Human trafficking is the transportation, harbouring, receipt or recruitment of people for the purposes of forced labour (commonly prostitution and debt bondage), slavery and servitude. It is amongst the fastest growing criminal industries, with annual revenues exceeding many large companies. Women constitute the largest proportion of trafficked persons with over half of trafficked victims being women and are the ones forced into sexual slavery and prostitution, in this case 98% of victims trafficked for the sex industry are women.
The mass of trafficking victims are between 18-24 years of age, with also an estimated 1.2 million children trafficked yearly.Human trafficking is usually confused with people smuggling, though it differs from the latter in that there is usually no voluntary smuggling involved or the terms of their debt being highly exploitative. In human trafficking the basic human rights of the trafficked person are taken away by the trafficker. Surprisingly, in nearly half the cases the victim personally knows the trafficker, as there are many cases where the family traffic their relatives for the money.Virtually every country in the world is affected by human trafficking, either as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims.
Due to the nature of trafficking there are three constituent elements that make up human trafficking, firstly the act; the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, the means; threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud and abuse of power and the purpose; for the purpose of exploitation, which includes exploiting the prostitution of others, sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery or similar practices and the removal of organs. Trafficking, being a criminalised act also renders actions related to it as criminal offences, e.g. attempts to commit an act of trafficking, the participation as an accomplice in an offence and organising or directing other persons to commit an act of trafficking.Trafficking is an extremely lucrative industry spanning continents, though with many countries as main hot-spots for trafficking and in some areas like Russia, Japan, Eastern Europe and Hong Kong, trafficking is controlled by large criminal organisations and with the larger financial capabilities and man power of these organisations, their successful carrying out of such acts increases and infiltrates more countries in turn ruining the lives of thousands of women. The trafficking business is also very profitable as little start-up capital is needed and prosecution is somewhat rare.
Human trafficking is also not a stand-alone issue. It is related to other issues that threaten the security and well being of women. The victims of human trafficking are exposed to continuous threats of physical violence and are broken both mentally and physically. Other threats faced include absolute poverty due to wage deprivation.
They are unprotected by labour laws and experience long working hours and no holidays, e.g. 15 is the average hourly work a Chinese labourer faces in France, also common practises are breach of contract, mandatory night work and poor accommodation.The persons chosen for trafficking are usually from the most vulnerable social backgrounds and minorities in a region. They're often from poor areas where working opportunities are limited and may often be runaways or refugees.
Women are at the most risk as they usually are the ones who have the hardest time finding jobs and traffickers exploit the lack of employment in these areas with promises of good jobs for women, e.g. waitresses, cleaners and models and with further promises of education and rehabilitation and a place to live. However when their destination is reached, the traffickers force women into prostitution to pay off the debt they owe the traffickers. The situations the women find themselves in are usually coercive and abusive, from which escape is difficult and dangerous.
Although constituting a lesser percentage of cases than prostitution, forced labour is one of the growing areas in which traffickers choose to expand, with an estimated 2.5 million affected by it yearly, of which over half are in Asia and ten percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Most instances of forced labour occur as exploitative employers take advantage of loops in the law to exploit vulnerable workers. The workers are then made to feel even more vulnerable to the forced labour practises because of unemployment, poverty, discrimination, political conflict and crime. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable but people can be forced into labour in their own countries.The most common forms of forced labour for women are domestic work and agricultural work (common amongst Mexican women in the U.
S. who work to pay off their debt to their traffickers). Domestic workers may be trapped in servitude through the use of force, such as physical (including sexual) or emotional abuse. Young girls are particularly vulnerable to domestic servitude, which occurs in private homes, and is often unregulated by authorities.
For example, there is great demand in some wealthier countries of Asia and the Persian Gulf for domestic servants who sometimes fall victim to conditions of servitude.
