Human Smuggling, Human Trafficking, and Exploitation in the Sex Industry

The Tragedy and Horror of Human Trafficking of Children and Youth

A Message from the EditorIntroduction to the Special Issue on Human Trafficking Michael R. Hall, Sabella Abidde, and José de Arimatéia da Cruz In November 2000, the United Nations adopted the "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime." It stated, "'Trafficking in persons' shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, 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 labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs."1 The 7th INTERPOL Global Conference on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September 2019—three months before the 37th Annual Association of Global South Studies (AGSS) Conference held in Argentina's capital in December 2019. The INTERPOL conference attracted 750 participants from ninety-seven countries who focused on disrupting the "business model" of criminal enterprises behind human trafficking and migrant smuggling. In her opening remarks at the INTERPOL conference, Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's Minister of Security, described human trafficking and migrant smuggling as "the strong over the weak—those who exploit the vulnerability for their own profit." According to Bullrich, "It is important that we understand the essence of the crime, [End Page ix] not only to fight the offenders, but also to develop our ability to return freedom and peace of mind to all those who have suffered as victims."2 While attending the AGSS conference, Professor of Political Science Sabella Abidde at Alabama State University, Professor of Political Science José de Arimatéia da Cruz at Georgia Southern University, and Professor of History Michael R. Hall at Georgia Southern University—encouraged and influenced by the success and popularity of the recent INTERPOL conference—initiated a project that would examine the issue of human trafficking in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Initially, the plan was to host a series of panels at the 38th annual AGSS conference to be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in October 2020. Due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the conference was canceled. As a result, we approached Ryan Alexander, the editor of the Journal of Global South Studies (JGSS), with a plan for an issue of the journal dedicated to the theme of human trafficking in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The fruition of this endeavor are the six articles by nine scholars from multiple disciplines included in this issue of the journal. In "Theorizing Human Trafficking and Unfree Labor," Julia Harnoncourt from the University of Luxembourg and Miguel Paredes from the University of Vienna examine human trafficking in the context of labor exploitation. The authors explain that unfree labor transpires when the workers cannot sell their labor freely. Significantly, the unfree labor condition involves a situation in which the laborer cannot end their labor relation. After placing their research in historical perspective, the authors examine the Palermo Protocol and the application of laws against human trafficking in two case studies: Bolivia and Brazil. In "Paradoxes and Anomalies in Caribbean Anti-Trafficking Law and Practice," Jason Haynes from the University of the Birmingham assesses existing state practice on human trafficking in the Caribbean. Haynes' study is based on empirical data collected from interviews with 50 government officials and nongovernmental organization representatives in twelve Caribbean nations. In "Comparative Analysis of Human Trafficking in Caribbean and African Islands from the Annual Trafficking in Persons Report," Kathleen M. Vogel from Arizona State University examines current trends in human trafficking in African and Caribbean islands. Especially relevant is the author's discussion of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human trafficking. In "Sun, Sand, Sex, and Safari: The Interplay of Sex Tourism and Global Inequalities [End Page...

The problem of preventing crime against migrants is updated. The urgency of issues related to preventing crimes against migrants as the main factor of criminality prevention in general is substantiated. The relevance of the topic is caused by the fact that in modern conditions, the attitude to migrants in accordance with the norms of international law is equally ambivalent. Migrants are exposed to numerous risks of victimization, and many of them suffer from victimization – sometimes repeatedly, and sometimes even systematically. Such risks of victimization can be classified together with their individual background of emigration and immigration. The two main types of criminal behaviour that is of interest to criminal policy – human trafficking and human smuggling – are addressed in the two Amendment Protocols to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention): the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air. In the latter document, migrants are perceived as offenders, not as victims, especially in legal treatment of smuggling. This is justified by the fact that migrants represent a demand for smuggling services, and this demand is considered the main incentive for this branch of organized crime, including transnational one. However, current legal situation – both the international legal framework and the legal provisions applied in the main jurisdictions – does not reflect the victimological reality of migration. The distinction between human trafficking and people smuggling (trafficking) creates a significant gap in the treatment of victims. The same is true of public, political and academic discussions that tend to ignore the reality of migration, which is characterized by the fact that not only victims of trafficking, but migrants in general, are clearly vulnerable and are at multiple risks of victimization. The problem of preventing crime against migrants is that it is hardly possible to justify a politically motivated dividing victims of criminal acts into two groups (trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants) in order to achieve two different standards of protection, especially in light of the enormous risks of victimization to which all migrants are exposed.

