By Emily Geminder
9 June 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Human trafficking, the buying and selling of human beings, yields an annual profit of $32 billion for the world’s growing criminal network. Trafficked persons are exploited for sex, they are used as forced labor and killed for their organs. Their experiences diverge widely, but all involve force, fraud or coercion. Almost always, trafficked persons are rendered invisible.
Last Wednesday the U.S. State Department released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, currently the only comprehensive global evaluation of trafficking and counter-trafficking efforts. At the report’s release, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice remarked, “Globally, human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat. It deprives people of their human rights and dignity. It increases global health risks. It bankrolls the growth of organized crime, and it undermines the rule of law.”
It is estimated that 80 percent of trafficked persons are women; half are under the age of 18. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro called human trafficking a modern form of slavery. “Traffickers target the most vulnerable: people trapped by debt, children living in conflict or on the streets, people taking risks to find jobs in a new land,” she said. While noting that accurate figures on trafficking are notoriously difficult to collect, Migiro said that up to two million women are trafficked across borders each year. Taking into account situations of domestic bondage and trafficking within borders, the numbers are even more alarming.
In 1949, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which prohibits all forms of slavery and slave trade. In 2000, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, ratified by 118 of 172 member states, explicitly defined the international community’s stance on trafficking. Since 2000, governments around the world have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into counter-trafficking efforts and legislation.
Yet trafficking persists. By some estimates, the crisis has only worsened. Furthermore, some of the counter-trafficking initiatives put into place ostensibly to protect trafficked persons have led to further violations of their rights. Head of Counter Trafficking at the International Organization for Migration Richard Danziger told MediaGlobal, “You can attempt to protect one right and violate another. In the effort to stop trafficking, some countries have put exit controls on women. Obviously, this does not protect their rights, and it still leaves them vulnerable to trafficking.”
A study by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women examined the counter-trafficking policies of eight countries—Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, India, Nigeria, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and their impact on the people they intend to help. In all eight countries, trafficked women were denied adequate assistance if, whether out of fear of retribution, shame, or for other reasons, they did not cooperate with law enforcement. They were routinely given minimal or no say in the proceedings that determined what happened to them. After being placed in detention centers, they were typically returned to their countries of origin, regardless of the risks they might face at home.
In an interview with MediaGlobal, Deputy Director General Ndioro Ndiaye of the International Organization for Migration stressed that trafficked persons must have a say in the processes that determine their future. “If victims do not want to return home, they should not be forced to,” she said. “Countries should have such policies in place.”
It is here that the issue of human trafficking intersects with the broader debate on migration. The lines distinguishing trafficked persons from migrants are murky at best, and many stories of trafficking begin as stories of economic migration: stories of people from the developing world hoping to find livelihoods far from home. While it is the element of force or coercion that distinguishes a trafficked person from a migrant, the experience of exploitation is often the same, and both trafficking and migration are increasing, due to widening global disparities. While there is a dire shortage of economic opportunity in developing nations, the expanding economic growth of the developed world hinges on a corresponding increase in cheap, unprotected labor.
At the margins of the movement of economically desperate people, trafficking thrives. “Most of the people we serve are from economically deprived backgrounds, seeking to migrate as necessity, not as choice,” Sapna Patel, Staff Attorney at the Sex Workers Project, told MediaGlobal. The Sex Workers Project, a division of the Urban Justice Center, originally addressed the needs of individuals trafficked into the sex industry, but it has since widened its scope to include forced labor as well. “We need to look at migrants as human beings first, not as criminals who are in a place illegally,” said Patel. “We need to protect the movement of people.”
In 2005, migrant workers from developing nations sent home $167 billion, far exceeding aid from developed nations. The potential for workers from the developed world is real and enticing. Danziger advocated efforts such as the Regional Consultative Process on the Management of Overseas Employment and Contractual Labour for Countries of Origins in Asia, also known as the Colombo Process, which promotes dialogue between member states on issues faced by migrant workers. “Sending and receiving countries have to actively engage in dialogue,” Danziger said. “We have to look at how to match labor needs and labor supplies in a manner that takes into account workers’ needs and the potential for development.”
While the prospects for workers are lucrative, they come with dangers. Victims of trafficking and forced labor situations often become victims yet again at the hands of the very law enforcement efforts conceived to protect them. Too frequently anti-trafficking funds and policies have been directed according to political and ideological agendas such as curbing immigration or prostitution. These policies often conflict with the basic tenets of anti-trafficking, namely that of ending the violations of the victims’ rights. “Counter-trafficking programs should prioritize prevention and protection efforts,” said Patel. “They need to ensure that trafficked persons are rehabilitated and getting the services they need.”
Trafficked persons routinely lack access to services such as legal counsel, job and housing assistance, reproductive healthcare and psychological services. Very often healthcare providers are the first and only point of contact for victims of trafficking. “Health providers must be sensitized to detect physical and mental signs of violence among clients,” Dr. Hedia Belhadj of the United Nations Population Fund told MediaGlobal. “They should also be in a position to provide comfort and build trust with these women.”
Human trafficking has been called an issue of modern day slavery. It thrives on social inequities, often targeting its victims based on racial and gender discrimination. While trafficked persons are predominantly from developing countries, half the annual profit of trafficking – $15.5 billion in 2005 – is generated in industrialized economies. Trafficking is most frequently associated with economic sectors such as agriculture, the sex industry, domestic work, and garment and textile production under sweatshop conditions. Yet, in a world of increasingly globalized supply chains, these sectors often cannot be disengaged from the mainstream economy. Trafficking is intimately linked to the tides of people at the edge of the formal economy: migrants, disenfranchised workers, forced laborers. Yet its victims are more likely to be punished than those who profit from their cheap – and often free – labor.
“Why are labor laws not being strictly enforced?” Ndiaye asked the UN General Assembly. “Is it because some sectors have always flourished on the backs of an exploited work force – whether slavery, exploitive sharecropping, bonded labor arrangements, or the overworked and underpaid labor provided by irregular migrants?”