The Problem of Human Trafficking

The evil institution of slavery still exists. All over the world, men, women and children are enslaved. They live and labor under cruel and inhumane conditions. Now called human trafficking, modern day slavery destroys human potential, corrodes and ravishes society, and is the shame of humanity. Human trafficking is a vast commercial enterprise that generates large profits for those who engage in it. The potential to create a vast amount of wealth by enslaving others creates key stakeholders and enablers with vested commercial interests who will protect their profits by any means and at any cost. The United Nations estimates that between 7 and 10 billion dollars is earned annually from human trafficking by criminal organizations. According to the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended, human trafficking is now the fastest growing source of profits for criminal organizations worldwide.

The commercial interests that are involved in human trafficking are comprised of a variety of actors including government officials at all levels, multinational corporations, transnational criminal organizations, terrorist organizations, militias, militaries and individuals. Two nongovernmental organizations, Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada, have documented the involvement of diamond traffickers, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah in human trafficking in Africa. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has documented the involvement of transnational criminal organizations in human trafficking throughout the world.

The United States Government estimates that 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders. The victims of human trafficking are men, women and children of all ages and backgrounds. Victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation, labor exploitation, criminal activity, organ harvesting and as forced combatants.

In Africa, civil wars and tribal conflicts fuel human trafficking. Not only are victims trafficked as forced combatants during these conflicts, they are also trafficked for illegal mining of precious gems and metals as well as for sexual exploitation. In March 2003, the UN Special Court in Sierra Leone indicted several individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of international law, enslavement, sexual slavery and conscription of children into an armed force.

The lack of the rule of law, as well as a weak, under funded, poorly trained judiciary that is subject to the influence of the executive, create the conditions in which human trafficking flourishes. The lack of the rule of law breeds widespread corruption and impunity and a weak judiciary prevents the prosecution of traffickers and the proper adjudication of the laws.

The primary enabler of human trafficking is the lack of a comprehensive anti-trafficking law that defines human trafficking as a distinct offense, criminalizes all forms of human trafficking, establishes criminal penalties that reflect the gravity of the crime, includes men, women and children in its definition of 'victim of human trafficking', provides for the criminal liability of corporations, criminalizes all activities related to human trafficking, establishes accomplice liability and extraterritorial jurisdiction.

The responsibility of governments to aggressively combat human trafficking must be enshrined in law. Without a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, the three P's of combating human trafficking: prosecution, prevention and protection will never be achieved. Governments will be unable to design and implement programs to train their judiciary and law enforcement officers on all aspects of a comprehensive domestic anti-trafficking law and the most effective way of enforcing the law. Governments will be unable to seek extradition of suspected traffickers if the crime of human trafficking is not established in domestic law. Governments cannot identify victims in need of assistance because 'victims of human trafficking' have not been defined in law.

Without a law that delineates appropriate and necessary victim assistance programs, victims will not receive aid. Awareness raising programs that inform people of their rights will remain empty promises without the codification of those rights into a domestic anti-trafficking law.

Without an anti-trafficking law that defines human trafficking in accordance with the United Nations Protocol, governments are unable to conduct primary research and empirical analysis of human trafficking, the factors that comprise it and their linkages. Governments cannot determine best practices and put them into effect. Ideas, information and strategies are not exchanged among governments and appropriate measures of success are not established.

Without a law that clearly defines and proscribes the crime of human trafficking, human trafficking thrives and all people are vulnerable. In lieu of a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, countries rely upon existing criminal statutes to prosecute traffickers. Statutes that criminalize rape, prostitution, pimping and kidnapping are used. These statutes do not provide penalties that are commensurate with the gravity of the crime of human trafficking nor do they satisfy the obligations of countries under the UN Protocol.

The United States Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported in July 2006 that each UN agency, international organization and NGO that is funded by the U.S. Government, defines and analyzes human trafficking in a way that is most favorable to the furtherance of its own mandate.

Organizations that focus on migration define and analyze human trafficking as an element of irregular migration and conclude that establishing laws that allow open migration is the solution. Organizations that focus on labor issues define and analyze human trafficking as an element of forced labor conclude that labor law enforcement, unionization and minimum wage standards are the solution to human trafficking. Organizations that focus on children define and analyze human trafficking solely as the exploitation of children and conclude that the only solution to human trafficking is to make children the responsible agents by training them to train their parents and local communities on the rights of children under international law.

Each unique definition, analysis and conclusion is proselytized to governments, NGOs, local communities, trainers and victims to devastating effect: key stakeholders in the fight against human trafficking are forced to look at this problem through a straw. The enormity and gravity of human trafficking is severely diluted by restricting the definition of this crime to a single form of exploitation or a particular group of victims.

The GAO has determined that as a consequence of the proliferation of numerous definitions of human trafficking, countries and organizations define human trafficking differently. Governments focus all of their efforts and resources solely on the sexual exploitation of women and girls to the detriment of other forms of human trafficking such as forced labor and other victims such as men and boys.