THE SECURITY THREAT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Code
Professor
Date
THE SECURITY THREAT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING 2

Debatably, human trafficking causes injustice to the individual and the families, friends,

the country of origin, and the respective destination. It is easier to blame border patrol or the

immigration bodies at stake, but security has remained a universal concern. Safety and security

are not spontaneous; they need a collective consensus backed by tangible public investment. As

individuals and as a nation, we owe our children, alongside women, the weak and vulnerable

groups, a life free from violence and fear. There are many causes of fear and insecurity, like the

threat of terrorism, but there is nothing more dangerous like an imminent subtle threat; human

trafficking.

According to Tong et al. (2017), human trafficking entails recruiting, harboring,

transporting, providing, or obtaining individuals for labor and services using violent means,

fraud, and coercion to the point of involuntary servitude alongside neo-slavery, peonage and

death bondage. Human trafficking does not equate to smuggling because the latter is consensual

despite both happening across our state borders. Immigrant silence exacerbates this issue. Most

victims fear the consequences of subsequent deportation procedures in the hope of sharing the

minute, almost insignificant remnants of the 'American Dream.' Their situation confers a lucrative

opportunity for human trafficking cartels; thus, to eliminate human trafficking, we must

understand and start with the root causes.

Rothman et al. (2017) discuss that human trafficking victims include citizens of the US,

legal visitors alongside undocumented or illegal immigrants. Most victims are aged between 21

and 30 years, mostly single or divorced, and searching for employment opportunities. This

profiling helps us understand the kind of subjects the traffickers are targeting and the setting up

preventive measures against the impending doom. The causes of human trafficking are complex

and interacting (Gupta 2017). The causes include social-economic, political structures processes
THE SECURITY THREAT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING 3

and relationships aggravated by poverty, gender, and social class issues. Gupta (2017) augments

two sides to this issue; demand and supply. The author discusses that structural adjustments

supported by globalization have initiated changes in the labor market. These changes happen in

the context of regional balance and development.

Kukhianidze (2016) deliberate that the demand for cheap labor, a characteristic of

globalization and regional integration, is among the leading causes of this vice. There is legal

labor migration, but most people use this window as an opportunity to satisfy selfish interests. Of

the world's migrants, 84% originate from developing nations, as Kukhianidze (2016) states. The

causes of labor migration include social security, the dynamics of economic developments, the

standards of labor, and exploitative intentions. Notably, a subtle form of human trafficking occurs

in permanent, transit, voluntary legal, educational, and medical variants. Naik (2018) compares

human trafficking to slavery because of violence and coercion alongside physical and mental

health consequences. s

Gender marginalization led by limited education and employment for women and girls

exacerbates gender inequities and feminized poverty (Gupta 2017. The bias creates supply;

availability of victims. On the demand side, globalization and capitalist economies trigger the

retrenchment and unemployment of educated middle-class men and women as companies seek

cheaper rates in the interest of more profit; shareholder satisfaction. This string of events pushes

women who gravitate to dominate the lowest ends of the economic hierarchy. With the

withdrawal or limitation of state benefits alongside a privileged male culture, the individuals end

up in miserable states. The vulnerabilities of these women, girls, and children render them perfect

prey for ungrateful, egocentric exploiters (Gupta 2017).

THE SECURITY THREAT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING 4

Arguably human trafficking is a system of demand and supply factors. Demand factors

include the desire for sexual exploitation, commercial sex work, prostitution, pornography,

teenage marriages, and sex tourism. The consequences of health trafficking are grave, ranging

from neurologic, reproductive, dental, mental, gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal effects. Naik

(2018) contends that 80% of global human trafficking occurs because of sexual exploitation and

the need for bonded labor. To regulate the impending doom of trafficking insecurity, we must

address this vice's pull and push factors. Consistent with Gupta (2017), the demand for sex in a

considerable number of developed countries is high, given the frequency of visits to brothels or

commercial sex venues; this is the primary driver or constituent of demand. Besides, young girls

command better prices. Having understood that we must jointly sort issues within our states and

help or initiate structural changes in the countries or states of origin.

Human trafficking is complex and multidimensional. According to Naik (2018), it needs a

multidimensional approach. This study recommends a permanent solution to the issue of gender

inequality. Without equal access to education, social services, and perception of the feminine

gender, not even border surveillance will lift the burden. Countries need to empower women.

Empowering women to lift the veil of vulnerability without which victimization is close to null.

Alongside gender equality, we need to make legal and religious changes to the institution of

marriage while granting everyone the right to individual freedom. For example, in most religious

institutions, Christianity abhors monogamy, but do we ask ourselves where the implications of

the gender ratios are? Absolutely no, maybe sometimes or maybe not. Some of the proposed

changes include the option of consensual monogamy. Instead of doing prostitution in secrecy,

men are granted the opportunity to marry and provide when needed.
THE SECURITY THREAT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING 5

Secondly, we need to combat the issue of cheap labor. Most employers prefer paying less

for more. There is an urgent if not imminent need for government intervention in both the private

and public sectors. The intervention details setting a minimum wage and mandatory performance

employment contract even for casual labor. While this proposal subjugates some of the

amendments to the bill of rights, invasion of privacy, it also provides security. The minimum

wage will overcome the impending crisis of unemployment with the influx of immigrants. The

third issue and remedy to human trafficking include combating organ trade. It is time hospitals

provide legitimacy when conducting transplants. The transplants drive and support organ

transplants with the promise of lucrative financial offers.

References

Gupta, R. (2017). Unit-3 Causes of Human Trafficking. YOU.

http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/39292/3/Unit-3.pdf

Kukhianidze, L. (2016) Legal Aspects of Labor Migration and Trafficking in Human Beings.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/328025706.pdf

Naik, A. B. (2018). Impacts, causes, and consequences of women trafficking in India from a

human rights perspective. Social Sciences, 7(2), 76-80.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Abdul-

Naik2/publication/330286083_Impacts_Causes_and_Consequences_of_Women_Traffick

ing_in_India_from_Human_Rights_Perspective/links/60ea87c91c28af34585e798f/Impact
THE SECURITY THREAT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING 6

s-Causes-and-Consequences-of-Women-Trafficking-in-India-from-Human-Rights-

Perspective.pdf

Rothman, E. F., Stoklosa, H., Baldwin, S. B., Chisolm-Straker, M., Kato Price, R., Atkinson, H.

G., & HEAL Trafficking. (2017). Public health research priorities to address US human

trafficking. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303858

Tong, E., Zadeh, A., Jones, C., & Morency, L. P. (2017, July). Combating human trafficking with

deep multimodal models. In Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Association

for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 1547-1556).

https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P17-1142.pdf