Human Trafficing

Ivan Garibay
Professor Godinez
English 101
12 December 2011
Human Trafficking It is estimated that the yearly profits generated from the industry of human trafficking is $32 billion. When people are trafficked they lose their freedom and are illegally transported across or within countries borders. The U.S. Department of States estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 individuals are trafficked into the U.S. from foreign countries, and over 4 million people are trafficked every year. Human trafficking has become a worldwide problem, which still has not been able to be stopped even with laws or acts that fight against it. There are many factors of human trafficking, like poverty, broken homes, and corruption. Poverty is one of the greatest factors of human trafficking because most poor people have less educational and stable job opportunities. Traffickers play to these faults by telling lies like promising better economic lives. Most American victims are people who are disaffected, running away, or children who are casted away. Official corruption and organized crime are more factors of trafficking, where police officers take bribes to overlook women in sex trades. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at least eight organized crime groups are trafficking women (Cullen-DuPont). One factor that comes into play a lot with human trafficking is gender. In statistics today say that adult women are most frequently trafficked, then minors, which is about 6 girls to every boy. The smallest group of people trafficked are men. Gender inequality is a major factor in the use of fraud to enslave women. In many countries, the most common are poor countries, girls have fewer education opportunities than boys. With human trafficking people can be trafficked through places ranging from people’s homes to a nationwide network. In the U.S. most victims are found in brothels, strip clubs, private homes, fields, factories, and street corners.
There are many different types of human trafficking. One of the biggest types is sexual exploitation. About 98% of people trafficked into sexual exploitation are female and 2% are male. The U.S. 2005 Tip Report said that the legalization of prostitution would increase the amount of trafficking women. Today most cases of women are being trafficked into prostitution through debt bondage. Which is where a person is set up into an arrangement where they have to pay off a loan with labor instead of money, which are also held through sexual force and violence by their traffickers. For example in the trial U.S. vs. Maksimenko two men were trafficking at least nine women from Russia and Ukraine, held in servitude as exotic dancers in their Michigan strip clubs. The men were holding these women captive through the use of force, which included rape. Young girls are usually trafficked by “lover boys”, which are men who seduce vulnerable young women and girls and force them into prostitution. They are also trafficked through their own families; traffickers tell the daughter’s parents that they can have an extremely better life compared to the poverty they are already in. In sexual exploitation there is also child sex tourism, which is usually practiced by men who travel away from their own countries to perform sex acts with children. A 2002 report said more than 5,000 woman had been trafficked from Eastern Europe, the Philippines, and Russia to be prostituted to the U.S. service men stationed in South Korea. Two forms of human trafficking that are also common and brought together by one main thing which is the internet, are forced marriage, and baby selling. In many countries young and forced marriage is very common. Forced marriages are arranged but without the consent of both people, most of the time it is without the woman’s consent. People like their parents or community leaders can either set up women, so they can be sold or traded to her new husband. Most victims of forced marriage experience domestic violence, abuse, rape, neglect, and forced servitude. With baby selling, they can be sold for up to $50,000. They are trafficked through overseas adoption agencies. But most countries are trying their best to stop this, like in Vietnam they are going to amend adoption laws. Modern-day slavery is slavery, which exists today and in recent times, where an individual or a group of people are controlled and forced to work for another person without their consent. Some examples of modern-day slavery are producing marijuana in Oregon, tending bar in New Jersey, and begging in New York City. In medieval times, slavery was a public acknowledgment and a category of human beings. The commercial slave trade networked from the Caspian Sea to London. Even though in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery with a subsequent domestic legation related to slavery and in any place subject to its jurisdiction, it still continued through times up until now. Now a days most men sell themselves and their families into bonded labor, and slaveholder don’t just “let slaves go”, they leave them with no help and bad health conditions. In the book “Human Trafficking” by Kathryn Cullen-Dupont, she states that, “The slaveholder exercises complete or nearly complete control over the people he or she has enslaved, and the enslaved person lives, and works as ordered by the slaveholder.”(Cullen-DuPont 7) The first comprehensive federal law to address modern-slavery was the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.(Cullen-DuPont 55) Another form of modern-day slavery is involuntary domestic servitude, like house keeping in private homes. People are hired to look like they are being paid but their paychecks cease. This is the about the second largest category of modern-day slavery in the U.S.. Forced and unfair labor is another form of human trafficking. People are work in factories, fields, and other places, where they are either forced or being unfair paid. They are also put into very bad labor conditions. For example sweatshops are a place where work is done in factories where labor laws are deliberately broken all the time. About 170,000 people work in sweatshops in the U.S., some of them are trafficked. Some of the statics of people being bought and sold are $600 for illegal Mexicans for farm work, $40 for young men to be laborers in Mali, and $800 for young girls bought for prostitution in Thailand (Cullen-DuPont 52). People can also be trafficked through labor contractors in agriculture, some are just unfairly paid. One act that helps fight against this is the Fair Labor Standards Act. An article called “Pay Your Workers, Nike, Just Do It” explains how Nike has failed to pay workers and have terrible working conditions