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Human Trafficking
Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is the modern-day form of slavery. It requires the use of force, fraud,
or coercion by a trafficker to compel a person into, or hold someone in, an employment
situation in which he or she will be criminally exploited. Human trafficking is a
pernicious crime that violates the fundamental principles of our society. For traffickers,
victims are commodities to be traded and exploited in any market. Trafficking may occur
when victims are transported across borders or within a nation, or may not involve
transportation at all. Victims, often women, are usually lured by promises of well-paying
jobs. Once deprived of the opportunity to return home or communicate with their
families, victims are generally held through force or threats in situations of sexual
exploitation or forced labor.
In its dictionary meaning, the concept of trafficking denotes a trade in something that
should not be traded in. Thus, we have terms like drug trafficking, arms trafficking and
human trafficking.
The working definition of trafficking which was adopted has been stated in the U.N.
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and
children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised
Crime, 2000, to which India is a signatory. It defines trafficking as:
Human trafficking differs from people smuggling. The trafficked victim is enslaved, or
the terms of their debt bondage are fraudulent or highly exploitative. The trafficker takes
away the basic human rights of the victim. Victims are sometimes tricked and lured by
false promises or physically forced. Some traffickers use coercive and manipulative
tactics including deception, intimidation, feigned love, isolation, threat and use of
physical force, debt bondage, other abuse, or even force-feeding with drugs to control
their victims.
Trafficked people usually come from the poorer regions of the world, where opportunities
are limited, and are often from the most vulnerable in society, such as runways, refugees,
or other displaced persons.
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.
Women, who form over 80% of trafficking victims, are particularly at risk to become
involved in sex trafficking. Potential kidnappers exploit lack of opportunities, promise
good jobs or opportunities for study, and then force the victims to become prostitutes,
participate in pornography or escort services. The main motive of a woman (in some
cases an underage girl) to accept an offer from a trafficker is better financial opportunities
for herself or her family. According to United Nations Population Fund report on 'State of
World Population "Trafficked women are usually forced into prostitution and sex tourism,
commercial marriages and other "female" occupations such as domestic work,
agricultural and sweatshop labour".
Central to the organisation of trafficking are the people who become “highly profitably,
low risk, expendable, reusable and resell able commodities” (Richard 1999). This trade in
human beings as chattels and treatment of their bodies as commodities becomes possible
because of the incremental link between body and money, the end objective of this
process always being instrumentalisation for gains.
There is broad agreement on the stages involved. These people are listed as recruiters of
people from a village or city; transportation to a designated location/transit point;
possible shift to a central location; before the move to their ultimate destination.
Sometimes the trafficked persons are shifted several times before they arrive at their final
destination, where the ‘sale’ takes place. The different elements involved in this process
seem to create an impossible number of permutations and combinations (ILO 2002a).
Recruitment
Place: People are reportedly recruited at places like cinema halls, bus stops, railway
stations, airports, streets and their homes. Other places mentioned are cafes, restaurants,
beauty contests and beauty parlours. State and national highways, quarry and
construction work sites, and areas where locals are displaced without proper
rehabilitation may also be sites for potential victims.
Time: Traffickers choose special times for recruitment. They take advantage of difficult
periods, either before the harvesting season or during a drought, when many locals look
elsewhere for income to survive (HRW 1995). Traffickers also keep themselves informed
about severely impoverished areas or those which have suffered climatic, economic or
political disasters (Johnston and Khan 1998: 53; ISS 2003a). They also reportedly recruit
people during festivals (ISS 2003a, and 2003c).
Methods: The ranges of the tactics or strategies reportedly used vary from the extremely
violent (drugging, kidnapping and abduction) to persuasion, material inducements,
befriending and deception.
Characteristics of traffickers: Traffickers are usually young men and middle-aged women
who are significantly older than the young women/children they recruit. They are natives
and agents who travel back and forth from home countries/regions to receiving regions
and generally have links with the villages to which the victims belong.
Often, these agents speak several languages (Giri 1999: 77, Tumlin 2000). They may
have multiple roles. For instance, those who fuel migration, with its outcome in
trafficking, may often also be the people who facilitate other, less exploitative, forms of
migration, as in the case of refugees (Tumlin 2000).
Players: Trafficking is said to involve a range of players ‘along the road from acquisition
to exploitation’ (ILO 2002a: 13). They are generally found in the context of organised
trafficking.
Networks may involve the police, visa/passport officials, railway/bus authorities and
employees, taxi/autorickshaw drivers or rickshaw pullers (DWCD 1996). The various
roles have been classified as financiers or investors; procurers or recruiters; organisers;
document forgers; corrupt public officials or protectors; brothel operators and the owners
and managers of sex establishments; escorts, guides or travel companions and crew
members (Richard 1999; Scholenhardt 1999; Raymond 2002).
DWCD (1996) has identified two types of traffickers: primary and secondary. The latter
are said to operate behind the scenes with connections in government circles, which are
used to provide themselves with protection. Pimps and procurers are the primary
traffickers.
Types of operations: People can be trafficked via organised international networks,
through local trafficking rings or by occasional traffickers. Thus, traffickers may operate
alone, in small gangs or as part of organised crime groups (Richard 1999; Kelly 2001;
Icduygu and Toktas 2002).
The traffickers can distributed according to age and sex; caste and religion; education and
marital status; state and country of origin. The share of men and women among the
respondents was around fifty-fifty, but relatively high percentage of female traffickers in
a generally male-dominated trade. The traffickers adopt various methods of traffic in
women and children. The following methods have been commonly employed for
trafficking in women and children in India: (a) offering them jobs as domestic servants;
(b) promising jobs in the film world; (c) dangling before them jobs in factories; (d)
offering money; (e) luring them with ‘pleasure trips’; (f) making false promises of
marriage; (g) befriending them by giving goodies, (girls who have run away from home
or are street children are highly vulnerable to the traffickers); (h) offering to take them on
pilgrimages; (i) making other kinds of false promises and (j) coercion.
Prevention
Trafficking is a human rights issue as well as a social issue because it affects not only the
rights and dignity of the individuals concerned, but also has a direct bearing on the
community and society at large. Trafficking can in no way be considered as just a
criminal issue or a law and order problem. It is primarily a matter of the protection of
human rights, especially those of women and children. Prevention of trafficking cannot
be successful without the involvement of the community.
• Working with children and young people through schools, teachers or child clubs
appears to be an innovative anti-trafficking strategy. Peer support/influence is
harnessed and the groups/clubs may act as neutral fora where children who are
experiencing family problems can seek help.
Bibliography
1. Prevention of Trafficking and the Care and Support of Trafficked Persons - The
Asia Foundation - http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/horizons/trafficking1.pdf
2. Azad India Foundation - Girl and Women Trafficking in India -
http://www.azadindia.org/social-issues/WomenTrafficking-in-India.html
3. http://www.youandaids.org/Themes/Trafficking.asp
4. The Times of India – Women trafficking in India
5. Prof. Martin Patt, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts – Human
Trafficking and Modern day Slavery
6. Department of Justice US – An Introduction to Human Trafficking