Although, the Korea is a world-class shipping and fisheries country, the issue of human rights violations by seafarers has been continuously investigated and reported in recent years. Especially, the issue of human rights violations by migrant fishers are serious. The definition of human in persons in the ‘UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons’ is different from the concept of human trafficking, which is the “selling and purchasing people like things” that are generally considered in Korean society. The concept of the ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons’ regards exploitation of sex and labor by using fraud, compulsion, and the status or environment of the victim. If the level of the cases in the human rights violations report of migrant fisher is at the current level, Korea is a route country and destination for trafficking in persons. The United States of America publishes a trafficking report every year to prevent trafficking and It surveys and evaluates 191 countries around the world and ranks them. In the United States of America, countries that are vulnerable to human trafficking prevention and activity are designated as tier 3 and are taking economic measures. Korea is a first tier country, but it has been pointed out that the problem of migrant fisher is improved every year. Workers in this field should be alert, as there can be level down to a second-tier country anytime without substantial improvement. In this paper, I understand the concept of human trafficking and look at the anti-trafficking activities in the United States. And I would like to propose measures to be improved to prevent human rights violations against migrant fishers. The proposal for the prevention of seafarers' human rights infringement is that the government needs practical regulatory activities and the education and training to who civil servants of seafarers' administrative executives.

Trafficking in Persons & Transit Countries: A Canada-U.S. Case Study in Global Perspective

"Immigration and Criminal Law in the European Union: the Legal Measures and Social Consequences of Criminal Law in Member States on Trafficking and Smuggling in Human Beings" published on 01 Jan 2006 by Brill | Nijhoff.

In recent decades the international community has focused its attention on trafficking in persons, one of the most worrying phenomena of the 21st century. Chapter 1 examines trafficking in persons in the light of the recent definition of the phenomenon given by the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. It analyses trafficking causes and consequences, and the most common forms of exploitation related to it. Chapter 2 reviews the most important international conventions against slavery and the slave trade, the UN Trafficking Protocol and various other international treaties adopted in the framework of international human rights, criminal, and labour law with the aim of identifying those measures guaranteeing the widest protection to trafficked victims. Chapter 3 reviews States' obligations under international human rights, criminal, and labour law to emphasize that the scarce protection of trafficked victims granted by the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children has to be supplemented by the international conventions as well. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the Council of Europe and the European Union, and their fight against trafficking in people, arguing that the focus has been placed mistakenly on the prosecution of traffickers rather than on the protection of trafficked victims. The book concludes with a recommendation to shift towards a more balanced approach to trafficking in persons and the overriding need to conduct further research on specific issues related to the spread of trafficking and the exploitation of its victims.

Johanna Granville is an assistant professor of political science at Clemson University.Torgovlya Liud'mi: Sotsiokriminologicheskii Analiz, Center for the Study of Transnational Organized Crime and Corruption (TraCCC) (American University). Moscow: Akademia, 2002. 221 pp.Migrant Trafficking and Human Smuggling in Europe: A Review of the Evidence with Case Studies from Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine, International Organization for Migration (IOM). New York: United Nations Publications, 2000. 416 pp. $35.00 paperback.Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Kevin Bales. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 298 pp. $16.95 paperback.Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives, David Kyle and Rey Koslowski, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 374 pp. $18.95 paperback.War's Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other Crimes Against Women, Anne Llewellyn Barstow, ed. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2000. 224 pp. $20.00 paperback.The roaring of the Boeing's engine matched twenty-six-year-old Lena Nakhimovskaya's barely suppressed excitement. So many months of preparation compressed into this one moment! It just proved that if you worked hard enough, you could get whatever you wanted. As the wheels finally hit the runway of Berlin's Schonefeld airport, she heard a silken feminine voice speaking rapid German. The jet airliner came to a stop, and Lena gathered up her belongings: the dog-eared hardback Istoriya Berlina too thick to fit in her purse and a long To Do list. Its first item: Ask Sergei to pay for German lessons.A few minutes later she walked beside Sergei as they entered the terminal. She had met him shortly after answering the ad for a job in Berlin as housekeeper and nanny. Friendly and outgoing when he coaxed her to sign the contract (verbovka), he had barely spoken a word during the whole journey from Samara. Strange.A tall man approached them. He wore a green T-shirt with German words on it and sleeves too tight for biceps as thick as thighs. He and Sergei conversed in low tones for about twenty minutes.Eager for action, she finally burst out, Hi. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Lena Nakhimovskaya. Let's go tour the city now!The man looked at Sergei with a twinkle in his eye. Licking his upper lip, he ran his eyes slowly up and down her body. First take a tour of you, he said with a strong German accent.Sergei finally spoke to her, twisting her arm. I'll give the orders around here, devushka.Thunder clapped overhead as rain drops began to patter against the windows. Lena jerked away to rummage in her purse. Her voice rose hysterically. Where is my passport? Both men just stared at her with pity. You can't be serious.... her voice trailed off.The above scenario, albeit fictional, is unfortunately typical. In 1997 alone, 175,000 young women from Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern and Central Europe were actually tricked and as commodities in the sex markets of the developed countries in Europe and the Americas. 1 Every year, at least 1 million women and children are taken from their homes and sold into slavery. 2 The United Nations' International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that as many as 4 million people worldwide are smuggled across borders each year, resulting in illicit profits amounting to $7 billion annually. 3 In addition to women from the former communist bloc, tens of thousands of other women from countries such as the Philippines, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ghana, and Nigeria are trafficked abroad each year and forced into prostitution to pay off their debts for transportation and housing. 4 Given the extent and duration of the problem of global human trafficking and, more specifically, forced prostitution, astonishingly few people fully understand it. In Article 3 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons that supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000), human trafficking is defined as,the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or position of vulnerability or 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. …

