Article Summary: Selling Children Into Human Trafficking
Samantha Jones
Professor Martinez
English 101
7 December 2012
Selling Children into Human Trafficking Every American knows and learned that when the Civil War ended slavery ended. Internationally there were several agreements and treaties to end the practice of slavery beginning from 1926. However, slavery for many in other countries has still not come to an end. Sex and human trafficking is finally being realized by many. There is an estimation of about 27 million people currently in slavery. Even though people are getting more knowledge on trafficking, perhaps they don’t know enough about it still. There are many articles about how millions of women and children are abducted a year into human trafficking. Trafficking can be defined …show more content…
by the 2000 United Nations Trafficking Protocol as, “… the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of 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 payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”.
Notice how the definition focus more on the movement of trafficking rather then the exploitation. There should be more focus on the slavery and the toucher within the slavery that these people receive. Children are very vulnerable to trafficking because they are desperate to make money for their families. They have the mentality to make money from their parents. These children at home are faced with family breakdowns, domestic violence, substance abuse, abuse and neglect, and the low status in life. From these things that they are facing with it they are pressured to find jobs to support their families because they have no support or care in their family environment. Parents might seem like monsters for making their children work but someone need to understand the pressure the families have to put their children to work because of all the factors they are faced with at home. The parents want to love and care for their kids but in these low income countries they are considered a burden. Especially the girls, they are considered more of a burden because boys are considered more of a value then girls. So, a norm for a family in these countries is to send their boys to school and girls to work. There are many forms of how children are brought into trafficking either by abduction, kidnapping, tricked into under pressure, and finally they could be sold by their families.
Parents selling their own children, that would never happen! Thats what most people might think. However, in third world countries it happens everyday in most villages. People usually think these parents are disgusting for doing such acts, because in the world we live in, this act is immoral and never heard of. However, these parents have a purpose for selling these kids in some situations. A reason why children are sold is because of the condition of poverty, desperation, and displacement that the families are in. Most of the time the decision to give up their child is a heartbreaking decision, but when a slave trader comes along to help these people with their debt just by giving their child a job. On the other hand, some parents will sale their child for greed. The slave traders connivence the parent to sell their children for money and they keep making more for more money. Siddharth Kara claimed that a young women named Bridget that he met claimed she was pressured in sex slavery for years because her parents sent her, she says, “We are like slot machines for our families.” (Kara, Siddharth. (2009) Sex …show more content…
Trafficking.) Asia is a perfect example to explain child trafficking because asia is known to be a region of destination for people to traffic because they are vulnerable. In Asia, their are reports of child trafficking such as, domestic services, factory work, agriculture, fishing, construction, sexual exploration, and prostitution. One of the ways these children are taken are by taking away by the consent of their parents. When these children are taken by their parents, they are given a secured payment. These parents have no problem with this because the norm in their country is that it is the child’s responsibility to make money for the family. But, these parents never hear from them again and many of them do not understand why. Within asia the trade routes for trafficked children span from east to south asia. In east Asia trafficking is not under control, in such a way that people in North Korea to China, South Korea and Taiwan to Japan, and so on. The trafficking gets bad to such a point that it travels outside of Asia to the east toward Bangladesh and Pakistan. ( Larsen, Jacqueline, “The trafficking of children in the Asia-Pacific”, April 2011) Many slaves are kidnapped and forced into some kind of labor.
