Human Sex Trafficking: A Global Issue - Research Paper Example

Human Sex Trafficking: A Global Issue The global scale and severity of human trafficking for sex slavery is alarming. The most helpless women and children across the globe are sexually abused for money with immunity, but attempts to fight the global sex trade are still terribly weak and misguided. There are a number of reasons for this continuous failure, according to Nelson (2002, 551). First, anti-sex trafficking laws are mostly inadequate and weakly implemented. Second, the agencies or groups committed to fighting sex trafficking are disconnected and inadequately funded globally. Third, in spite of heightened media exposure, sex trafficking is still insufficiently understood. Lastly, in spite of a large number of studies and data/information, a methodical examination of the sex trade industry, carried out to determine the best areas of intervention, remains absent. Thus, this paper aims to establish that human trafficking for the sole purpose of gaining profit from sex trade is a widespread and serious problem today. Numerous policymakers and scholars are still in disagreement as regards to the exact definition of ‘trafficking’. In order to resolve such issue, the 2000 United Nations Trafficking Protocol created a widely recognized definition of trafficking (Gallagher 2010, 29): … the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of 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 prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. Still, trafficking does not entirely mean movement. The recruitment, purchase, movement, exploitation, and maltreatment of victims of sex trafficking sustain the industry that makes massive profits yearly. Besides sexual exploitation, humans are sold for organ harvesting, labor-intensive work, and domestic slavery (Potts 2003, 228). There are still inconclusive data about the prevalence of human trafficking, but the figure frequently cited by nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government is 600,000 to 800,000 human beings are trafficked yearly all over the world and ‘millions’ sold locally (Kara 2010, 17). The profits made from this despicable crime, according to the 2009 International Organization for Migration report, has enlarged from a US$12 billion industry to a US$36 billion industry. At present, the U.S. State Department data show that roughly seventy percent of sex trafficking victims are women and children (Kara 2010, 17). Numerous countries have either failed to understand the scale of human trafficking that have taken place within their borders or have the wrong idea about human trafficking, or have basically lacked the needed resources to fight sex trafficking. The 2000 UN Protocol specifies several types of trafficking such as organ harvesting, slavery, forced labor, sexual exploitation, etc. Another type of trafficking is illicit adoptions, such as the trading of children who are abducted or given freely (Potts 2003, 227). In several African societies, it is a tradition to surrender a child to a community leader, who sends the child to a foreign land to study. Yet, at times the leader sells the child to sex trade, labor, or adoption. Trafficking may be classified in several ways. For instance, it can be classified by each phase of the trafficking cycle: acquisition, transportation, and exploitation (Jones et al. 2007, 108). In the documentary Sex Slave, the Frontline discussed in detail how victims of sex trafficking are recruited in Ukraine, then transported to Turkey and other parts of Europe, and ultimately are exploited by their owners. There are several first-hand accounts, like that of Tanya and Katia, that describes the actual process of sex trafficking. Likewise, trafficking is classified with regard to the route, like place of origin, shipment, or destination. On the other hand, trafficking may be classified as domestic, when the trafficked individuals are acquired and abused within national borders, or it can be global, when trafficked individuals are abused after being shipped across national borders (Potts 2003, 227). Nevertheless, the United Nations places more importance on global trafficking because its directive is transnational crime. On the contrary, domestic trafficking is subjected to the rule of each Member State. The push and pull factors have frequently been used to explain or classify the mechanisms of human trafficking. Push factors have an effect on the longing to go abroad, whereas pull factors largely contribute to the appeal of a destination country (Kara 2010, 17-18). Also, trafficking could be described through components associated with the opportunity and incentive to perpetrate a criminal act. Basically, trafficking has three Ps, namely, (1) prosecution (i.e. policymaking, investigation, trial, conviction, and sentencing), (2) protection (i.e. providing assistance and security to victims), and (3) prevention (i.e. mitigating risk factors for victimization) (Mattar 2008, 1355). Furthermore, global and domestic collaboration as an effort to combat trafficking should be taken into consideration. All efforts should put emphasis on the rights of the victim as the basis of the campaign. Hence, it is important to look at the environment of trafficking from different points of view (e.g. the people involved, the location, the push and pull factors, etc.). Understanding trafficking in various points of view will improve