A Brief Look Into Human and Sex trafficking
By: M. Raihan Mappuji
In late December 2022, we were given an early new years gift from the Romanian officials. Said present comes in the form of an infamous misogynist Emory Andrew Tate being detained by Romanian police due to suspicion of human and sex trafficking. His history of treating women as beneath him surprises no one when he was accused of trafficking vulnerable women from various places to come to Romania and work as cam girls selling their body involuntarily. The case exploded partially due to his reputation but also the severity of it. But this certainly is not, and will not be, the only case of human and sex trafficking cases .
The frequent occurrence of human and sex trafficking cases has been swept like most human rights violation cases. If it is not viral or trending, people will disregard it all together. However, before discussing its causes, urgency, and possible solutions, one has to define human and sex trafficking. Human trafficking can be summarized as the act of recruiting, transporting, along with harboring persons by means of physical force and coercion, whilst sex trafficking works in the same vein but uses their victims for commercialized and juvenile sexual acts.
From the definition, we can concur that the act of human and sex trafficking is a unanimous human rights violation. The process of enlisting a person by force of physical threats and coercion is an act of infringement of individual sovereignty. Due to the nature of trafficking, it prays predominantly on the weak and vulnerable, taking advantage of their vunerability for monetary and sexual gains. Jeffrey Epstein being a prime example of this looming threat, he was a renowned sex offender, he trafficked women and solicited them for prostitution with all his victims being underage. Epstein breaches several international laws including Article 5 of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crimes, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) along with several states and federal laws in the United States.
The roots of human and sex trafficking can be traced down to a myriad of reasons. The first one is socio-economic factors, it is no surprise the lack of wealth you have the lower the quality of your living condition with citizens from countries that have lower GDP are more susceptible to being trafficked by traffickers. Their environment is written with conflicts and famine, the status quo in their area makes victims allured by the promise of a better life by these traffickers. The victims are usually migrants that flee from their country because of economic hardship, natural disasters, or conflicts. Their displacement in society causes them to be easily emotionally coerced to be trafficked and with no means of financial support to protect themselves.
Second of all, the devaluation of certain groups lead them to be more vulnerable to be trafficked than others. Women and children are more than often the target of human trafficking due to their place in society. The traditional understanding and practices in certain parts of the world made women and children targets for specific demand in sex trafficking. The two previous traffickers, Andrew Tate and Jeffrey Epstein, trafficked specifically women. It is reported that women and girls make up 98 percent of victims of sex trafficking and 20.9 millions women and children are bought and sold worldwide into the commercialized sexual industry along with forced labor.
Lastly, the demand for cheap labor. The rise of capitalism becomes a pivotal point in human history. With higher demands comes the needs of more capital and the only way to reach that is with more workers. But with the constant increase of demands comes shortcuts, may that be productions or materials to workers. Human trafficking becomes a solution to meet these shortcomings by cutting the cost of workers with victims. Traffickers’ promise of a better opportunity manifests as overworked and low minimum wage jobs. Industries that profited off of victims of human trafficking still stand to this day where an estimate around 27.6 millions were in forced labor.
Furthermore, with human and sex trafficking still on the rise, it requires solutions to tackle these problems. However, both human and sex trafficking are difficult to combat against due to the difficulty to identify it. Both traffickers and consumers understand these and thus do their best to cover the illegal activities, not only that but also the victims being well hidden and traumatized. Thus, removing these variables that cause human and sex trafficking is the best method of fighting against trafficking. We need to shift our effort to mitigate the risk of human and sex trafficking by national and international level.
The first thing we can do is to focus on developing foreign policy to less developed nations in the world. We can see that the cause of trafficking is because of migrants that fled their countries due to economical and political unrest caused by conflicts. With the international stage especially more developed nations are able to help alleviate problems done by the conflicts. Although countries cannot intervene with internal matters of state, they are still able to send supplies that temporarily fixes some problems. Not only that, bigger countries having diplomatic powers are able to solve certain issues that revolve around political issues, for example, middle east conflicts. Even though these larger countries will have to sacrifice certain national interests, their effort will contribute to a world less filled with human and sex trafficking.
In addition is to create better job opportunities for targeted trafficked groups. The factor of trafficker using the hopes of victims with promises of better opportunities is one of the factors that needs to be removed or mitigated. This can be succeeded by creating an inclusive field of work for women in various industries. Efforts like the women in STEM movement that has been trending lately is one of said solutions that can improve women’s likelihood in landing jobs. Along the line of creating more industries for women, but with more work opportunities comes a plethora of initiatives for women pursuing higher education. With women having access to higher education it brings their likelihood to be financially independent, with this they are able to support themselves. The same goes for children, with children having access to education they are not only less likely to be stuck in poverty thus reducing the chances of them being recruited by trafficker for jobs in the future. Thus, with the bigger incentive of creating more job opportunities and education will decrease the possibilities of future trafficking.
Lastly, reducing discrimination towards minorities in society. The prosecution of women and other minorities, discrimination works as a barrier from these minorities restricting them to their rights. All of the previous factors, economic, politics, and education are all due to these limitations imposed by discrimination towards these minorities. These forms of discrimination come in the form of discriminatory policies towards minorities. These policies hinder them in accessing certain facilities in societies, for example the no pregnancy leave policies that apply in some companies impacts the performances of women in the office but also cultivate an agenda of women being untrustworthy or unreliable due to their supposed ‘emotional’ behaviors. These sorts of discriminatory policies are what damages the opportunities of minorities to receive access to these rights.
In conclusion, sociological, political, and economical problems are what produces human and sex trafficking. In our current status quo, trafficking cases exist and it is proof of our society’s failure to fix fundamental issues that vulnerable people in our society faces in everyday life. With human beings the predominant species on earth, as long as humans still live, so does trafficking. We can mitigate these factors from fruition, but in the end it may be just a hopeless endeavor.
Reference
Human Trafficking: Causes and Implications by Dr Shashi Punam
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338457522_Human_Trafficking_Causes_and_implications
Andrew Tate detained in Romania over rape and human trafficking case by BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64122628
An Introduction to Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Impact and Action by UN Office on Drugs and Crime
