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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The last few decades have seen a huge increase in attention paid to the trafficking of human beings, often referred to as modern-day slavery. International and national policies and protocols have been developed and billions of dollars spent to combat the issue and protect trafficking victims. Yet it continues to flourish and human beings, in both the Global North and the Global South, continue to be degraded to the level of commodities and smuggled across borders for profit. Drawing upon feminist and human rights approaches to trafficking, this book links the worlds of policy, protocols, and social structures to the lived experience and conditions of trafficked people. Recognizing that trafficking for sex, labor, and body parts often overlaps in a broader context shaped by poverty, violence, and shrinking access to rights, the authors offer a more thoroughgoing account of this social problem. Only with such an integrated approach can we understand the exploitative conditions that make people vulnerable to trafficking, and the progress - as well as gaps - in initiatives seeking to address it.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1
:
Introduction
Trafficking: an old phenomenon in a new bottle?
The messy world of definitions, explanations, and data: a brief introduction
Toward a framework on trafficking: combining an intersectional approach with questions of human security
Outline of the chapters
Notes
2
:
Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation
On being trafficked
Data on trafficking for sexual exploitation
Explanations of trafficking for sexual exploitation
Trafficking and migration
Questions of human security
Addressing trafficking
Concluding thoughts
Notes
3
:
Trafficking for Labor Exploitation
Experiences of trafficked victims
Reflections on large-scale data on forced labor and trafficking
Low-wage labor and trafficking
Labor, trafficking, and questions of rights and security
Concluding thoughts
Notes
4
:
Organ Trafficking
Narratives
What's in a name? Transplanting, donating, harvesting, and trading in organs, or is it trafficking?
The global industry in organ trafficking
Questions of human security
Addressing organ trafficking
Concluding thoughts
Notes
5
:
The Other Side of Trafficking: A Look at the Data and Policies on Trafficking
Methodologies and the worlds of data
Worlds of policies
Notes
6
:
Envisioning a Trafficking-Free World
Toward a trafficking-free world: a look at the resources for victims
Is a trafficking-free world possible?
Notes
7
:
Afterwords: Ongoing Debates and Unresolved Questions
Afterword 1: Modern-day slavery
Afterword 2: Feminist dissensions on how we should address trafficking for sexual exploitation
Afterword 3: Geopolitics, security, and trafficking for labor
Afterword 4: If transplant registries exist in countries, should foreigners be able to receive transplants?
Afterword 5: Two UN reports on human rights and human trafficking
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Human Trafficking
Trade for sex, labor, and organs
Bandana Purkayastha
Farhan Navid Yousaf
Polity
Copyright © Bandana Purkayastha and Farhan Navid Yousaf 2019
The right of Bandana Purkayastha and Farhan Navid Yousaf to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
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Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2130-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2131-9 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Purkayastha, Bandana, 1956- author. | Yousaf, Farhan Navid, author.
Title: Human trafficking: trade for sex, labor, and organs / Bandana Purkayastha, Farhan Yousaf.
Description: Medford, MA : polity, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018013002 (print) | LCCN 2018022967 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509521340 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509521302 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509521319 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Human trafficking. | Human trafficking victims. | Organ trafficking. | Organ trafficking victims.
Classification: LCC HQ281 (ebook) | LCC HQ281 .P87 2018 (print) | DDC 364.1551–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013002
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Acknowledgments
There are many reports and scholarly collections on trafficking today. Many are easily available via simple web searches. So why did we decide to write another book? We were primarily motivated by the experiences of victims of trafficking for sex, labor, and organs. We learned how people can be trafficked repeatedly at different stages of their lives. This led us to think of a trafficking continuum, instead of following policies and remedies that tend to think of discrete forms of trafficking. As we delved into the subject, and examined efforts around the world, it was clear that many of the efforts were focused on helping victims after trafficking. The root causes – structural inequalities, wars and conflicts, the rapidly expanding political terrain in which migrants encounter new barriers to accessing rights – were rarely addressed. At the same time, without adequate resources for the future, shelters and camps can become the sites for trafficking and/or human smuggling. Thus, we are at a juncture when we are likely to witness ever-growing numbers of people who are vulnerable to trafficking, while our efforts to punish (the perpetrators) and rescue and rehabilitate (the victims) are unlikely to prevent the creation of new victims. Drawing on the scholarly and policy accounts of cases around the world, we wanted to emphasize trafficking from the point of view of human security, where people are enmeshed in a global-to-local world of policies, laws, efforts, practices, and interactions, as they attempt to build lives of human dignity.
