, with harmful consequences for the health and safety of women. Proponents of criminalisation argue that legalisation increases trafficking and prevents the police from protecting women. They also believe that the distinction between voluntary and forced prostitution is a false one, arguing that prostitution is inevitably exploitative. A compromise between these two positions, now debated in several countries, is to punish clients who knowingly purchase services from trafficked persons.
Protection
Protecting and assisting trafficked persons is a crucial element of anti-trafficking efforts. However, coordinating the various programs and activities that have been put in place has proven challenging. Efforts have tended to be project-based and fragmented, lacking an overall strategy and division of labour among stakeholders, who have often competed for funding and influence. Now, national action plans, referral mechanisms, standard operating procedures, and memoranda of understanding foster better cooperation and coordination between and among governments, government agencies, international organisations and NGOs.
Prosecution
Legislative Measures
Over recent years, many states have passed laws that criminalise human trafficking and assist trafficked persons. Moreover, existing laws have been amended to harmonise national legislation with international standards.
Challenges to Counter-Trafficking Efforts
Although progress has been made, counter-trafficking faces numerous challenges. These five approaches will be described in Parts 10-14 of this series of blogs.
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Human Trafficking and Migration
Human trafficking is often seen as synonymous with irregular migration. To be sure, many persons from poor countries who cannot migrate legally are lured to affluent countries by traffickers promising employment and other opportunities.
However, trafficking does not need to involve the crossing of international borders, and not all irregular migrants are victims of trafficking. When trafficked persons are treated as irregular migrants, there is a risk of double victimisation. The deportation of victims of trafficking to their home countries not only fails to take into account the interests and needs of trafficked persons, but also undermines efforts to prosecute traffickers. After all, victims refrain from contacting the authorities for fear of deportation and deported persons can no longer serve as witnesses for the prosecution.
Finally, a focus on irregular migration tends to put the blame on sending countries, obscuring the fact that the demand for sexual services and cheap labor in affluent countries is a major driving force behind trafficking.
Consequences of Human Trafficking
Consequences for Individuals
Armed Conflict and Human Trafficking
Trafficking in areas of Peace Support Operations
Gender and Human Trafficking
People often think that men are smuggled and women trafficked. This is not true: Men are trafficked as well (mainly for the purpose of labor exploitation) and many women are smuggled. Nevertheless, women's experiences of trafficking often differ from those of men. To understand the trafficking of women and girls, one should:
Many women confronting unemployment, sexual harassment, or domestic violence, respond to advertisements offering well-paid work abroad. In many cases, this behavior is not naive. Women simply perceive the potential benefits of migration, such as financial rewards and improved social status, as outweighing the dangers of migration. To understand the trafficking of women, one has to take into account transformation processes and violence.
Gender-based discrimination
Poverty, unemployment and a lack of economic prospects affect women more than men, especially in patriarchal societies and in those undergoing political, economic and social transformation. The "feminization of poverty" is thus a prime root cause of labor migration and trafficking. Some countries do not have laws against gender-based discrimination. Even if they do, many women are not aware of their rights to equal treatment, and laws against gender-based discrimination have little practical effect. In labor markets, women are often hired last and fired first, and they have less access to regulated jobs than men, often working in informal sectors where risks of exploitation and violence are high.
Causes of Human Trafficking
Of the more than 12.3 million people trapped in forced labor today, around 2.4 million are victims of human trafficking, according to the International Labour Office (ILO). Forty-three percent of trafficked persons are sexually exploited and one third are trafficked for economic exploitation. Up to half of all forced laborers in the world today are minors. Traffickers earn billions of US dollars in profits every year. In recent years, human trafficking is increasingly being viewed as an important global security issue. The success of counter-strategies hinges on an understanding of the root causes of trafficking.
There are various causes behind trafficking. Searching for a better life abroad, many migrants rely on smugglers and traffickers who benefit from a lack of legal migration and employment opportunities by offering their "services." Economic hardship, conflict, crime, discriminatory practices or natural disasters affect millions of people and make them vulnerable to various forms of exploitation and enslavement. Many societies discriminate against women and girls, who are expected to stay at home and thus often have little access to education and jobs. This gender-based discrimination makes women and girls disproportionately vulnerable to trafficking.
Forced Labor
Kidneys are the most commonly trafficked organs, as removing other organs would lead to the death of the "donor." Only in rare cases are people whose organs are trafficked kidnapped and forced to have their organs removed. Most commonly, people sell their organs to escape from desperate economic situations. We can speak of organ trafficking when the "donor" is coerced into donating organs or when he or she does not receive the agreed price. Organs are not the only trafficked body material. Other human parts, including human tissue, are also traded. There have been cases where human parts have been removed from dead bodies and sold without the knowledge and consent of relatives.
Trafficking affects children in both industrialised and developing countries. Trafficked children provide sexual services, are forced into marriage, are illegally adopted, work as housemaids or beggars, are recruited by armed groups or are exploited in professional sports. Trafficking exposes children to violence, sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS. It violates their right to be protected, grow up in decent conditions, and have access to education. A trafficked child is any person under 18 who is recruited, transported, transferred, harboured or received for the purpose of exploitation, within or outside his or her country of origin.