policies and campaigns against human trafficking. Recruitment of sex workers/slaves largely takes place in several ways such as abduction, deception, acquisition by ex-slaves, and so on. Abduction is, in truth, an infrequent method of getting slaves because abduction makes movement tremendously difficult. Even so, abduction really takes place (Basil 2009, 162). As shown in the short film The Journey, the abduction of the woman becomes a very difficult endeavor for the traffickers because the victim tries persistently to escape. As mentioned by one of the traffickers in the documentary Sex Slaves, Vlad, a woman should be psychologically weak in order for her to accept the fact that she has no other choice but to work as a prostitute. In the case of abduction, there is no way of knowing whether a woman is psychologically weak or not. Thus, other methods, like deception, are more widely practiced than abduction. Deception involves fake job offers or other livelihood opportunities with the intention of trafficking individuals. When individuals are hopeless or distraught because of poverty and other factors, the appeal of a stable, high-paying employment abroad becomes very difficult to decline (Kara 2010, 7). Olga, one of the traffickers in Ukraine, is able to acquire slaves by promising women good jobs abroad. Many individuals fall prey to these forms of deception, like Jana Kohut (“Survivors of Human Trafficking”) who was looking for a part-time job but ends up in a brothel because of a false interview for an accounting job. Exploitation of trafficked individuals mainly implies unpaid sex work, although in reality, exploitation starts immediately after the individual is trafficked. Victims of sex trafficking are sexually abused, tormented, debased, and drugged during transit, for the traffickers’ enjoyment and to disorient the victims to make them psychologically weak and subservient. Disorienting the victims starts during transit and carries on once the victim is traded. Further sexual abuse, torment, and debasing are in store for victims as their owners make sure they will provide the service customers want and never attempt to run away (Mattar 2008, 1358). But escape is not even possible because the victims are a long way from home. Besides, most of them do not have passports or cash. Seeking help from police officers is seldom an alternative because some of them are customers of the sex industry. Crooked law enforcers collect backhanders to let clubs and houses of prostitution to operate, or inform sex slave owners if a raid or investigation is imminent or being prepared (“Frontline- Sex Slaves”). The sex trafficking industry today, in essence, entails the organized sexual abuse, enslavement, torture, and decimation of a huge number of women and children, whether through drugs and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) or AIDS, or through murder (Sarkar et al. 2008, 223). According to Potts (2003, 228), due to the fact that the laws against murder, torture, and rape in almost all countries are harsher than laws against human sex trafficking, which may actually be understood as the combination of murder, torture, and rape, the fate of trafficked individuals across the globe is still dreadfully bleak. Victims of sex trafficking are likely to develop major and severe sexual and reproductive health illnesses as an outcome of their unsafe sexual activities, sexual abuse, and practices that could make transmission of STDs possible. In an environment of strained migration forces and disorder like widespread hostilities, the deterioration of social services, and poverty both worsen health and physical impacts and make their prevention more difficult (Sarkar et al. 2008, 223). Sexual abuse worsens sexual and reproductive illnesses in several ways. Risk of infection is especially sharp among children, particularly among girls. In addition, the related impacts of trauma, despair, tension, and stress after sexual abuse may heighten the possibility of acquiring STD after contact (Sarkar et al. 2008, 223). Moreover, possible or actual violence, sexual or physical, weakens the capacity of women to prevent health hazards in a sexual contact. Sex slaves may be coerced to provide service to multiple customers, which, consequently, increase the likelihood of getting infected. Similarly, the mental and emotional health impacts of sexual abuse are grave. Some of these are depression, acute anxiety, suicidal tendencies, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Basil 2009, 163). Health care professionals have a major part to fulfill in the fight against sex trafficking. This role includes addressing the needs of survivors of sex slavery, identifying individuals who are vulnerable, or experiencing, sexual abuse, and developing strategies to lessen the possibility of sexual abuse. Preventing and finally getting rid of sex trafficking will necessitate a coordinated, wide-ranging strategy. Governments should intensify their campaigns to fight sex trafficking and to abide by the provisions of the international law on sex trafficking. Furthermore, governments should redirect their attention to the removal of the core origin of this problem. The inner process of sex trafficking, namely, recruitment, acquisition, movement, and exploitation, should be focused on to reveal its wider and deeper operation as a criminal enterprise (Mattar 2008, 1356). The specifics of how the industry works expose