in factories in Honduras. They own the workers in Honduras $2.2 million (End Human Trafficking). Children in many poor countries have become soldiers. More than 300,000 children are now involved in 30 or more armed conflicts. They serve in rebel militias and in national armies. Children soldiers join for food or to get vengeance for their killed loved ones, but most are just abducted. They act as cooks, guards, messengers, porters, servants, and spies. For example in conflict from 1993-2002 in Sierra Leone thousands of children were recruited and used by all-sides, like the Revolutionary United Front, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, and the pro-government Civil Defense Forces. They were usually survivors of village attacks, then taken and given drugs, and made to commit very cruel acts. Sadly the reason we know about these terrible acts because of children’s personal experiences; Michael was 15 when he was kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to serve as a combatant in the Ugandan insurgent force. During his forced service in the LRA, he was made to kill a boy who had tried to escape. He also watched another boy being hacked to death because he did not alert the guards when his friend successfully escaped. (Cullen-DuPont 7) One form of human trafficking that is new is “transplant tourism”, which is the trafficking of organs. About 15,000 kidneys are taken from involuntary donors every year (Cullen-DuPont 23). Organs can go for thousands of dollars, for example a kidney goes for $2,700 in Turkey, and $4,000 in the Philippines. Some people that are very wealthy will pay up to $150,000 for a rare organ. Most organs are bought over the black market. After the organs are removed, they are kept in cold storage and air lifted to illegal distribution centers. Some countries where organ harvesting is very common are Asia, Turkey, Iran, the Czech Republic, and Russia ("Organ Trafficking in Eastern Europe."). With human trafficking the countries are categorized into “countries of origin”. “transit countries”, and “destination countries”. Right now people are being trafficked from at least 127 known countries like Cameroon, Egypt, India, Jamaica, Ukraine, Laos, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda. Some very high “destination countries” are Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Thailand, Turkey, and the U.S. is one of the major ones. Which has created the problem of the underage commercial sex industry. But all of these countries have major “pull factors” like poverty. The seas are also a trafficking destination like the Gulf of Thailand, the Sea of Japan, the Black Seas, and on the Andaman Sea (Cullen-DuPont). The United States is a major destination for traffickers and their victims, and its one of the ten countries on a list of 139 that is “very high” for human trafficking. Most people in the U.S. who are trafficked for sexual exploitation, like stripping, pornography, and prostitution (Cullen-DuPont 44). The largest concentration of victims in the U.S. has been in California, Florida, New York, and Texas. They also have considerable immigrant communities. The U.S. Department of State says that about 18,000 to 20,000 people are trafficked across international borders into the U.S. each year (Cullen-DuPont 44&45).
Human trafficking is also very common in many foreign countries. In India about 90% of women and girls are being trafficked from one village to another for forced marriage, and prostitution. India is a high-level “destination country” and “origin country”, and a medium level “transit country”. Human trafficking is a severe problem in this country. About 25,000 to 40,000 women and children are trafficked into India for sexual exploitation from Nepal and Bangladesh every year (Cullen-Dupont 92). Belize is almost opposite compared to India. Belize is a low-level “origin country” and a very low-level “destination country”. Its not even on the list for “transit countries”(Cullen-Dupont 107). Unlike Nigeria which is in the world’s top 11 “origin countries” for modern-day slavery. It is ranked as a country that “does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking [but] is making significant efforts to do so”. Singapore is a “destination country” for human trafficking. girls and woman are usually trafficked from Thailand, the Philippines, the People’s Republic of China, and Indonesia for commercial, sexual, and labor exploitation. In Vietnam, men, woman, and girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation and labor exploitation in Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic. Vietnam is a source and “destination country”.(HumanTrafficking.org)
There are many organizations and groups that are fighting against human trafficking. One organization is the Not For Sale campaign, which is a campaign that equips and mobilizes Smart Activists to deploy innovative solutions to re-abolish slavery in their own back yards (Not For Sale). Since 1998 Global Rights has partnered with organizations and governments to set standards and laws working to fix forced labor and human trafficking ("Global Rights: Trafficking."). The United Nations and International Labor Organization are two groups who are trying to stop human trafficking, in the last 80 years they have gotten more laws then any group to abolish slavery. In 1926 the Slavery Convention was created by the League of Nations. Even though the League of Nations ended in 1946, the Slavery Convention was adopted with a few amendments in 1953. Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) work on their own combat to trafficking and aid victims, but they also work in concert with the U.S. government. You can even help to stop human trafficking yourself, there are many places you can report things that you see. Like you can call the Department of Justice Trafficking in Persons and Workers Exploitation Task force complaint line to report human trafficking crimes ("Federal Bureau of Investigation - Human Trafficking."). Human trafficking may seem like something that is unimportant or not an issue to people who live in rural areas, like Mount Desert Island, but the truth is that human trafficking effects everyone. It is a worldwide issue that has yet to be stopped by anybody. With all the different elements of human trafficking, it effects all different ages, races, and genders. How can we create world peace without fixing a problem that harms and even kills more than millions of people? What we need to do is not to just create laws that are supposed to fight against the problems. We need to fight this problem head on all around the world, by funding programs that will help finance federal agents to keep close eyes on this issue.

