The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have just launched the Blue Heart campaign to promote awareness of the issue of human trafficking. Isn’t raising awareness a bit wimpy and bleeding-heart? Well, no. Human trafficking suffers from the problem that everybody knows what it is, but not a lot about it. Awareness is an important first step because a) as this activity is frequently hidden, people need to be aware and knowledgeable about human trafficking to be able to recognise it if it happens in their immediate environment and raise the alarm, b) to warn potential victims of the risk, c) to generate interest and thus create an impetus for developing appropriate responses, c) to put pressure on governments to take action.
According to the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, human trafficking is:
“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”
If that’s somewhat legalistic, the UNODC have provided a useful chart to help explain and define key features of human trafficking.
Source: UNODC websiteWhat I’d like to highlight here is transit. A key theme in human trafficking is moving a person (who might already be vulnerable) through deceit or force to a place or situation where they cannot or will not (through fear, etc) gain access to familiar forms of help. Perhaps this transit is within one country (or conceivably not a geographical journey at all!). Within a country, for example from city to city, the trafficked person will be removed from family, friends, a social worker and other avenues of assistance, and may have been persuaded into believing that they have chosen this life. Across borders, a trafficked person will be removed from all these things, as well as an understanding of where to get help, what the law is, and how enforcement works (is it corrupt? does it care?), what kind of help is available, and a realistic perspective of the risks of escaping the traffickers, amongst other things. A language barrier will, evidently, isolate and make the person even more vulnerable. There are many consequences and features associated with all this, but I’d like to stress the element of transit for the purposes of making a person vulnerable.
What is actually being done to stop human trafficking?
Measures against human trafficking still depends a lot on legislation and law enforcement, which varies greatly from country to country. International organisations are trying to build an international effort, but what could constitute an anti-human trafficking network is hardly comprehensive. The Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) is trying to get countries to adopt a national raporteur in order to push pressure on countries to find out what is actually going on within their borders, do something about it, and report back to international fora regarding what has worked and what hasn’t. I highly recommend this little section from the OSCE magazine’s anti-human trafficking special if you want to read more about what is being done.
Even governments labour under limited understandings of what human trafficking is. For example, its image of being mainly about sexual exploitation means that many countries lack legislation when it comes to non-sexual forced labour (eg. construction sites, and begging, where children, in particular, are vulnerable) and it can simply be ignored. Furthermore, countries undergoing successful development become destinations of human trafficking for the first time and lack the experience or legal provisions to deal with the problem. And there is a lack of awareness among governments and the general public of in-state human trafficking, which avoids customs and passport officials altogether, and is generally, mistakenly, not considered to be a form of trafficking. Therefore popular awareness and comprehensive understanding is key.
Why are you considering human trafficking as a security matter? Security is wars and that, right?
Human security. Human security is a security paradigm, still very much under construction, that focuses on the security of individuals, as opposed to the state. The state might be conducive to that security, but it’s not the focus. This all might include environmental or economic threats, diseases, crime, etc. You can broaden this out or narrow it down as much as you like, and there’s a little barney going on about whether human security is a bit too ‘life, the universe and everything’ or whether we actually need to think that way in the wake of human rights and globalisation. Human trafficking incorporates both economic and physical violence, is undeniably an affront to human rights, and, as is often said, essentially constitutes a modern slave trade. I’m confident that it fits the profile of a threat to human security.
But don’t listen to me! It’s only by educating ourselves and promoting awareness that we can formulate appropriate responses and implement them.
Awareness about human trafficking is VERY important. Thanks for the post.
LIN is an organization that is attempting to combat human trafficking. One of their programs is through empowerment of women in the culinary arts. Read about it at OneVietnam Network:
http://talk.onevietnam.org/LINseries1/