its weaknesses, specifically, the market and the people involved. To make sure that sex trafficking is abolished permanently, the circumstances that originally create the malady, specifically, economic globalization and inequality in resource allocation, should be taken into consideration as well. In spite of current boosts in the popularity of campaigns against human trafficking, prevention-oriented approaches are still the least applied among the anti-trafficking models, largely because reliable methods of assessing their quality and effectiveness remain untapped; until the relationships are more credibly verified between prevention-oriented approaches (e.g. raising awareness) and a decrease in trafficking, prevention-based models will be inadequately looked at (Mattar 2008, 1356). However, due to the complexity in pinpointing and taking out victims of trafficking once they are absorbed into this underground system, successful prevention could be the best strategy to safeguard at-risk individuals. The below recommendations are possible ways to enhance prevention campaigns: (1) States should allocate enough resources for the creation of assessment programs to determine the success of prevention strategies, especially projects aimed at raising awareness. Any approaches states decide to depend on to prevent sex trafficking require enhanced procedures to assess the success of these approaches so that effective strategies can be modified to be appropriate in local populations and successful methods can be repeated. Governments of developed nations should try to help governments of developing and less-developed countries develop measuring programs to monitor the outcomes of their own prevention plans. (2) States must allocate funds for committed research and development and communication with survivors of sex trafficking to obtain their first-hand experiences and views for successful models of prevention. (3) States should encourage their citizens to help in the fight against sex trafficking by reporting known or possible traffickers and victims of this heinous crime. Women’s programs, like the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in the United States, have helped sex workers face their circumstances by abandoning prostitution, publicly detesting the practice, exposing their experiences, and guiding other sex workers out of the system (Nelson 2002, 553). Getting rid of sex trafficking permanently requires a more nonviolent and egalitarian society where in people from diverse backgrounds can unite, appreciating one another’s vital compassion and self-respect. Human sex trafficking is not a one-dimensional problem. In fact, it is a criminal act that overlaps with some of the toughest psychological problems that health care practitioners try to solve. Sex traffickers look for individuals who are hopeless, miserable, and weak. The objective of the trafficker is to ensnare the individual by deceiving her or giving her a fake job offer that seems to be the answer to the victim’s problems. In several instances, even when the prospective victim has an idea that the job will be demoralizing, she does not visualize just how degrading it actually will be. Sex trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery, and it takes place more frequently and more extensively than most people are aware of. It is a multi-billion dollar business, as mentioned in Sex Slaves, and it is sustained by a huge number of criminals and victims. Governments and organizations should stay informed and vigilant of this problem and deal with it aggressively. Local governments and authorities should also have an accurate knowledge of the issue and how to identify it in their territories. Synchronized and forceful campaigns from all sectors can pull the plug on the operations of the sex industry and set the victims and sex slaves free. Works Cited “Frontline-Sex Slaves.” Google Video. n.a. Web. 14 July 2012. “Survivors of Human Trafficking.” YouTube. 7 June 2010. Web. 14 July 2012. “The Journey: A short film on sex trafficking PT1.” YouTube. 19 May 2010. Web. 14 July 2012. Basil, Nwoke. “Factors Sustaining Human Trafficking in the Contemporary Society: Psychological Implications.” Ife Psychologia 17.1 (2009): 161+. Print. Gallagher, Anne. The International Law of Human Trafficking. England: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Jones, Loring et al. “Globalization and Human Trafficking.” Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 34.2 (2007): 107+. Print. Kara, Siddharth. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Print. Mattar, Mohamed. “Comparative Models of Reporting Mechanism on the Status of Trafficking in Human Beings.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 41.5 (2008): 1355+. Print. Nelson, Kathryn. “Sex Trafficking and Forced Prostitution: Comprehensive New Legal Approaches.” Houston Journal of International Law 24.3 (2002): 551+. Print. Potts, Leroy Jr. “Global Trafficking in Human Beings: Assessing the Success of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent Trafficking in Persons.” The George Washington International Law Review 35.1 (2003): 227+. Print. Sarkar, Kamalesh et al. “Sex Trafficking, Violence Negotiating Skill, and HIV Infection in Brothel-Based Sex Workers of Eastern India Adjoining Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.” Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition 26.2 (2008): 223+. Print. Read More