Here are some facts about the trafficking of children:
Trafficking for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation
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The best-known type is the trafficking of women and girls for the purpose of prostitution. But women and girls are also trafficked to work in private households. Moreover, men and boys are trafficked into the sex industry or, more commonly, on fields, in factories, in shops or at construction sites. Fraud and deception are essential elements of trafficking. Traffickers also use the threat of force or actual force against victims and their families. They also make victims comply with their demands by threatening to contact the police and immigration authorities, which may lead to deportation if the victim is not allowed to stay and work in the country. The fact that many trafficked persons have their passports taken away makes them especially vulnerable. In addition, traffickers pay trafficked persons small or no salaries at all.
According to a 2005 estimate of the International Labour Office, forced labor affects at least 12.3 million people globally. Of those, 2.4 million are victims of trafficking (forced labour includes trafficking of persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation). The annual profits of trafficking are estimated at US$ 32 billion.
Besides labor and sex trafficking, there are other forms of human trafficking as well. The gap between the demand for and supply of human organs has created a thriving illicit market in which traffickers deal in organs of people who are tricked into surgeries that often lead to their death. Furthermore, traffickers deal in children for adoption and exploit children, many of whom are disabled, as street beggars and vendors. These are the various ways in which traffickers use people, or rather their bodies, as commodities.
Prostitution of children under the age of 18 years, child pornography and the (often related) sale and trafficking of children are crimes of violence against children. They are forms of economic exploitation akin to forced labour or slavery. Such children often suffer irreparable damage to their physical and mental health. They face early pregnancy and risk sexually transmitted diseases, particularly AIDS. They are often inadequately protected by the law and may be treated as criminals.
Children who have been the victims of a trafficking operation will have suffered physical and/or sexual abuse, often of an extreme kind. They are beaten, raped, tortured, sometimes killed. They endure this suffering at an age when they should normally be trusting, healthy and energetic youngsters. During childhood children are developing in a physical, social and psychological way. When trauma occurs during this important stage in life, the consequences are devastating, and affect all aspects of their lives. Children can lose their independence, and the capacity to lead a meaningful adult life. They suffer resultant long-term negative effects on their health and life expectancy. They can suffer stigma in their families and communities when they return home. They can become involved in criminal activities.
Some children (former victims or others) may be recruited to take part in the exploitation of other children, or may set up their own systems of exploitation, thus perpetuating the cycle of child abuse.
Often children show a complex pattern of symptoms, related to the multi traumatic experiences. For some children the effects are clearly visible; others however suppress their feelings and symptoms, and it can take a while before symptoms show up; this can be especially the case with psychological symptoms. Some children will even repress and forget the traumatic experience, the memory of which will surface later on.
All children who have been sexually exploited will suffer some form of physical or mental harm. Where children have been enslaved and have had no control over their lives during their exploitation, they suffer trauma that is equivalent to the results of torture. Usually, the longer the exploitation goes on, the more health problems that will be experienced. But some children will suffer life-long damage very quickly, such as by contracting HIV.
The various effects on children that can result from being sexually exploited are summarized below:
Effects on Physical Health may include:
• Victims acquire various diseases, including venereal diseases and HIV infection
• Victims suffer a whole range of symptoms such as: nausea, headache, chest pain
and respiratory problems, dizziness, stomach and abdominal pain, backache, skin
diseases
• Girl victims can become pregnant
• Girl victims can suffer complications of pregnancy and be made to undergo abortions
• Victims frequently suffer physical deprivations, including beatings, sensory deprivation
and food deprivation
• Victims endure bruises, scratches, wounds on sexual organs
Effects on Mental Health and Emotional Responses may include:
• Depression
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Feelings of guilt and shame
• Suicidal thoughts
• Exhaustion and sleeping problems (not sleeping or oversleeping)
• Flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety attacks, irritability and other symptoms of stress
• Dissociation, or emotional withdrawal
• Inability to concentrate/limited ability to organize and structure
• Loss of self-confidence (sometimes leading to overconfident manner to compensate)
• Low self-image, believing themselves to be worthless
• Low self-esteem/feelings of self-hate
• Easily feel ‘picked on’
• See themselves as saleable commodities
• Feelings of degradation
• Anxiety
• Confused sense of time
• Confused feelings about love and sex
• Nervous breakdowns, sometimes with permanent effect
• Anger
Effects on Behaviour may include:
• Victims can be mistrustful of adults
• Victims adopt anti-social behaviour
• Victims can find it difficult to relate to others, including within the family and at work
• Victims frequently develop drug and alcohol addictions
• Suppression of anger can result in outburst of anger against others or against
themselves (self harm)
• Victims can become aggressive and angry towards others around them
• Victims can develop dependant relationships with their abusers
• Victims worry that they will not be able to have a normal life
• Victims worry about people in their families and communities knowing what has happened to them, and become afraid to go home
• Victims develop eating disorders (not eating, overeating or binge-eating)
• Victims become hyper-active
• Victims are unable to discriminate in relationships (mix with the ‘wrong’ people)
• Victims become flirtatious and sexually provocative/wear sexy adult clothing
• Victims begin to steal/hoard
• Victims like to have and spend money
• Victims start to abuse or bully others, lie and cheat
• Victims run away from a protective environment
• Victims feel powerless and need to ‘be in control’ by getting their own way (temper
tantrums)
• Victims harm themselves (self-inflicted cuts or other injuries)