Human trafficking is an urgent contemporary human and labor rights issue. It is prevalent in a wide range of sectors, from the commercial sex sector to the construction industry to begging. Human trafficking also (increasingly) occurs in situations where the body is rendered ‘divisible,’ such as in cases of organ trafficking. The ratification of the United Nations Protocol on Human Trafficking (formally known as the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children) in December 2003 has led to a proliferation of legislative and policy responses by states, interventions by international and nongovernmental organizations, and scholarly and third-sector research on the subject. International organizations, such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), have also become important players in the field of counter-trafficking, including through the publication of numerous guidelines and manuals, research publications, and other resources. With ‘human trafficking’ defined by the UN Protocol as involving the three linked elements of recruitment, movement, and exploitation, responses have centered on what are commonly labeled the ‘3 Ps’; prevention of trafficking, protection of victims, and prosecution of offenders. By nature a clandestine and illicit activity, human trafficking has proven both challenging to study and, as a transnational crime, difficult to investigate and prosecute. Research with victims and survivors is often not undertaken well because trafficked persons are viewed as a ‘hidden population’ and because of a range of ethical challenges. As a result, published research on human trafficking is often largely bereft of victims’ voices; is overly reliant on information provided primarily by key stakeholders; and exhibits a bias toward estimates, mapping the problem, and criminal justice responses. In 2022, almost twenty years after the Trafficking Protocol came into international force, critical scholarly work evaluating the achievements, shortcomings, and effects of the UN Protocol has produced a robust engagement not only with human trafficking as an important subject, but also with counter-trafficking responses as a corpus of knowledge and practice, with its own attendant institutional and political infrastructures. Geographical scholarship on the subject is, in large part, motivated by these concerns for critical and progressive engagements with the ways human trafficking and counter-trafficking responses impact the rights and dignity of victims. This focus has directed much scholarly engagement by both geographers and those in cognate disciplines, such as anthropology and gender studies, to interrelated modes of human exploitation through modern-day slavery, forced labor, and precarious work.

