Human Trafficking on a Global Scale, Research Paper Example

Introduction

According to the Polaris Project website, human trafficking can be defined as a form of human slavery in which the trafficker profits from the control and exploitation of other humans. Under most instances, the victims or slaves of this ever-growing crime against humanity includes children between the ages of five and twelve coerced into the sex trade, “adults age eighteen or over who are coerced or deceived into commercial sex acts,” and others who are forced to work, such as “domestic workers held in a home, or farm workers forced to labor against their will” (Human Trafficking, 2014). Many of those who toil constantly to bring an end to human trafficking on a global scale have “summed up the concept of human trafficking as ‘compelled service,’ much like during the Antebellum Period in the American South when African-Americans were indentured slaves and servants. Financially, human trafficking generates “billions of dollars in profits by victimizing millions of people around the world,” even in the United States. Thus, due to the huge amount of profit that can be gained through the exploitation of human beings,  human trafficking is considered to be “one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world” (Human Trafficking, 2014).

With the major goal being to disrupt “the conditions that allow human trafficking to thrive in our society,” the Polaris Project also relates that human trafficking on an international scale has grown over the last several decades, due in part to the continuing economic and social problems in many Third World countries. In essence, those that practice human trafficking “have created an international market for the trade in human beings based on high profits” and the ever-growing demand for commercial sex and cheap, unskilled, uneducated labor. The Polaris Project has also estimated that more than twenty million human beings have been forced into human slavery in some one hundred and sixty countries around the world over the last twenty years. Out of this number of countries, three stand out as the worst offenders–China, Russia, and Iran–all of which are rated as Tier 3 offenders with the island nation of Cuba and the Sudan in Northern Africa rated at Tier 2 on the Watch List of the United States Department of State (Human Trafficking, 2014).

In order to help combat the issue of human trafficking in these four nations and around the globe, in 1999, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) linked up with the U.N. Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute and other international bodies to create the Global Programme Against Trafficking in Human Beings (GPAT) in order to “better enable governments to respond to the issues of trafficking in human beings” and the ever-increasing problems associated with smuggling migrant workers from Mexico and South America (Trafficking in Persons, 2006, p. 48).

Some of the tasks associated with the GPAT includes training “criminal justice practitioners and providing member states,” the most important being the United States, with “legal advisory services and ways to improve the capacity of member states in their efforts” to protect the victims of trafficking, especially women and children. One pivotal tool that has shown to be quite effective is the international trafficking database which was designed to collect and analyze data on a global scale so as to “increase the global community’s knowledge base” and raise the awareness of human trafficking in order to help prevent the exploitation of humans beings for profit (Trafficking in Persons, 2006, p. 48).

Trafficking in China

Today in 2014, the People’s Republic of China stands as the number one perpetrator of human trafficking. Thus, it is the major source nation, transit location, and destination country “for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking” in Asia. According to the latest statistics, most of the victims in China (an estimated 600,000) are migrant seasonal laborers and workers who are generally “recruited by false promises of employment and later coerced into prostitution or forced labor” in other Asian countries and the Pacific Basin. In essence, human trafficking in China is a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise operated by “well-organized international criminal syndicates and local gangs” that work together to exploit an untold number of persons on an annual basis (Human Trafficking in China, 2006).

China is also the number one perpetrator related to the trafficking of children who are kidnapped and bought and sold for a number of reasons, such as for adoption to wealthy couples in the U.S. and Europe. Statistically, it is estimated that more than 20,000 children are kidnapped every year in China for illegal adoption with boys making up about 75% and the remaining 25% being girls. Depending on the age of the girl, most end up in other countries in Asia, such as Thailand and Malaysia, where they are bought and bartered like cattle “for commercial sexual exploitation, forced marriage, begging, and forced labor.” In addition, China is the major destination country for women and children who are bought and sold in Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, Russia, and North Korea, for sexual and labor exploitation (Human Trafficking in China, 2006).

Although the People’s Republic of China is the main destination country for external human trafficking, there are also major problems associated with internal human trafficking in China. The main focal group is China’s migrant population which has been estimated to exceed 150 million people from all over Asia. Within this group, “forced labor remains a notable problem in brick kilns, coal mines, and factories” with some of these industries operating illegally in order to “take advantage of lax supervision in the poorer regions of China.” Some of these migrants even end up working with no pay in China’s extensive prison system. But unfortunately, because of the lack of official interest by the Chinese government, the exact number of migrants that are virtually kidnapped and forced to work as human slaves is not known (Human Trafficking in China, 2006).

Some of the major reasons for China’s position as the number one perpetrator of human trafficking in today’s world includes 1), the absence of employment opportunities for China’s poor, especially those who live in rural environments far from China’s major cities; 2), the incredible growth of China’s manufacturing and construction sectors which has “resulted in large-scale rural-to-urban internal migration; 3), the expansion of China’s burgeoning entertainment industry which accounts for almost 60% of all the reported cases of human trafficking in China. This would include thousands of young girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty who are kidnapped and forced to work in China’s pornographic industry (Human Trafficking in China, 2006).