We would like to thank Jonathan Skerrett of Polity Press, our acquisitions editor, without whose encouragement this book would not have been completed. A sincere thanks to Cia Waring for reading through the document and asking us to clarify many ideas. Fiona Sewell was an amazing copyeditor. And we thank our family members for their constant support as we worked nights and weekends to coordinate our efforts across a 10-hour time divide.
Abbreviations
AIWA
Asian Immigrant Workers Advocates
ATIP
Anti-Trafficking in Persons
CAST
Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking
CATW
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
EU
European Union
GAATW
Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women
GSI
Global Slavery Index
HRW
Human Rights Watch
ICE
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
ILO
International Labour Organization
INGOs
international non-governmental organizations
IOM
International Organization for Migration
MOM
Ministry of Manpower
MSE
multiple systems estimation
NGOs
non-governmental organizations
NOWCRJ
New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice
OHCHR
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
PACHTO
Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance
SAARC
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
SLBFE
Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment
SPLC
Southern Poverty Law Center
TIP
Trafficking in Persons
[annual US Department of State report]
TVPA
Trafficking Victims Protection Act
UAE
United Arab Emirates
UK
United Kingdom
UN
United Nations
UNHCR
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNODC
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
US
United States
USD
United States dollar
VAWA
Violence Against Women Act
WHO
World Health Organization
1 Introduction
Over the last few decades, scholars, journalists, people in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and policy makers have intensified their efforts to address the trafficking of human beings. A number of international and national policies and protocols have been developed and billions of dollars have been spent to combat trafficking and protect trafficking victims. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), since the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (OHCHR 2000) entered into force on December 25, 2003, more than 90 percent of countries have developed legislation criminalizing different forms of human trafficking (UNODC 2016). In 2013, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed resolution A/RES/68/192 and designated July 30 as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons1 in order to create awareness about trafficking in human beings and strengthen global cooperation to fight it. Estimates by the United Nations (UN) and international NGOs (INGOs), such as the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), suggest that billions of dollars have been spent to combat trafficking since the 1990s.
Yet trafficking continues to flourish. According to the estimates of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Walk Free Foundation, and International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 2017, 40 million people across the world were victims of modern slavery in 2016. While there are many disagreements about the data on actual number of trafficked persons (e.g. Loff and Sanghera 2004, Mugge 2017), many reports, case studies, and narratives of trafficked persons document that traffickers continue to prey upon people who are desperate to survive or move in search of better life conditions. As trafficking has grown to a billion-dollar industry according to some estimates (e.g. ILO 2014), human beings continue to be degraded to the level of commodities, smuggled across borders for profit, and trafficked for sex, labor, or their body parts.
The scholarship, activism, and policy foci on trafficking have also increased exponentially over the last few decades (e.g. Bernstein 2010, Dragiewicz 2015, Kempadoo 2012, Yea 2014). On the scholarly front, streams of research and policy analyses have generated debates and dissensions about adequate definitions and methodologies to study trafficking. Most of the research focuses on trafficking for sexual and labor exploitation. We use a slightly different approach in this book, and focus on trafficking for sexual exploitation, labor exploitation, and organs to describe the universe of trafficking. The research on this subject has begun to show that the exploitative contexts in which they are positioned make victims of one form of trafficking vulnerable to other forms over their life course. Thus, a woman trafficked for sexual exploitation might end up being trafficked for other types of labor. Or a man who has been trafficked for labor can become the target of organ traffickers. Thus, we conceptualize trafficking as a continuum,2 where one form of trafficking overlaps with and can be connected to other forms of trafficking. However, the efforts to address trafficking often deal with types of trafficking separately, as discrete crimes to be punished. By examining all three forms we show that far from reflecting a series of clandestine and illegal activities, many forms of trafficking arise out of a complex series of interactions between illegal and legal (and above-ground) practices. This complexity explains why – despite so much effort – trafficking continues to flourish.