In order to understand the essence of the crime, two issues have to be taken into account: not only do we analyse features of the perpetrator, but also the victim’s behaviour. Both measures have to be recognised in the light of their mutual relations. In such a case, victimology is instrumental for criminology. It answers the fundamental question: who and why becomes a victim of a crime? It is victimology that draws our attention to a post-crime victimisation problem in the psychological, social and legal aspects. These issues are particularly vital in the case of human trafficking. First, the victim of the crime has to be defined. Over the centuries, the word ‘victim’ came to have an additional meaning. Nowadays, the legal definition of a victim in many countries typically includes the following: it is a person who suffered direct or threatened physical, emotional or pecuniary harm as a result of the commission of a crime. In the Polish legal system, a legal definition of a victim is given in the Polish Charter of Victims’ Rights, whereas the Polish penal law speaks of an aggrieved party and defines it in Article 49 of the Criminal Procedure Code. However, one fact draws our attention. The aggrieved or those objectively recognised as aggrieved do not agree with such a qualification. Let us take a closer look at the reasons why they see themselves in a different role. There is no doubt that one of the reasons is the fact that victims are often qualified as persons offending the law, as criminals. Another problem, is the victims’ return to their previous life situation, which had led them to being recruited by a human trafficker. We also need to point out that the relations between human traffickers and their victims are extremely complex. However, the key issue is that there is an agreement for a crime. The decision-making processes have to be analysed. The victims of human trafficking find themselves in a situation where they have a considerable limitation of free decision making. One of the major examples reflecting these problems that always takes place in a compulsory situation in the wide sense of this expression is job undertaking which leads to the abuse of the potential worker’s situation. A very specific example is a job agency. The question that appears is when we should speak of an unlawfully acting job agent, and when we can start calling this human trafficking? Is every illegal job agency dealing with human trafficking? What is the difference between these two? And finally when does a worker become a victim and an aggrieved party? What types of slavery and slaves exist today? bounded labour affects at least 20 milion people around the world. People become bounded labourers by taking or being tricked into taking a loan for as little as the cost of medicines for a sick child. To repay the debt, many are forced to work overtime, seven days a week, up to 365 days a year. They receive basic food and shelter as ‘payment’ for their work, but may never pay off the loan, which can be passed down for another generation; eaily and forced marriage affects women and girls who are married without choice and are forced into lives of servitude often accompanied by physical violence; forced labour affects people who are illegally recruited by individuals, governments or political parties and forced to work usually under threat of violence or other penalties; slavery by descent is where people are either born into a slave class or are from a group that the society views as suited to be used as slave labour; trafficking involves the transport and/or trade of people: ‘woman, children and men’, from one area to another for the purpose of forcing them into slavery conditions; worst forms of child labour affects an estimated 179 million children around the world in work that is harmful to their health and welfare. Children work on the land, in households as domestic workers, in factories making products such as matches, fireworks and glassware, on the streets as beggars, in the outdoor industry, brick kilns, mines, construction sector, in bars, restaurants and tourist establishments, in sexual exploitation, as soldiers. It seems that pursuant to the Employment and Unemployment Countering Act (Ustawa o zatrudnieniu i przeciwdziałaniu bezrobociu) a model contrary to the one in the act can create a criminological model of modern human trafficking. It would be then running a business to gain financial benefits in the way that the businessperson exploits the position of the aggrieved party and provides the future employer with employees. The latter group, however, even if agreeing to move abroad, becomes completely dependant on the employer which is often combined with a deprivation of liberty, because they have no possibility to choose their place of staying or withdraw from the previous agreement. A number of international regulations, e.g. the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children which supplements the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime of 2000, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography of 2000, the Slavery Convention of 1926 together with a Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery dated l956 show, that the issue under discussion still remains a contemporary problem, and needs regulations aiming at finding relevant solutions. There can be no doubts in the light of the nullum crimen sine lege certa that a precise description of the crime is essential. Only a precise definition of a separate crime of human trafficking will enable to recognise the scope of the problem and will create internationally accepted circumstances to overcome it. Such a definition must include at least: acts: recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person; means: threat to use or the use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or a position of vulnerability; purposes: forced labour or services, slavery slavery-like practices or servitude. Everyone, government and non-governmental organisations, must focus on the crime which must be precisely described including a detailed description of a victim. It is highly urgent and important to harmonise all legislative measures in order to prevent human trafficking, which would guarantee an effective protection of victims and prosecution of criminals.

Attempts to address the problem of trafficking in persons on an international, regional and national basis are relatively recent. The ‘Bali Process’ refers to an ongoing programme of practical cooperation between over 40 Asian and Pacific countries which arose out of the Regional Ministerial Conferences on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime held in Bali in February 2002 and April 2003. The Conferences, together with the United Nations' Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, provided the impetus for the enactment of national legislation to criminalize trafficking in persons. This article analyses the criminal justice response to trafficking persons in the Asia–Pacific region since the enactment of the Protocol and argues that there are numerous practical problems with the enforcement of new trafficking provisions. Drawing on case studies in Australia and New Zealand, it is argued that other offences may be more easily enforced and that the emphasis on enacting new offences detracts from addressing human rights issues and the social dynamics of migration.