All of this accounts for the reason why China is now ranked as a Tier 2 perpetrator of human trafficking. China is also the top nation for the U.S. Department of State’s Human Trafficking Watch List. As to the Chinese government, it has failed as of 2011 to meet the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and for not demonstrating sufficient efforts” to halt the multi-billion dollar human trafficking industry in China. The Chinese government has also failed miserably to help protect its citizens from being bought and sold as human slaves (Human Trafficking in China, 2006).

Trafficking in Russia

According to Elena V. Tiurukanova of the Institute for Urban Economics, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the breakup of its satellite nations, today’s Russia is experiencing a “marked manifestation of human trafficking” in relation to being the “origin, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation” and other forms of trafficking, such as a source for cheap human labor. Russia has also become the main source for trafficking in “Russian children and children from the former Soviet republics into Russia for purposes of pedophilia and pornography.” Some of the reasons for this increase since the collapse of the Soviet Union includes economic problems and financial hardships which have helped to create an environment suitable for both internal and external trafficking (2006, p. 7).

In 1997, the Russian government and external agencies began to take the issue of human trafficking seriously which then led to signing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in 2000 and the Protocol on Trafficking in Persons in 2004. At this time, the Russian government also created a legal definition of human trafficking and made it part of its criminal code with the intent to be robust on halting the exploitation of Russian women and children. One way in which the Russian government responded to this crisis was to initiate “government interagency meetings and anti-trafficking conferences,” such as the All-Russian Assembly on Anti-Trafficking which led to a dialog between government officials and individuals responsible for developing specific strategies in order to bring an end to human trafficking in Russia (Tiurukanova, 2006, p. 7).

Statistically, the nation of Russia ranks second after Southeast Asia (specifically China) in regards to the scale and breadth of human trafficking. In 2006, it was estimated that more than 175,000 Russian women had been forcibly removed and enslaved for a variety of purposes, such as for cheap labor, prostitution, and to appear in pornographic films and literature. Most of these women, some as young as fourteen years of age, were removed from the Russian Federation with estimates ranging from about 35,000 to 58,000 on an annual basis (Tiurukanova, 2006, p. 13).

These figures do not include the untold number of migrants from other areas of Central and Eastern Europe who have been enslaved and kidnapped for criminal purposes. What makes it so difficult to track the number of enslaved persons in Russia is the lack of data collecting methods which obviously would help the Russian government to understand the scope of the problem and how to take action against human trafficking and those who profit from it (Tiurukanova, 2006, p. 13).

From a legal standpoint, current Russian laws and regulations concerning the term “exploitation” are quite vague which in fact only increases the difficulty in prosecuting individuals for human trafficking. For example, one finds definitions such as the “exploitation by others of the practice of prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, slave labour. . . and servitude” and even the removal of organs and body tissues. In the Russian penal codes, one finds definitions like “sexual exploitation, servitude, and slave labour,” all of which according to Tiurukanova requires further clarification (2006, p. 20). Thus, it is clear that the problem of human trafficking in Russia requires much more attention and the creation of specific laws that will punish those responsible for such a horrendous crime against humanity.

Trafficking in Iran

The third largest perpetrator of human trafficking in today’s world is Iran, a nation that has undergone tremendous political and social change over the last forty years and which serves, much like China and Russia, as a major country of origin, destination, and transit for traffickers and smugglers. Also like China, because of the often “clandestine nature of irregular migration” into Iran by people from other Middle Eastern states, it is nearly impossible to “estimate the number of persons being trafficked or smuggled” within Iran. It is also difficult to know the “illegal status of victims which tends to prevent” the reporting of incidents to the Iran government (Hosseini-Divkolaye, 2014, p. 66).

One of the major reasons for Iran’s current status as no. 3 in relation to human trafficking is that it shares geographical borders with Iraq and Afghanistan which has led to “mass irregular immigration during the last twenty years” with an estimated 2.5 million immigrants, many of whom live in Iran illegally and work for major Iranian organized crime smuggling groups. However, unlike China and Russia, the Iranian government has recently initiated a series of policy reforms in order to combat migrant smuggling and the trafficking in humans “at national, regional, and international levels” (Hosseini-Divkolaye, 2014, p. 66).

The most recent form of legislation was the ratification of laws in 2004 that prohibited human trafficking and set stiff fines and penalties for the perpetrators. Fortunately, these new laws have led to an increase in law enforcement efforts to locate and imprison those that practice human trafficking and smuggling in Iran. Whether these new laws and others to come in the future will cease the practice of human trafficking is Iran is wide open to speculation.

Conclusion

It should be noted that human trafficking does occur in the United States, but because of a number of sweeping laws and regulations at the federal level, the problem will never reach the proportions as exhibited in China, Russia, and Iran. Overall, human trafficking is nothing new and as long as there exists opportunities for huge profits, the problem of human trafficking and smuggling will continue to be a major crisis well into the 21st century.

References

Hosseini-Divkolaye, N.S. (2014). Iran: Migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons. Forced Migrant Review 32: 66-67. Retrieved from http://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/FMRpdfs/FMR32/66-67.pdf

Human trafficking. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview

Human trafficking in China. (2006). Retrieved from http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/china

Tiurukanova, E.V. (2006). Human trafficking in the Russian Federation. Institute for Urban Economics. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/Unicef_EnglishBook%281%29.pdf

Trafficking in persons: Global patterns. (2006). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Retrieved from http://www.unodc.org/pdf/traffickinginpersons_report_2006ver2.pdf