Trafficking: an old phenomenon in a new bottle?
While trafficking is increasingly in the news in our times, what is it exactly and to what extent is trafficking a new phenomenon? While we discuss the policy-based definitions of trafficking later in this chapter, broadly, human trafficking refers to the exploitation of human beings by others who use force, coercion, fraud, deception, and/or abduction to recruit, transport, harbor and receive, and exploit human beings for profit (UNODC 2016). The victims of trafficking do not consent to this exploitation. In other words, trafficking includes the dimensions of force, fraud, coercion (in different degrees), and diverse practices that generate profit for entities in the trafficking chain; a lack of consent on the part of the people who are trafficked is a key distinction that differentiates trafficking from other forms of exploitation. While we begin with this broad definition, each one of these terms – “force,” “profit,” and “lack of consent” – includes many nuances that we will discuss later in this book.
Some scholars and activists have described trafficking as modern-day slavery (e.g. Bales and Soodalter 2009, Walk Free Foundation 2016). With a widespread recognition of the immorality of slavery, this phrase is very effective in getting people in some parts of the world to understand the extreme forms of exploitation of human beings that continue today (e.g. Bales 1999, David 2015). This phrase also helps to frame this social problem in ways that garner support for the efforts to abolish and eradicate trafficking in human beings, so it is used widely (e.g. UNODC 2009). Yet some scholars are moving away from this phrase as they describe the contemporary structures, conditions, and facets of trafficking (e.g. Chuang 2015, Mugge 2017, Plant 2015). They argue that the term is too broad and does not help to capture many facets and underlying factors of contemporary trafficking; at the same time it appears to co-opt the conditions of slavery historically without centrally talking about racism. (We present more details on this debate in chapter 7, “Afterwords: Ongoing Debates and Unresolved Questions.”)
Scholars are now looking into a number of questions including the role of states in facilitating some forms of trafficking even as the same states have laws against slavery, involuntary servitude, peonage, and debt bondage, and many have signed onto anti-trafficking protocols and devote significant resources to the eradication of some forms of trafficking. The critical questions for us today are: exactly which actors – states, corporations, crime cartels, and/or other entities – are involved in the process? How do people become victims of trafficking and what are their options for escaping from these conditions? How effective are the globally powerful policies and protocols, with their emphases on prevention, protection, and punishment, in the eradication of trafficking? Which aspects of trafficking fall through the cracks?
In order to fully understand the world of trafficking today, it is important to briefly look at the history of trafficking. According to many scholars (for instance, Gekht 2008, Knepper 2013, Samaddar 2015, Whitman and Gray 2015), trafficking for sexual and/or labor exploitation is not a new phenomenon. Just as most of the news stories about trafficking today focus on trafficking for sexual exploitation, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discourse also focused mostly on exploitation for sex. And the Global North-based discussions of sexual exploitation of women and girls were mostly about white women and girls.
