Human trafficking describes the ‘recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labor (including bonded labor or debt bondage), and servitude’.
It is supposed to be the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. The revenue generated by human trafficking is around $5 billion to $9 billion. The menace has reached epidemic proportions now. Techniques like coercion, deception, fraud, abuse of power and outright abduction are used to trap victims. Debts can also make people consent to being exploited.
Victims of trafficking, especially women and children, may find themselves forced into prostitution, forced labor or services, slavery, etc. Children may also be trafficked for purposes of illegal international adoption, early marriage, recruitment as child soldiers (for example by the LTTE, a terrorist group in Srilanka), begging, for sports (such as child camel jockeys in the Middle East) or for religious cults.
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Human trafficking is different from the smuggling of people which is voluntary and resorted to for purposes of migrating to another country to seek a better life. A fee is paid to the smuggler for his help and once the migrant reaches the destination, he is free to go where he wants. But in trafficking, the victim is enslaved and is denied his basic human rights. Sometimes tries people who are trying to enter other countries into may be picked up by traffickers and trapped into enslavement.
Trafficking is a quite lucrative Industry. In Russia, Eastern Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, and Colombia, trafficking is done by large criminal organizations. However, the majority of trafficking is done by networks of smaller groups, generally, trafficked people are from the most vulnerable groups like powerless minorities in a -region. They live in the poorer areas where few opportunities are available and they may be ethnic minorities, or runaways and refugees.
Women are very vulnerable to sex trafficking, Traffickers promise them good jobs and then force them into the sex trade. Every year, many Bangladeshi and Nepalese women are trafficked into India for this purpose. They may end up in the brothels of Kamathipura in Mumbai or Sonagachi in Kolkata. The most shocking fact is won that in many cases, relatives of the women including fathers, husbands, lovers, brothers, uncles or aunts collude with the traffickers.
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Trafficking of children is a result of parents’ extreme poverty. Impoverished parents may sell children to pay off debts. Some of them are deceived into thinking that their children will get a better life. In West Africa, AIDS is one of the major causes for child trafficking as they have often lost one or both parents to the disease. Children have also been forced to be child soldiers in Africa. The adoption process also results in cases of trafficking of babies and children.
Men may also be trafficked, usually for unskilled work predominantly involving forced labor. Other forms of trafficking include forced marriage, and domestic servitude. A Philippine maid in the Middle East murdered her employer who had subjected her to terrible abuse. Many films have dealt with human trafficking.
The recent (2007) film, ‘Eastern Promises’, by David Crone berg is about a British midwife who stumbles on a gang of Russian slavers when she seeks relatives to a baby of a sex slave named Tatiana who dies in childbirth. The 2008 film, ‘Taken’, by Pierre Morel, is about foreign girls in Paris who are “trafficked” for prostitution.