Types Of Human Trafficking

There are many forms of trafficking, but one consistent aspect is the abuse of the inherent vulnerability of the victims.

Trafficking in women for sexual exploitation

This prevalent form of trafficking affects every region in the world, either as a source, transit or destination country. Women and children from developing countries, and from vulnerable parts of society in developed countries, are lured by promises of decent employment into leaving their homes and travelling to what they consider will be a better life. Victims are often provided with false travel documents and an organized network is used to transport them to the destination country, where they find themselves forced into sexual slavery and held in inhumane conditions and constant fear.

Trafficking for forced labour

Victims of this equally widespread form of trafficking come primarily from developing countries. They are recruited and trafficked using deception and coercion and find themselves held in conditions of slavery in a variety of jobs. Men, women and children are engaged in agricultural and construction work, domestic servitude and other labour-intensive jobs.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children in tourism

This crime type has been apparent in Asia for many years and has now taken hold in Africa as well as Central and South America. The phenomenon is promoted by the growth of inexpensive air travel and the relatively low risk of prohibition and prosecution in these destinations for engaging in sexual relations with minors.

Trafficking in organs

Trafficking in humans for the purpose of using their organs, in particular kidneys, is a rapidly growing field of criminal activity. In many countries, waiting lists for transplants are very long, and criminals have seized this opportunity to exploit the desperation of patients and potential donors. The health of victims, even their lives, is at risk as operations may be carried out in clandestine conditions with no medical follow-up. An ageing population and increased incidence of diabetes in many developed countries is likely to increase the requirement for organ transplants and make this crime even more lucrative.

EFFECTS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKIN

Psychological Effect
Most traffickers recruit their victims between the ages of 6 to 24, because a young victim will easily succumb to force and give in. They are forced into heavy physical labor in hazardous environments. Many are also taught the use of weapons and are recruited as 'soldiers' in armed conflicts. According to statistics by the U.S. Department of State, globally, 2 million children are trafficked into the sex trade each year. The children suffer from lack of self-esteem, emotional disturbance, disorientation, and depression and are scarred for life. They develop deep psychological disorders that they struggle with for the rest of their lives even if they have been rescued. Psychological vulnerability hinders them from having a healthy state of mind in the future. The children are likely to become withdrawn and tend to be suicidal. Any children born to the victims of prostitution are taken away at the time of birth causing further mental agony to the mothers. In fact, the longer the victims have been enslaved, greater will be their traumatic experience.

Health Effects
'Human Trafficking, Human Misery', a book written by Alexis Aronowitz, states that an estimated 80% victims of trafficking are sexually exploited, abused or forced into prostitution as most victims are young women and children. Such a victim probably might have to cater to anywhere between 8 to 15 clients in a day. The use of sexual protection is negligible in this industry, leaving the exploited at a high risk of contracting various sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS that they further pass on to the men and their partners. In some cases, victims are also subjected to substance abuse by being forced to take drugs. Such individuals also have to constantly battle with drug addiction. Improper supply of meals and the lack of nutritious food causes malnourishment in these entrapped victims. Poor living conditions also contribute to the development of various diseases that these victims suffer from in later years. The victims are not given any medical aid to cure these ailments. Those recruited in chemical factories are treated like modern-day slaves and when they succumb to occupational diseases, are quickly replaced by another batch of victims.

How Does Trafficking Happen?

Trafficked persons are often enslaved or in situations of debt bondage that are fraudulent and exploitive: traffickers will take away or abuse the basic human rights of their victims, who have most likely been tricked and lured by false promises or physically forced into their situation.

Trafficking can work like this: "It is a common practice to persuade a young woman to leave home and to move to a wealthier neighboring country where she can work in domestic service, child or adult care, or as a waitress in a restaurant or a bar, or perhaps as a dancer. Upon arrival, her passport, visa, and return tickets are taken from her and, effectively, she is imprisoned, either physically or financially or mentally. She is made to work as a domestic slave or as an agricultural or factory worker, under slave-like conditions, or in a brothel. She sees virtually none of the money that she earns, and eventually she will be sold."

What Causes Trafficking?

In a nutshell, there is a demand for it. Men around the world profit in pleasure and in price from the exploitation of women and children. Poverty and global disparities in the rule of law are conditions in which human trafficking, like HIV/AIDS and other killers of the poor, thrives. In poorer regions of the world where education and employment opportunities are limited the most vulnerable in society -- runaways, refugees, or other displaced persons-- are the most common victims of human trafficking. People who are seeking opportunity and entry to other countries may be picked up by traffickers and misled into thinking that they will be free after being smuggled across the border. In other cases, such as armed conflict, and some trafficked humans are captured through slave raiding.