Others go voluntarily, because they are tricked thinking they will have a better life, but they are really walking into a nightmare. There are many situations where a child was tricked into going into a job that end up being slavery. Msondo was one of those many boys who fell right into the trap of slavery. They showed him money and told him and his friend, while fishing, that they pay them for doing jobs with a good amount of money. Some of the kids backed out when they said that they could not tell their parents about the job. However, Msondo was one of the few that left with the men. He learned from the other children that got lured into the job offer that he would be fishing for 9 hours and only get 25 cents for his family a day. In these waters were crocodiles, he had became a slave for 10 months. During the time he was there he watch some children die from malnutrition or being killed by a crocodile. (Kiener, R. (2012, October 16). Human trafficking and
slavery.) Msondo is one of the lucky ones. In Uganda lived Linda Muyimba, she was promiseda job in retail that would pay her 2.5 million Uganda shilling a month (about 1,080 in US dollars). Job offers are very rare in Uganda and the unemployment is high. Therefore, she was excited and desperate so with no question she took the job. She was told to go alongside with a dozen other women to a Chinese Hotel. Muyimba thought it was a brief stopover to get to her new job. One of the women that she knew, they took her passport to limit her movements and the men sent a string of men to her hotel room. Muyimba was forced against her own will for a month to sleep with multiple men everyday. They tried to fly her and the women over to Malaysia, she did not make it across the border. She found out that she was pregnant (miscarried) and had contracted HIV. (“Uganda: Women trafficked into sex work,” IRIN News, March 5, 2012) Sex slaves make most of their money of the child victims, because men want “preserved” and “virgin” women. When parents sell their girls, they will mostly end up at a place like “place of pleasure.” Where dozens of girls from Nepal, Bangladesh and India are kept to pleasure men. Everyday these girls are starved, beaten, and treated like animals. The owner of the slave would give the girls opium so they will have sex with the men without causing trouble. If they do not behave they but on high music and beat them until they go unconscious. A women name Millaika, who is in one of these sex houses told the author, an example for one of the new minors that came from her village. She was sold by her parents for $444 and she refused to have sex, so they broke her arm. Economy actually has to do with a lot of why these children are trafficked. Trafficking generates billion of dollars each year. What keeps these going is the profit and the male sexual demand. If there was no demand for sex-slaves, there probably be no sex slaves. It is a simple demand an supply, as long as men demand sex there will be supplied with it. However, there are only some men who are responsible for the demand. Anywhere from 6 to 9 percent of males over the age of eighteen actually purchase sex from slaves at some point each year. It was only recently in the 1990s that sex slavery started to be the satisfaction in sex demand and the only reason is for the profit. (Wheaton, Elizabeth; Schauer, Edward; and Galli, Thomas, Economics on Human Trafficking, 2010) Profit is the main reason why there are sex slaves today, because everyone knows in order for a business to make a big profit they need to lower their prices. The cost of labor they don’t even need to worry about so much they just need to pay whatever their family needs which is not much. They pay their slaves families almost nothing to what the customers pay for the slave. To pull these slaves together wasn’t that hard for them either. During the 1990’s started mass migrations where vulnerable and desperate women and men were searching for jobs. This continues onto the children. The parents expect their children to find jobs to help feed the family. The children themselves are pressured from the parents causing them to be vulnerable. Nearly 200 million children from the ages of 5 to 14 are put to work to help their families. This might not be slavery but it is very similar. “Zara Cigay, 12, and her two younger brothers don’t go to school. Instead, they help their parents and extend family, migrant farm workers who pick cotton and other crops in southern turkey” (Human Trafficking and Slavery, Volume 12, Issue 12, pg12). Experts see this as slavery because we are preventing these kids to develop in school as they should. Children should be at school or even home playing to develop their minds. We put them straight to work and they can not develop their minds. However, the families are doing whatever they can to make themselves and their family to survive. Even selling their children is an option for them, but it is always not their fault. They pursue them to get jobs, which is understandable. However, these children are pressured so much by their parents they can be tricked so easily by slave traders. If the demand goes down for sex slaves so will the supply, but that is not going to ever be the case.
Work Cited Elizabeth, Wheaton; Schauer, Edward; Galli, Thomas, “Economics of Human Trafficking” , 2010, Intertnational Migration, Vol. 48 (4) Kara, Siddharth. (2009) Sex Trafficking. Larsen, Jacqueline L; “The Trafficking of Children in the Asia- Pacific”, April 2011, Trends & Issue in crime and criminal. “Uganda: Women Trafficked into Sex Working”, IRIN humanitarian news and analysis, December 7, 2012, Kiener, Robert, “Human Trafficking and Slavery”, CQ Global Researcher, (2012), Volume 6, Issue 20 Masci, David, “Human Trafficking and Slavery: Are the world’s nations doing enough to stamp it out?”, CQ Research (2004) Volume 14, Issue 12
Professor Martinez
English 101
7 December 2012
Selling Children into Human Trafficking Every American knows and learned that when the Civil War ended slavery ended. Internationally there were several agreements and treaties to end the practice of slavery beginning from 1926. However, slavery for many in other countries has still not come to an end. Sex and human trafficking is finally being realized by many. There is an estimation of about 27 million people currently in slavery. Even though people are getting more knowledge on trafficking, perhaps they don’t know enough about it still. There are many articles about how millions of women and children are abducted a year into human trafficking. Trafficking can be defined …show more content…
by the 2000 United Nations Trafficking Protocol as, “… the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of 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 payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”.
