Pros And Cons Of Human Trafficking

Debt/Contracts. When recruited or abducted from another country and brought to a different one, human traffickers use debt bondages. This type of debt ranks as the most common type in human trafficking. Traffickers claim that the victims owe them money for transportation and “saving” their lives by bringing them to the United States for a better life (Human, 2018). Instead of coming to a new country for opportunities like they were often promised, they spend their time paying off this so called debt through a life of terror. As time goes one, the traffickers continue to make up more debt for things such as living and food. The other popular form of trickery is contract slavery. Recruiters use false or deceptive contracts to justify slavery.
These contracts usually consist of false information and end up promising luxuries that never occur. The majority of contract slavery in the United States leads to forced domestic service (Human, 2018). These include jobs like sweatshops, agriculture fields, restaurant, and hotel work. Both forms trick and convince innocent people into a life of enslavement. Street Children. These children come from excessively large families typically from third world countries. Children more well known as accidents by their mother and father who abandoned them get placed into a life of labor. Recently, in several European countries, children as young as ten are recruited into military services and asked to serve as a soldier in military combat (Neumann, 2015). Their owners also use them as young criminals forcing them into the drug world by using them as the medium for importing and exporting drugs.
Organ Trafficking The final type of human trafficking is known as the trafficking of organs. The very alarming and controversial topic has occurred in countries all over the world, specifically in China. Organ trafficking involves the abduction or deception of people leading to the involuntary removal of human organs for transplant. China has reports regarding the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners without family consent and sold across the globe. The traffickers distribute the human organs through the internet to donors and recipients in illegal acts. The internet has become a very powerful thing helping the underworld of organized crime to prevail. In addition, the trafficking of human fetus also occurs for the use of cosmetics and drug industry (Human, 2018). Traffickers feed their victims certain foods and supplements in order for them to produce fetus that they can use to make illegal drugs for distribution all over the world.
Traumatic Bonding
In order to gain control of their victims, traffickers use a technique known as traumatic bonding in which they use psychological and physical abuse (Human, 2018). Through this process, the victims develop an appreciation or need for their owner. The trafficker often uses threats against the victim’s family to break them into the industry. According to the Encyclopedia of Human Trafficking, “the victim develops a strong emotional tie with the abuser, making it difficult for the victim to flee” (Human, 2018). After days, months, or years of constant threats and abuse, the victims personalities and behaviors adjust to the lifestyles of their owners. The trafficker also uses a technique known as “the cycle of violence.” This process involves three different stages consisting of several behavioral treatments performed on the victims. The first period, known as the honeymoon, consists of constant apologies, promises, blaming, gifts, and more to convince the victim that he or she loves the trafficker. The next period, known as the tension building stage, involves consistent anger, yelling, criticism, and neglect from the trafficker towards the victim. Traffickers attempt to completely destroy their victim’s integrity and self-esteem in order to take complete control of their lives. This period makes the final stage of explosion much easier. Once the victim has become mentally weak, the trafficker begins to perform abusive, emotional, and sexual attacks (Human, 2018). These three periods allow the trafficker to mold their victims into the slave lifestyle.
Techniques of Recruitment
Human trafficking can occur to anyone at any given time but certain groups of people are targeted more than others.
In most cases, human trafficking runs as an organization or business rather than one single person abducting alone. The business side of human trafficking allows these criminals to work together and stay under the radar of law enforcement. Each human trafficking group usually has recruiters who watch and look for people. They find their victims through resources such as the internet, employment agencies, and local contacts (Preventing, 2015). They also go to places such as shopping malls and look for people that follow a routine and typically travel alone. These recruiters typically look for young children who come from a troubled background. Abduction or kidnapping of children does not occur near the times people would think when discussing human trafficking. Kidnapping a child, especially one from a steady background, can raise several red flags. The most effective and popular technique used by recruiters involves persuading their victims. Depending on which part of the world this occurs in, the bribes
differ.
Africa
Recruitment in Africa most commonly happens in small third world villages. These villages have very high poverty rates and the civilians have little to no proper education. These people live in conditions that most did not even think still existed. A better life and an opportunity is all these people look for. These vulnerabilities feed right into the hands of human traffickers. Many times recruiters promise parents of these villages a better life for their teenage children. The recruiters engrave luxuries into their brain which include a college education or even a house with running water. Little do they know that these luxuries actually translate into a life of forced sex and labor. Jaqueline, a fourteen-year-old girl born in a small village in Southern Africa, was tricked into the industry of human trafficking. One trafficker, who at the time seemed like a helpful saint, promised her family a life of wealth and education for their fourteen-year-old daughter. Her parents were convinced and sent Jaqueline with the man. When they arrived in the United States, the trafficker forced Jaqueline to work in a factory for twelve to sixteen hours each day, along with handing over all of their money (Carr, 2011). Her trafficker also forced her to have sex with middle age men around the area. At night she had a pillow and a raggedy blanket while she laid on a cold basement floor. Jaqueline tried to escape several times prior to arrival but received severe beatings and remained under extreme supervision. Jaqueline began to fear her trafficker and did anything to avoid conflict. Traffickers take control of victims emotional, physical, and psychological well-being with abuse (Zimmerman, 2018). The fear of the victims allows owners to gain more control over their sex industry. After two years of beatings, work, and sexual assaults, the police finally found Jaqueline. She lied to the police several times because she feared what her owner would do to her and threats he had put against her family. After further investigation, the truth came out and the trafficker served decades in a federal prison. Jaqueline fell under the category of a human trafficking victim and received compensation. In 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) was issued in order to help stop the growing epidemic of human trafficking.
Whose primary goal provided protection and assistance to trafficking victims along with encouraging international response (Human, 2018). The three strategies they worked by were prosecution, protection, and prevention. Of course eighteen years later human trafficking continues to cause problems, but the TVPA has done a tremendous job helping victims return back to a normal happy life. In Jaqueline’s case, the TVPA provided her with several legal and social service benefits including a housing, medical care, therapeutic services, a caseworker, and the access to an attorney (Human, 2018). And for the first time in her life, fourteen-year-old Jaqueline finally enrolled into school. The TVPA provides a number of excellent services to the people who lost their dignity and
lives. Foreign countries also play a huge role in human trafficking, providing innocent but very vulnerable people. Although the United States sits atop all other countries as the number one human trafficking location in the world. But a vast majority of these victims do not originate from the United States. The primary countries in which these victims come from include Italy, Germany, and Netherlands. Nearly all of these countries have legalized prostitution or broadly tolerate the act. This makes the recruiting process extremely easy as all three of these countries also rank towards the top in existing sex industries. In order to protect their investments, the Encyclopedia of Human Trafficking shares that “traffickers use terroristic threats as a means of control over their victims and demonstrate power through the threat of deportation, the seizing of travel documentation, or violence against the migrants or their family members remaining in the origin country” (Human, 2018). In order to transport these legal human slaves from country to country, traffickers forge passports and travel documents. In countries with weak institutions, crooks easily obtain these documents with ease as top officials and leaders can be bribed for legal documentation and passports (Siskin, 2012). In a time of desperate need, the vulnerable cannot even depend on their country’s highest authorities to help save them.