Works Cited

Cullen-DuPont, Kathryn. Human Trafficking. New York, NY: Facts aaaaa On File, 2009. Print.
End Human Trafficking | Change.org. Web. 1 May 2010. .

"Federal Bureau of Investigation - Human Trafficking." FBI — Federal Bureau of Investigation aaaaaaaHomepage. Web. 01 May aaaaa2010. .

"Global Rights: Trafficking." Global Rights: Welcome to Global Rights. Web. 29 Apr. 2010. .

HumanTrafficking.org: A Web Resource for Combating Human aaaaaaaTrafficking in the East Asia Pacific Region. Web. 27 Apr. 2010.

Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery. Web. 28 Apr. 2010. .

"Organ Trafficking in Eastern Europe." Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), Self-love, aaaaaaaNarcissism, Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Relationships with Abusers, Stalkers, and aaaaaaaBullies - Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited. Web. 03 June 2010. .

Annotated Bibliography Cullen-DuPont, Kathryn. Human Trafficking. New York, NY: Facts aaaaa On File, 2009. Print. This Book discusses of modern-day slavery, also known as human trafficking. The book meticulously defines the term and outlines the problem both globally and domestically. Efforts of the United Nations and other nonprofit organizations to address the issues of labor and sexual servitude are discussed. The author sheds light on how the trade in humans continues despite the attempt of governments to stop it.

End Human Trafficking | Change.org. Web. 1 May 2010. . This website offers petitions on anything that you feel that you need to change. And on this website there are petitions against human trafficking like for example is to criminalize human trafficking in West Virginia.

"Federal Bureau of Investigation - Human Trafficking." FBI — Federal Bureau of Investigation aaaaaaaHomepage. Web. 01 May aaaaa2010. . This is the accrual website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This website provides Information on how report this criminal action and also provides stories from the victims, programs info, and related website on this topic.

"Global Rights: Trafficking." Global Rights: Welcome to Global Rights. Web. 29 Apr. 2010. . This website is an origination that works in Africa, Asian, and Latin America. They provide reports on what is happening in those areas. Also programs that provide access to justice and promote women’s rights and gender equality, and advance racial and ethnic equality

HumanTrafficking.org: A Web Resource for Combating Human aaaaaaaTrafficking in the East Asia Pacific Region. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. This website is resource is for combatting Human Trafficking. They just released the 11th annual Trafficking person report, also to help rise awareness on this current issue.

Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery. Web. 28 Apr. 2010. David Batstone reveals the story of a new generation of 21st century abolitionists and their heroic campaign to put an end to human bondage. In his accessible and inspiring book, Batstone carefully weaves the narratives of activists and those in bondage in a way that not only raises awareness of the modern-day slave trade.

"Organ Trafficking in Eastern Europe." Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), Self-love, aaaaaaaNarcissism, Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Relationships with Abusers, Stalkers, and aaaaaaaBullies - Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited. Web. 03 June 2010. . His books are based on correspondence since 1996 with hundreds of people suffering from the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (narcissists) and with thousands of their family members, friends, therapists, and colleagues.

Bibliography: Cullen-DuPont, Kathryn. Human Trafficking. New York, NY: Facts aaaaa On File, 2009 "Global Rights: Trafficking." Global Rights: Welcome to Global Rights. Web. 29 Apr. 2010. . aaaaaaaTrafficking in the East Asia Pacific Region. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery. Web. 28 Apr. 2010.