Notice how the definition focus more on the movement of trafficking rather then the exploitation. There should be more focus on the slavery and the toucher within the slavery that these people receive. Children are very vulnerable to trafficking because they are desperate to make money for their families. They have the mentality to make money from their parents. These children at home are faced with family breakdowns, domestic violence, substance abuse, abuse and neglect, and the low status in life. From these things that they are facing with it they are pressured to find jobs to support their families because they have no support or care in their family environment. Parents might seem like monsters for making their children work but someone need to understand the pressure the families have to put their children to work because of all the factors they are faced with at home. The parents want to love and care for their kids but in these low income countries they are considered a burden. Especially the girls, they are considered more of a burden because boys are considered more of a value then girls. So, a norm for a family in these countries is to send their boys to school and girls to work. There are many forms of how children are brought into trafficking either by abduction, kidnapping, tricked into under pressure, and finally they could be sold by their families.
Parents selling their own children, that would never happen! Thats what most people might think. However, in third world countries it happens everyday in most villages. People usually think these parents are disgusting for doing such acts, because in the world we live in, this act is immoral and never heard of. However, these parents have a purpose for selling these kids in some situations. A reason why children are sold is because of the condition of poverty, desperation, and displacement that the families are in. Most of the time the decision to give up their child is a heartbreaking decision, but when a slave trader comes along to help these people with their debt just by giving their child a job. On the other hand, some parents will sale their child for greed. The slave traders connivence the parent to sell their children for money and they keep making more for more money. Siddharth Kara claimed that a young women named Bridget that he met claimed she was pressured in sex slavery for years because her parents sent her, she says, “We are like slot machines for our families.” (Kara, Siddharth. (2009) Sex …show more content…
Trafficking.) Asia is a perfect example to explain child trafficking because asia is known to be a region of destination for people to traffic because they are vulnerable. In Asia, their are reports of child trafficking such as, domestic services, factory work, agriculture, fishing, construction, sexual exploration, and prostitution. One of the ways these children are taken are by taking away by the consent of their parents. When these children are taken by their parents, they are given a secured payment. These parents have no problem with this because the norm in their country is that it is the child’s responsibility to make money for the family. But, these parents never hear from them again and many of them do not understand why. Within asia the trade routes for trafficked children span from east to south asia. In east Asia trafficking is not under control, in such a way that people in North Korea to China, South Korea and Taiwan to Japan, and so on. The trafficking gets bad to such a point that it travels outside of Asia to the east toward Bangladesh and Pakistan. ( Larsen, Jacqueline, “The trafficking of children in the Asia-Pacific”, April 2011) Many slaves are kidnapped and forced into some kind of labor.
