Phenomenon Of Human Trafficking Research Articles

Human traffic—past and present

The essays in this issue are animated by the conference “Human traffic: Past and present,” sponsored by the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAR) at Duke University in the fall of 2011.1 At this conference, participants sought to engage the multiple dimensions embedded in the complex phenomenon of human trafficking, rethinking, and unthinking some of its more popular frames and tropes, such as its ubiquitous reference to victimization, coercion, criminality, and modern slavery. As participants noted in that gathering, discussions of human trafficking have for the most part been framed through the dimension of “human rights” where “the trafficked” are reduced to commodities in insidious networks of violence and criminality, and are often portrayed as the unsuspecting victims of these criminal elements. Thus, as one blurb advertising an earlier North Carolina conference on the topic declared: “[H]uman trafficking is one of the most profitable and fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world.” Likewise, activists generally define human trafficking as “the sale, transport and profit from human beings who are forced to work for others,” and this trade, widely considered to be a contemporary equivalent to slavery, takes place both transnationally and nationally. Tied to the rise of prostitution, women and children, who are estimated to comprise 80% of those trafficked, constitute vulnerable groups that are seen to be at higher risk than others. Like indentured servitude of the past, persons are persuaded to leave their present, usually debilitating, situations for what are perceived to be better futures. As participants to the conference observed, however, evidence suggests a certain willingness by persons involved in these activities to risk their lives to realize what they envision, or at least hope, to be a better position for themselves by gaining a foothold in other places besides their “originary” homes. It was also recognized, however, that children are for the most part without the capacities to judge the sorts of risks such movements entail, and therefore face a higher probability of exploitation and abuse. Notwithstanding these broad realities, many conferees contended there is a need to calibrate the experiences of those involved in human trafficking against and within other processes of displacements and movements that are motivated by a general search for an escape from unfreedoms, or states of unhomeliness, that processes like migration entail.

Human Trafficking and Human Rights in the United Kingdom’s Legislation and Policy: Legislative Lip Service to Justice or a Robust Arsenal of Tools to Curb the Phenomenon

The recent developments in international, regional, and national laws to curb the phenomenon of human trafficking has been fierce. Predominantly the corpus of instruments to deal the phenomenon have been constructed to tackle it as an organised criminal activity in contrast to confronting it as a crime against human rights. To curb the phenomenon of human trafficking it is cardinal to have a holistic and equal approach to tackle each dimension of the crime; prevention, prosecution and protection of the victims. A frequently criticism made of the United Kingdom’s anti-trafficking legislation and policy is that it lacks a concerted effort to provide protections to the victims and accord them with the human rights that, under international, regional and national law, they are entitled. Through a critical assessment of the UK’s anti-trafficking legislation and policy it will be argued that in spite of the existence of protection provisions in UK policy there is a significant lack of their practical outworking. Moreover for the United Kingdom to progress away from lip service to justice to a robust arsenal of tools to curb the phenomenon particular attention must be focused on protection of the victims and their human rights.

The Transnational Illegal Market of Trafficking in Human Beings – Actors and Discourses: A Transatlantic Comparison

The paper analyses the development of trafficking in human beings (THB) as an economic crime and as a severe violation of human rights by focusing on the different actors’ involved in counter-trafficking efforts. The paper outlines how the crime evolved in Austria, Germany and the United States of America (USA) since the 19th century until present. The phenomenon of human trafficking as defined by the UN Trafficking Protocol of 2000 it relates to slavery and it is considered as modern day slavery. Finding the right words to describe the crime remains a persistent challenge in combating human trafficking. Most formulations used to describe trafficking focus on the trade or buying and selling of people, or they mean something closer to “smuggling,” which relates specifically to movement over borders. These words, including the word trafficking in English, may not adequately capture the most important aspect of the practice: exploitation. Nevertheless, it is important to note that in the 19th and early 20th century practices nowadays considered as human trafficking referred as ‘White Slavery’, Slavery and ‘Madchenhandel’. THB was also primarily saw as a feeding of the sex industry; excluding forced labour, domestic servitude, forced begging, among other forms of human trafficking from the today internationally agreed upon definition. A growing demand for (cheap) labour, sexual services and women for (forced) marriages, economic and demographic disparities have stimulated the trafficking and smuggling in human beings through time. The perpetrators force the individuals to work in conditions of forced labour, servitude, or debt bondage; this privation of freedom and poor living conditions is thus a severe violation of human rights. Efforts to combat THB have mostly been geared at victim support and prevention as a response to the severe harm to victims, but little has been done to diminish the profitability of the business, which is why it is valuable to look at how this business has developed through time. Trafficking still remains a very profitable business in which the traffickers face relatively small risks.

Epilogue: Human Trafficking Seen from the Future

The phenomenon of human trafficking cannot be separated from a number of important changes that have taken place in society - at both a local and global level - over the last few decades. In addition, there have been a number of important theoretical developments, as well as the emergence of several law enforcement models directed to combat the growing problem of trafficking in humans. Some of these topics will be dealt with in the following paragraphs that take the form of an epilogue to a very rich special issue.