Gekht (2008) and Pattanaik (2002) point out that by 1904 and 1910 there were international agreements to stop white slave traffic. Specifically, abolition of prostitution became one of the demands of the nineteenth-century feminist movement (Outshoorn 2005). The focus of these abolitionists remained on the prostitution of white females, especially those who were moved overseas to serve white officers in the colonies where sexual relationships with local women were frowned upon (Pattanaik 2002). As the European powers took over the political control of vast swaths of Africa and Asia, they also organized their need for cheap labor through systems of indentured labor where men and women were forced to work to fulfil exploitative contracts. Slavery was officially abolished by 1927 (Fouladvand 2018), but indentured laborers were transported from one colony to another, or migration occurred from impoverished communities within Western Europe to parts of the “New World,” where the migrants were held in conditions of involuntary servitude (for an overview see Samaddar 2015). Indentured labor has been historically associated with colonialism. Colonial powers typically took over a country to exploit its resources, for which purpose colonial powers required cheap, plentiful, and docile labor. Indentured labor met these criteria, so countries received these laborers, but made sure a range of laws and policies, from apartheid to exclusion from citizenship – with corresponding restrictions on property ownership, housing, education, well-paying jobs, etc. – ensured their unequal status. In a critical commentary on the efforts of the time, Goldman (1910) wrote:
Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery: the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these “unheard of conditions” in our midst, and lawmakers are planning a set of laws to check this horror … What really is the cause of this trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation of course: the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. (p. 2)
By the time the League of Nations emerged in the early twentieth century, anti-trafficking campaigners:
managed to add a clause to the constitution that obligated the League to assume responsibility for international treaties agreed in 1904 and 1910. In 1921, the council created a permanent organization known as the Advisory Committee on the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children. The advisory committee decided that a worldwide social scientific study of the traffic in women would establish the facts of the trade beyond dispute and provide a substantive international agenda. (Knepper 2013, p. 36)
Initially, early twentieth-century researchers gathered data from twenty-eight countries across the Americas, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Later the studies were extended to Asia. The focus remained on trafficking in women and children for prostitution. These early discussions on trafficking – where the term was used to describe the exploitation – rarely included discussions about the exploitation for labor, or the ways in which the structures of racism and class were relevant for understanding exactly which women were the focus of rescue efforts. Similarly, the role of capitalism and colonialism remained unmarked in these discussions of trafficking.
When we examine the history of the later twentieth century and the re-emergence of trafficking on the global stage, some of these earlier trends are still evident. According to Fouladvand (2018), the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others emphasized criminal justice penalties for procurement for prostitution. The Nuremburg Trials reignited global attention to enslavement as the world learned about the treatment of Jews by the Nazis. Subsequently, the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery expanded the definition of slave-related practices, to include:
bonded labour, serfdom, the selling of women by their families for marriage, certain forms of abuse of women, and the buying and selling of children for exploitation [but] it was fair to say that the approach to slavery at this period was as a residual problem which flourished only in local pockets of pre-modernity, in the sex trade or under totalitarian rule. (Fouladvand 2018, p. 4)
As Gekht (2008) and others have pointed out, the recent re-emergence of the attention to trafficking has been partly due to the end of the Cold War and greater international co-operation on global crimes. Along with the criminal activities related to drugs, human smuggling and trafficking emerged as prominent international crimes. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United States (US) and several other nation-states, as well as large NGOs, became interested in trafficking for sexual exploitation; they became vocal advocates for better policies, protocols, and actions to control sexual exploitation, especially prostitution. These groups demanded criminal prosecution of smugglers and traffickers.3
By the turn of the twenty-first century, two powerful tools, which we discuss later in this chapter, were introduced. The 2000 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (OHCHR 2000) includes language about mandatory criminal prosecution and discretionary language about victim assistance. The US Trafficking in Persons report was instituted the same year; this has become a powerful international tool seeking information about countries’ efforts to combat trafficking, based on a number of quantitatively measurable items including the number of prosecutions, laws passed, special police units, and shelters.4 Yet the 2016 Global Report on Trafficking points out that while many countries have passed policies against trafficking, the number of convictions remains low (UNODC 2016).
Looking beyond the policy and legal worlds, scholars have identified different facets of the current phase of globalization as critical contributors to the contexts of trafficking. The current globalized economy continues to look for cheap, contingent labor. On the demand side, there is a continuing (and, perhaps, expanding) demand for sex directly or through a rapidly growing pornography industry. With improvements in medical technology and a culture of expectation of long and healthy lives in different parts of the world, there is an ever-growing demand (often legal) for organs for transplantation. Many people are eager, even desperate for new and/or better opportunities as armed conflicts, natural disasters, and continuing inequalities, locally, regionally, and internationally, lead to their displacement and the disruption of their ways of life. Improvements in transportation and communication make distant places appear more reachable to people who are looking for better opportunities. At the same time, we are witnessing rapidly growing restrictions on legal migration. This disjuncture, between a potentially mobile population and a world of political restrictions on migrants’ mobility (Purkayastha 2018), as well as the growth of legal and illegal industries and networks that trade in human beings for exploitation, leads to the conditions that facilitate the growth of human trafficking.