Others go voluntarily, because they are tricked thinking they will have a better life, but they are really walking into a nightmare. There are many situations where a child was tricked into going into a job that end up being slavery. Msondo was one of those many boys who fell right into the trap of slavery. They showed him money and told him and his friend, while fishing, that they pay them for doing jobs with a good amount of money. Some of the kids backed out when they said that they could not tell their parents about the job. However, Msondo was one of the few that left with the men. He learned from the other children that got lured into the job offer that he would be fishing for 9 hours and only get 25 cents for his family a day. In these waters were crocodiles, he had became a slave for 10 months. During the time he was there he watch some children die from malnutrition or being killed by a crocodile. (Kiener, R. (2012, October 16). Human trafficking and
slavery.) Msondo is one of the lucky ones. In Uganda lived Linda Muyimba, she was promiseda job in retail that would pay her 2.5 million Uganda shilling a month (about 1,080 in US dollars). Job offers are very rare in Uganda and the unemployment is high. Therefore, she was excited and desperate so with no question she took the job. She was told to go alongside with a dozen other women to a Chinese Hotel. Muyimba thought it was a brief stopover to get to her new job. One of the women that she knew, they took her passport to limit her movements and the men sent a string of men to her hotel room. Muyimba was forced against her own will for a month to sleep with multiple men everyday. They tried to fly her and the women over to Malaysia, she did not make it across the border. She found out that she was pregnant (miscarried) and had contracted HIV. (“Uganda: Women trafficked into sex work,” IRIN News, March 5, 2012) Sex slaves make most of their money of the child victims, because men want “preserved” and “virgin” women. When parents sell their girls, they will mostly end up at a place like “place of pleasure.” Where dozens of girls from Nepal, Bangladesh and India are kept to pleasure men. Everyday these girls are starved, beaten, and treated like animals. The owner of the slave would give the girls opium so they will have sex with the men without causing trouble. If they do not behave they but on high music and beat them until they go unconscious. A women name Millaika, who is in one of these sex houses told the author, an example for one of the new minors that came from her village. She was sold by her parents for $444 and she refused to have sex, so they broke her arm. Economy actually has to do with a lot of why these children are trafficked. Trafficking generates billion of dollars each year. What keeps these going is the profit and the male sexual demand. If there was no demand for sex-slaves, there probably be no sex slaves. It is a simple demand an supply, as long as men demand sex there will be supplied with it. However, there are only some men who are responsible for the demand. Anywhere from 6 to 9 percent of males over the age of eighteen actually purchase sex from slaves at some point each year. It was only recently in the 1990s that sex slavery started to be the satisfaction in sex demand and the only reason is for the profit. (Wheaton, Elizabeth; Schauer, Edward; and Galli, Thomas, Economics on Human Trafficking, 2010) Profit is the main reason why there are sex slaves today, because everyone knows in order for a business to make a big profit they need to lower their prices. The cost of labor they don’t even need to worry about so much they just need to pay whatever their family needs which is not much. They pay their slaves families almost nothing to what the customers pay for the slave. To pull these slaves together wasn’t that hard for them either. During the 1990’s started mass migrations where vulnerable and desperate women and men were searching for jobs. This continues onto the children. The parents expect their children to find jobs to help feed the family. The children themselves are pressured from the parents causing them to be vulnerable. Nearly 200 million children from the ages of 5 to 14 are put to work to help their families. This might not be slavery but it is very similar. “Zara Cigay, 12, and her two younger brothers don’t go to school. Instead, they help their parents and extend family, migrant farm workers who pick cotton and other crops in southern turkey” (Human Trafficking and Slavery, Volume 12, Issue 12, pg12). Experts see this as slavery because we are preventing these kids to develop in school as they should. Children should be at school or even home playing to develop their minds. We put them straight to work and they can not develop their minds. However, the families are doing whatever they can to make themselves and their family to survive. Even selling their children is an option for them, but it is always not their fault. They pursue them to get jobs, which is understandable. However, these children are pressured so much by their parents they can be tricked so easily by slave traders. If the demand goes down for sex slaves so will the supply, but that is not going to ever be the case.
Work Cited Elizabeth, Wheaton; Schauer, Edward; Galli, Thomas, “Economics of Human Trafficking” , 2010, Intertnational Migration, Vol. 48 (4) Kara, Siddharth. (2009) Sex Trafficking. Larsen, Jacqueline L; “The Trafficking of Children in the Asia- Pacific”, April 2011, Trends & Issue in crime and criminal. “Uganda: Women Trafficked into Sex Working”, IRIN humanitarian news and analysis, December 7, 2012, Kiener, Robert, “Human Trafficking and Slavery”, CQ Global Researcher, (2012), Volume 6, Issue 20 Masci, David, “Human Trafficking and Slavery: Are the world’s nations doing enough to stamp it out?”, CQ Research (2004) Volume 14, Issue 12