The Perfect Business? Anti-trafficking and Sex Trade along Mekong SVERRE MOLLAND Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012, viii+276 p.Transnational Crime and Human Rights: Responses to Human Trafficking in Greater Mekong Subregion SUSAN KNEEBONE and JULIE DEBELJAK Oxon: Routledge, 2012, xiii+276 p.Recently, as response to global crisis of human trafficking, more attention has been paid to human trafficking in Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). However, literature of human trafficking mainly focuses on prostitution and irregular migration, and always considers maximization of profit as central logic behind human trafficking. But this is only part of story.Explaining social-cultural discourses of human trafficking in GMS, Sverre Molland, Susan Kneebone, and Julie Debeljak present alternative perspectives on human trafficking in GMS. In their opinions, there is tension between discourse of policy enforcement and human rights in region.Transnational Crime and Human Rights: Responses to Human Trafficking in Greater Mekong Subregion evaluates legal policy frameworks for responding to human trafficking in GMS. At international, national, and subnational levels, authors point out two essential contexts in human trafficking, namely, prostitution and labor migration. Meanwhile, they apply Foucault and Habermas' ideas about discourse to evaluate competing discourses have shaped policies and policy responses have respectively changed discourses.For instance, Kneebone and Debeljak adopt Foucault's concepts of bio-politics and governmentality1) to illustrate trafficking discourses at both global and regional level not only explaining the increased interests in 'securitization' by those who are in power, but also analyzing why some discourses that may unsettle status quo are excluded (Kneebone and Debeljak, p.24).In The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and Sex Trade along Mekong, Sverre Molland comments on three discourses of traffickers, victims, and anti-traffickers in human trafficking along Thai-Lao border, with specific focus on border towns of Vientiane and Nong Kai. At same time, Molland interprets human trafficking along Thai-Lao border from three theoretical approaches. First, he utilizes discourse2) to explain that institutional practices do not only shape external world, but also respond to it. Second, he adopts practice theory to explain how individuals and groups employ range of strategies and maneuvers to archive certain ends, and internalize these very same ends (Molland, p. 14). And third, he introduces Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of bad faith3) to explain deliberate ignorance in human trafficking.Molland carefully analyzes and income hierarchies within sex industries in Vientiane and Nong Kai, which are different from idealized depiction of human trafficking. He concludes that human trafficking is not parasitic on migration flows from poorer to richer areas. In many cases advanced by Molland, price for commercial sex in Laos is higher than that in Nong Kai (Molland, p. 127). Furthermore, Lao sex workers cross border to work in Nong Kai, who break logic of maximization of utility. Molland highlights fact that analytical models assumed by anti-traffickers do not explain movement of Lao sex workers mentioned above.In both books, authors pose serious challenges both analytically and methodologically to literature on human trafficking in following three areas.First of all, two books criticize effectiveness of definition context of human trafficking in GMS.In The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the Trafficking Protocol),4) one of most essential international texts to any study on human trafficking, definition context of human trafficking contains a range of contradictions and ambiguities (Molland, p. …

Although 'trafficking in human beings' and 'human smuggling' are divergent crimes that refer to different articles in the Dutch Criminal Code, they both became strongly attached to 'world' of organized crime. Consequently, the government speaks of victims in case of people being trafficked and increasingly of offenders for those being smuggled. In this chapter, several global developments and incidents within the Netherlands have been described that have contributed to a climate in which human smuggling has evolved from a non-problematic fact or activity to a serious criminal offence that deregulates Dutch immigration and integration policies and ultimately threatens national security. This chapter focuses on the flows of people, transnational organized crime and international terrorism. As in most other western countries, migration policies in Netherlands are increasingly characterized in terms of migration control. Simultaneously migration policies focus on integration of settled immigrants at the expense of marginalizing and excluding illegal immigrants. Keywords: Dutch criminal code; Dutch immigration policies; human smuggling; illegal immigrants; international terrorism; migration control; Netherlands; organized crime; trafficking in human beings

The new un trafficking protocol

This chapter outlines the Italian law on smuggling of migrants, trafficking in human beings and irregular migration. It points out that in 1998 only Italy commenced to develop legislation on the three phenomena. It then examines legislation introduced in 1998 and points out that the legislator of 1998 did not emphasise the importance of police and judicial co-operation at European Union (EU) level. It also outlines modifications introduced by legislator in 2002. The chapter emphasises that these changes particularly were made on phenomenon of irregular migration. It shows that Italian legislation on smuggling of migrants and irregular immigration is restrictive, although not excessively if the EU reality is taken into account. It then analyses one provision of Schengen Implementing Agreement to demonstrate that the European law considers irregular migration a crime. It also explains why Schengen Implementing Agreement is not respected in the part related to penalisation of irregular migration. Keywords: criminal offence; European law; European Union (EU); illegal immigration; irregular migration; Italian law; Schengen Implementing Agreement; smuggling of migrants; trafficking in human beings