Regional variations
Recent international reports on trafficking show that trafficking economies exist all over the world. There are variations in the forms of trafficking that are most prevalent in different parts of the world. Women remain the largest number of trafficked persons, though the numbers of men and children have been growing. Some of this growth may be due to better monitoring and reporting. According to the Global Report (UNODC 2016), among those who are trafficked for sexual exploitation, women and children make up 96 percent of the victims; of those who are trafficked for labor, 63 percent are men. Men were most often targeted for organ trafficking (82 percent). This document reports that the wealthy countries are the destination for victims from the widest range of countries. For instance, victims from 137 countries were detected in Western and Southern Europe. The report points out that trafficking appears locally, regionally, and internationally. While we have been used to describing those who were made to cross international boundaries, through force, fraud, or deception, as “trafficked persons,” with newer debates – some of which we discuss later in this chapter – there is a growing recognition that the phenomenon occurs at all scales, from local to global.
The UN has continued to issue periodic reports on trafficked persons. The 2016 report of UNODC shows significant interregional variation.
In Northern and Western Europe, the detected victim profile shows 56 percent women, with 67 percent exploited for sex; however, labor trafficking appears to be a growing trend. Of the convicted offenders, 58 percent are foreigners to this region, often from the same countries as the victims.
In Central and Southern Europe, most frequently detected victims are women (54 percent). As in Western and Southern Europe, the exploitation is sexual. The emerging issue is trafficking for begging and forced marriages.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the victims are more likely to be men (53 percent), with forced labor being the detected form of exploitation. Trafficking from poorer to richer countries of the region is the emerging trend.
In North and Central America and the Caribbean, women make up 60 percent of the victims. Sexual exploitation has been detected in 55 percent of the cases. The domestic and intraregional flows show many children are among the detected victims.
In South America, women make up 45 percent of the detected victims. Of the victims, 57 percent have been exploited for sex. This region serves as the origin of intraregional trafficking circuits.
In East Asia and the Pacific, women make up 51 percent of the victims. Sexual exploitation has been detected in 61 percent of the cases. This region is the destination for short-, medium-, and long-distance trafficking.
For South Asia, the UN report does not provide the gender of the victim. However, adults make up 60 percent of detected victims, pointing to the presence of significant child trafficking, including to the Middle East. Of the detected victims, 85 percent are exploited as forced labor.
Similarly, for sub-Saharan Africa, 39 percent of the detected victims are reported to be boys. Of the victims, 53 percent are in situations of forced labor.
In North Africa and the Middle East, women make up 38 percent of the detected victim profile. Of the victims, 44 percent are exploited as forced labor. The report emphasizes that trafficking driven by conflict and persecution occurs along some migration routes in this region.
These overview figures provide a sense of the variations across the globe. However, the report points out that the problems of data collection affect some of these regional profiles. The report is careful to estimate profiles based on detected victims. Since many are not detected, these profiles are estimates for the years in which the data were collected. From the time of the League of Nations’ attempt to collect data on trafficking, the core problem has remained: how do we collect data on victims who largely remain invisible in society? How do we even know if a person is a trafficked victim or not?
An overview on the policies and struggles to contain trafficking showcases some of the complexities of the problem.