Trafficking of children often involves exploitation of the parents' extreme poverty. The latter may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income or they may be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children. In West Africa, trafficked children have often lost one or both parents to the African AIDS crisis.Reporters have witnessed a rapid increase in prostitution in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Kosovo after UN and, in the case of the latter two, NATO peacekeeping forces moved in. Peacekeeping forces have been linked to trafficking and forced prostitution. Proponents of peacekeeping argue that the actions of a few should not incriminate the many participants in the mission, yet NATO and the UN have come under criticism for not taking the issue of forced prostitution linked to peacekeeping missions seriously enough.

TRAFFICKING IN CHILDREN

Trafficking of children is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation. Trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children can take many forms and include forcing a child into prostitution or other forms of sexual activity or child pornography. Child exploitation can also include forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, the removal of organs, illicit international adoption, trafficking for early marriage, recruitment as child soldiers, for use in begging or as athletes (such as child camel jockeys or football players), or for recruitment for cults .It was reported in 2010 that Thailand and Brazil were considered to have the worst child sex trafficking records.
Trafficking in children often involves exploitation of the parents' extreme poverty. Parents may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income, or they may be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children. They may sell their children for labor, sex trafficking, or illegal adoptions.

The adoption process, legal and illegal, when abused can sometimes result in cases of trafficking of babies and pregnant women between the West and the developing world In David M. Smolin’s papers on child trafficking and adoption scandals between India and the United States, he presents the systemic vulnerabilities in the inter-country adoption system that makes adoption scandals predictable.

FORMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

 Sex trafficking victims are generally found in dire circumstances and easily targeted by traffickers. Individuals, circumstances, and situations vulnerable to traffickers include homeless individuals, runaway teens, displaced homemakers, refugees, job seekers, tourists, kidnap victims and drug addicts. While it may seem like trafficked people are the most vulnerable and powerless minorities in a region, victims are consistently exploited from any ethnic and social background.


Traffickers, also known as pimps or madams, exploit vulnerabilities and lack of opportunities, while offering promises of marriage, employment, education, and/or an overall better life. However, in the end, traffickers force the victims to become prostitutes or work in the sex industry. Various work in the sex industry includes prostitution, dancing in strip clubs, performing in pornographic films and pornography, and other forms of involuntary servitude.

Human trafficking does not require travel or transport from one location to another, but one form of sex trafficking involves international agents and brokers who arrange travel and job placements for women from one country. Women are lured to accompany traffickers based on promises of lucrative opportunities unachievable in their native country. However, once they reach their destination, the women discover that they have been deceived and learn the true nature of the work that they will be expected to do. Most have been told false information regarding the financial arrangements and conditions of their employment and find themselves in coercive or abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous. Child labour 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.

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them. Every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims. UNODC, as guardian of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and the Protocols thereto, assists States in their efforts to implement the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking in Persons Protocol).Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings. It has been perpetrated mainly for the purposes of sexual slavery or forced labour; other purposes include extraction of organs or tissues and even surrogacy and ova removal.
   The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs; The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph have been used
   The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons. Child shall mean any person under eighteen years of age
Human trafficking differs from people smuggling. In the latter, people voluntarily request or hire an individual, known as a smuggler, to covertly transport them from one location to another. This generally involves transportation from one country to another, where legal entry would be denied at the international border. There may be no deception involved in the (illegal) agreement. After entry into the country and arrival at their ultimate destination, the smuggled person is usually free to find their own way.


While smuggling requires travel, trafficking does not. Much of the confusion rests with the term itself. The word "trafficking" includes "traffic," from which could be inferred transport or travel. However, while the corresponding syllables look and sound alike, they do not hold the same meaning.

Victims of human trafficking are not permitted to leave upon arrival at their destination. They are held against their will through acts of coercion, and forced to work for or provide services to the trafficker or others. The work or services may include anything from bonded or forced labor to commercialized sexual exploitation. The arrangement may be structured as a work contract, but with no or low payment, or on terms which are highly exploitative. Sometimes the arrangement is structured as debt bondage, with the victim not being permitted or able to pay off the debt.

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 as reasonably assessed is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt. 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 $31bn 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.