Toward policies and protocols on trafficking: the US experience
In his account of the war on human trafficking in the US, DeStefano (2008) provides an excellent overview of the road to some of the current thinking about trafficking. While countries like the US had older laws against slavery and peonage, the late twentieth-century understanding of trafficking required sorting out smuggling, illegal migration, and migration due to fraud, coercion, and force. According to DeStefano, by the 1990s, the US had begun to develop international law enforcement standards for a number of crimes including human smuggling and trafficking.5 This entanglement of trafficking with other criminal activities has meant most of the responses have been envisioned in terms of crimes and punishment. By 1998, the US had been in conversation with Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, and Canada. In addition, that same year, the UN's Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice recommended the General Assembly work toward an international convention – which works like a treaty between countries – against transnational crime. By 2000, both the US and the UN had begun to draw up protocols and policies that specifically emphasized trafficking in women and children. Not surprisingly, these policies and protocols reflect the political advocacy of many of the groups that feel passionate about facets of human trafficking. While the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) initially had three objectives – prosecution, protection, and prevention – over time, the focus has been on prosecution that is reliant on the criminal justice system. Over the years, two other trends have shaped how the TVPA operates. Under pressure from activists – often from religious organizations – who wished to eradicate prostitution, the focus has been on trafficking for sexual exploitation. Further, over time, all forms of prostitution became embedded in US policy directions. In its subsequent iteration, the US policy – the Trafficking Protection Victim Reauthorization Act of 2003 – specifically prohibits money from going to organizations that do not publicly affirm their opposition to the legalization or practice of prostitution.
At the same time, especially since the 1990s, many civil infractions that were associated with immigration have been brought within the purview of the criminal justice system (often referred to by social scientists as the crimmigration system). Since trafficked persons typically do not possess all the papers to enable them to access justice systems within any country, their legal situation remains problematic. Thus, the worlds of migration and criminalization of their status as migrants without documents have created particularly difficult conditions on the ground for victims who wish to seek protection.
Internationally, the pressure from human rights activists led to the recognition of domestic trafficking victims. As DeStefano (2008) points out, if, as some advocates ask, all prostitution is formally included under the category of “coerced sex,” then the numbers of trafficked persons would go up significantly within the US. However, the exact contours of these definitions and their translation into policy remain, in the US as in other countries, as dynamic circumstances, depending on the relative power of the groups who attempt to change the definitions.
The messy world of definitions, explanations, and data: a brief introduction
Understanding trafficking today requires us to delve into the messy world of definitions and data on trafficking. Despite the enormous effort and amount of money poured into combating trafficking, consistently valid large-scale data remain elusive. The worlds of academia, policy, and enforcement are engaged in developing adequate definitions of trafficking and refining processes to gather data. In this section we discuss some of the divergences in defining and explaining trafficking.
Trafficking: policy definitions
What exactly is trafficking? We begin with two policy-based definitions that are widely used across the world to combat trafficking. Even this brief glimpse shows that these definitions are complex, reflecting the agendas of different stakeholders (National Institute of Justice 2014). The world of policies that are designed to address trafficking range from the international level, such as the UN conventions and protocols, to a range of national laws, policies, and local efforts. The UNODC's recent report (2016) shows that over 90 percent of countries have developed legislation to combat trafficking. We provide definitions by the UN and the US6 that have been particularly influential across the world. The UN protocols require signatories to report periodically on the actions they have taken to combat trafficking. At the same time, the institutionalization of the annual US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports as a way of shaping US foreign relations – tying some of its foreign aid to recipient countries’ efforts on trafficking – has significant impact on how countries have attempted to respond to trafficking.
The UN's protocol on trafficking provides the broad framework for understanding and responding to trafficking. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons was passed in 2000. According to Article 3 of this protocol, human trafficking is defined as:
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of a 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 giving or receiving payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. (OHCHR 2000, p. 2)
According to the UNODC,7 the definition of trafficking consists of three core elements:
1
the
action
of trafficking, which means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons;
2
the
means
of trafficking, which includes threat of or use of force, deception, coercion, or abuse of power or position of vulnerability;
3
the
purpose
of trafficking, which is always exploitation. In the words of the Trafficking Protocol (OHCHR
2000
, article 3), “Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”
In addition, the UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (2016) provides information about human trafficking flows “within countries, between neighbouring countries or even across different continents” (p. 5). According to the report, in addition to trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labor, and organ removal, the cases identified show that people have been trafficked for other forms of exploitation, including begging, committing crime, illegal child adoption or child selling, forced marriages, child soldiering, pornography, benefit fraud, and mixed exploitation.
By way of comparison, the annual US TIP report has some similarities with the UN definitions, but it is more limited in scope. This report defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:
sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or
the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. (US Department of State 2017, p. 3)
The specific categories identified by the TIP report are sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, forced labor or bonded labor, domestic servitude, forced child labor and unlawful recruitment, and use of child soldiers (2017, p. 12).
These definitions and their differences are important because they not only shape much of the effort to combat trafficking, they influence the data on trafficking. To which protocol countries respond, and in which ways, shapes the direction of efforts to combat trafficking. A clear point of difference between these two definitions is the absence of organ trafficking from the US description of trafficking. The UN definition includes many other forms of human degradation in its description of trafficking victims. Yet there are similarities in these approaches as well. Both, implicitly or explicitly, refer to victims who are trafficked within and across countries. Both definitions rely on gender binaries; even though the term “person” is used in the definitions, the data (including narratives) are gathered on males and females (and not people of other genders). Both are grounded in a criminal justice approach to combating trafficking, i.e. for punishing individual or group perpetrators or rescuing individual victims. These definitions recognize the power of criminal networks, but not the complex intersecting global and local structures that create the vulnerabilities of persons who are more likely to be trafficked. Nor do these definitions emphasize a thrust to combat the consumers of trafficked sex, labor, or organs. And little is said about the rights or quality of lives of those who are victimized through trafficking, including their ability to build lives of dignity (a key principle in understanding human rights of persons).
How do we understand trafficking?
The framework we use in this book reflects our understanding that the same individuals can be exploited for sex, labor, and organs sequentially, though sometimes these forms of exploitation occur together. We are interested in analyzing the structures – the institutions, laws, policies, patterned practices – that lead to the victimization of human beings, as well as the structures that facilitate or impede their ability to rebuild their lives if and after they are free of the trafficked condition. In charting out our approach, we draw upon several ongoing scholarly and activist debates. We present the lineage of these debates in the next section, but it is important to emphasize the key issues that shape our understanding of trafficking.
One of the key academic debates focuses on women who are in the sex trade. Since the growth of feminist scholarship and activism led to renewed attention to violence against women, sex work, and associated topics, there are debates among scholars and feminist NGOs about women in sex work as victims of trafficking or whether they chose this profession (Merry 2011). The answers to such questions are key to understanding how countries and organizations identify and count the numbers of trafficked women (and girls) and what measures they devise to combat trafficking. A related issue is adequately accounting for the sources of women and men's vulnerabilities to trafficking.
Another key debate is whether trafficking is a form of migration. On the one hand, the UNODC asserts “cross border trafficking flows often resemble regular migration flows” (2016, p. 12). On the other hand, migration and trafficking are often discussed separately by academics (for an exception see Purkayastha 2018). Positioning trafficking within the terrain of migration draws our attention to the rights – or lack of rights – of migrants, including trafficked persons. We discuss trafficking as part of forced migration and recognize that trafficking takes places within countries and across international borders, with different implications about rights and access to a country's resources. We remain mindful of the overlap between trafficking and human smuggling. Fiona David defines smuggling in this way:
Migrant smuggling is a related but distinct legal concept to trafficking in persons. As defined in Article 3 of the Migrant Smuggling Protocol, migrant smuggling involves two main elements: (i) intentionally facilitating the illegal entry of a person into another country; (ii) for some form of financial or material benefit. While migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons are distinct legal concepts, in reality these crime types can overlap. For example, a trafficked person may have been smuggled as part of the migration process and, similarly, a smuggled person may also become a victim of trafficking. (2012, p. 2)
While some international definitions assert that trafficking can occur even if people are not moved (see p. 3 of the 2017 US Department of State TIP report), in reality internal and international migration is mostly common to the experiences of trafficking. Drawing upon the migration literature also allows us to pay attention to the inadequacy of anti-trafficking interventions primarily through criminal justice systems. While smugglers and traffickers can be addressed through criminal justice systems, they are only one set of actors in the trafficking terrain. The actors that form the markets for the trafficked products, or those who contribute to the vulnerability, are not necessarily engaged in criminal activities according to the laws and policies of most countries. Equally important, a focus on the criminal justice system sometimes detracts from paying attention to the prevention and protection aspects of anti-trafficking efforts.
Building on the earlier definitions, we too emphasize the critical role of force and/or coercion exercised by powerful entities that profit from trading in human beings for sex, labor, or body parts within and across countries. In most people's minds, and, as we indicated earlier, in many policy circles, trafficking is most often equated with “sex trafficking.” The scholarship and activism tend to address each form of trafficking separately, though there has been some change in recent years to look at trafficking for sexual and labor exploitation together. Looking at these three forms of trafficking together in this book allows us to unpack the meanings, assumptions, criticisms, and limitations of our thinking about trafficking. Our prior research on victims of trafficking shows that different forms of trafficking are not discrete occurrences; often the same people can be trafficked for sex or labor or organs or for other purposes at the same time or during different stages of their lives (Yousaf and Purkayastha 2015a). Consequently, while we discuss different forms of trafficking separately in the chapters of this book, we conceptualize the forms of trafficking as a continuum and showcase some of the structural similarities and linkages across these different forms.
Much like the data in the UNODC reports, which were the basis of our regional trafficking summary earlier, we recognize both women and men can be victims, though women and girls make up the vast majority of those trafficked for sex. We show that trafficking emerges and is sustained within a series of nested glocal structural conditions – that is, intersecting local, regional, and global conditions – that create significant inequalities and threats to people's survival and wellbeing. Consequently, we highlight the embedded inequalities and power disparities that characterize these glocal contexts in which trafficking occurs. And we pay attention to the policies, protocols, agendas, and practices of a range of actors that shape how trafficking is defined and addressed around the world.
We follow the UN protocols in thinking about trafficking as a violation of human rights, as these are enshrined in the UN Charters and Conventions on Human Rights. We do not rely only on the idea of rights as they are enshrined in laws and policies. Since we are interested in understanding the experiences of trafficked persons within a world of marginalization and exploitation, we discuss laws, policies, and prosecution, and fragmented goodwill initiatives and large-scale humanitarian efforts. We also emphasize that people's ability to substantively access political, civil, social, economic, and other human rights offers a good entry point for understanding trafficking. The idea of human security is based on our understanding of substantive access to human rights, but we think it is also important to remain aware of the historical and contemporary political-economic context in which trafficking occurs. This human security approach, as we discuss later in this chapter, emphasizes the need to look to the long-term wellbeing of the people affected by trafficking. Consequently, this approach allows us to interrogate some of the theoretical, methodological, and policy debates on trafficking.
In the next section we outline some of the key academic and activist debates that help us to better understand some of the core elements of these definitions, and outline some of the methodological problems in defining trafficking and devising responses to trafficking.
Explaining trafficking through the lineage of academic debates
The scholarly debates on different types of trafficking vary in their approaches. These divergences reflect scholars’ foci on different groups (e.g. women primarily vs. human beings) and the vantage point from which they consider trafficking, for instance within a larger discussion on violence against women or through analyses of forced migration. Here we present two sets of debates. We begin with the feminist debates that relate explicitly or broadly to trafficking. Next, we turn to migration scholars who examine trafficking as a form of forced migration. These discussions overlap at times but we present these separately to explain the gaps we are seeking to address. Cross-cutting with these debates are the discussions on human rights and human security which provide an entry point to considering the experiences of the victims along with the structures that impede their access to rights.
Trafficking debates: feminist dissensions
The growth of feminist scholarship, especially the scholarship that examines individuals and groups at the nexus of intersecting structures of gender/class/race/ethnicity/age/nationality and related inequalities (widely referred to as intersectionality), has ignited debates relating to seemingly innocuous terms such as “trafficking” or “victims.” This literature delves into violence in women's lives, how power is understood, and the structures that create people's vulnerabilities to trafficking. Since this scholarship is closely reflected in many activist organizations as well, we cite some NGOs’ interpretations of these debates.
As we indicated earlier, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Western powers worried about white slavery, that is, the idea of white women being forced into prostitution and then moved to the colonies to provide sexual services to officers. A clear racial boundary separated those who were deemed worthy of rescue and those who were not visible in that conversation. Others who were regularly traded or moved around the world were defined as slaves or indentured labor (Seedat-Khan 2012
