Human Trafficking

Abstract

This article focuses on human trafficking, which is the sale and trade of people, typically for the purpose of sexual slavery or forced labor. Human trafficking is a serious crime involving the kidnapping, coercion, and exploitation of people. A 2022 report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that more than 50 million people were being exploited as victims of human trafficking at any time in 2021. Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery and a grave violation of basic human rights.

Overview

Lucy Magambi is a survivor of human trafficking who now resides in New Jersey with her husband and children. Several years prior, Lucy's life took a catastrophic turn when, as a Kenyan citizen, she responded to a job advertisement posted by a US resident who was soliciting housekeeping services for which he would pay $200 a month, a figure that she deemed astronomical in contrast to her meager earnings. Looking forward to the opportunity that lay before her, Lucy embarked upon her journey to the United States, although when she arrived she found herself overworked, unpaid, abused, and isolated. Fortunately, Lucy was eventually able to seek asylum through one of Catholic Charities refugee resettlement and human trafficking programs, which helped her locate and reconnect with her son whom she had temporarily left behind in Africa.

Due to the illegal and clandestine nature of human trafficking operations, there are divergent statistics on the prevalence of human trafficking. The collection of accurate data on human trafficking figures is extremely difficult. This is exacerbated by the fact that many cases fall below the radar and are never reported. The ILO (2022) indicated that there were up to 50 million human trafficking victims worldwide in 2021, including 28 million in forced labor and 22 million in forced marriage. Human trafficking is a corrupt and lucrative system, and the ILO estimated in 2024 that human trafficking generated $236 billion a year in illegal profits, depending on the location in the world and the type of work the victims are forced to undertake.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), trafficking in persons is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the 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 the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practice similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

Human trafficking affects both men and women, both of whom are forced into various forms of unpaid labor, including domestic and factory work, as well as construction. The recruitment of child soldiers is another form of human trafficking. According to the UNODC's 2022 report, released in early 2023, forced labor was the most commonly identified form of human trafficking (38.8 percent in 2020), followed closely by sexual exploitation (38.7 percent in 2020). Other forms of human trafficking and exploitation are thought to be significantly underreported, including forced marriage, organ removal, exploitative begging, trafficking for illegal adoption, and forced criminality.

Svitlana Batsyukova differentiates sex slavery from prostitution in that prostitutes frequently engage in their trade voluntarily and receive monetary compensation. Further, the legalization and regulation of prostitution varies between countries, whereas human trafficking and sexual exploitation is unanimously illegal and a blatant violation of basic human rights. Furthermore, victims of trafficking are not reimbursed or paid and are unable to escape their undesirable positions unless they do so surreptitiously, risking brute force or even death.

Further Insights

Victim Profile. Many victims of human trafficking are typically offered employment or other opportunities under false pretenses by traffickers. Traffickers may exploit the poverty and hope of vulnerable individuals, enticing them with the opportunity to improve their lives. Events such as the lengthy coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that began spreading worldwide in early 2020 were particularly concerning for the potential of even higher rates of instances of human trafficking. As the pandemic resulted in the need to shut down public venues and office buildings in an effort to slow the spread of the virus, many countries' economies suffered and unemployment rates rose. Organizations such as the UNODC feared that such financially and psychologically stressful times during the pandemic may have led more people to become vulnerable to such exploitative "opportunities" (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2021). For 2022, UNODC researchers reported that the global COVID-19 pandemic potentially limited opportunities for trafficking, pushed it further underground, and simultaneously limited the capacity of law enforcement to fight it. The researchers also found that climate change multiplied trafficking risks.

Traffickers may also capitalize on armed conflict. Human trafficking involves the recruitment and abduction of victims, who are then transferred to the destination where they are isolated and exploited. Although they may initially travel with their trafficker voluntarily, victims of human trafficking are then isolated, coerced, threatened, beaten, and restrained. In international cases of human trafficking, the victims’ identification papers are often destroyed or withheld by traffickers; because of their illegal immigration status in the destination country, many victims of trafficking are made to fear law-enforcement authorities. Victims are often imprisoned in extreme isolation and are dependent upon their captors for food and shelter. Victims are often threatened with violence against themselves or their family members at home.

According to data aggregated by the UNODC, women accounted for 42 percent of trafficking victims identified by authorities in 2020 (or most recent data), girls accounted for 18 percent, men represented 23 percent, and boys accounted for 17 percent of identified trafficking victims, which indicated men and boys accounted for a greater proportion of detected victims as novel forms of exploitation emerged, including forced criminality and mixed forms of exploitation. Men and underage boys are often exploited for forced labor or armed labor, while women and girls experience more sexual exploitation and domestic servitude. In many of the reported cases, victims were moved across international borders but not necessarily over long distances; most victims of trafficking were transported into neighboring countries within the same subregion or region of the world.

Most human trafficking occurs on the regional or national level. Among the numerous trafficking flows the 2022 UNODC report identified, some general patterns of transnational trafficking flows emerged. Regions differed in terms of the types of trafficking that were predominant; volumes of trafficking as compared to previous years; detected victim profiles in terms of gender, age, and regional origin; and number of people convicted for trafficking. For example, for 2020, Central and Southeastern Europe and North America both reported an increase in victims detected, but North American experienced a decrease in the number of convictions, while Central and Southeastern Europe recorded an increase in convictions that year. Central America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, South America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa all reported decreases in detected victims; South America reported a decrease in convictions. Children comprised the majority of detected victims in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020 (or most recent data).

Offender Profile. According to the 2022 UNODC report, 72 percent of the people investigated for human trafficking worldwide were men in 2020 (or most recent data), but made up 59 percent of those convicted of human trafficking, while women comprised 28 percent of those investigated, but 41 percent of those convicted. The UNODC report also showed that countries of origin tended to convict more females than did countries of destination, which the UNODC suggested may have to do with female traffickers being more involved in the recruitment activities of trafficking crimes. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia that year, 81 percent of convicted traffickers were women, compared to 19 percent men. The number of female and male offenders were convicted in South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific were closer to parity, with men comprising 55 percent of convicted traffickers compared to women making up 43 percent. Western and Central Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, convicted male offenders dominated.

In addition, most (74 percent) offenders are citizens of the country where they were convicted (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2021), suggesting that local criminal networks acquire victims before selling them to criminal networks in destination countries. Local offenders are better positioned to earn the trust of their victims and to use their local connections to threaten retaliation against victims’ family members.

Human trafficking is a heinous crime in itself, but it also serves as a major source of income for organized crime groups and even terrorist networks. The scope of human trafficking was only widely recognized at the international level in the early twenty-first century, and the international community has been working toward developing solutions to this grave problem.

Solutions. As public awareness of human trafficking increased, anti-trafficking legislation has been enacted at the local, national, and international level. In December 2003, the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons came into effect. In the first five years of the protocol’s enactment, 63 percent of 155 countries and territories passed laws against human trafficking. The majority of countries (65 percent) had no specific anti-trafficking legislation prior to 2003; by 2021, 169 of the 181 countries assessed had anti-trafficking laws in place that aligned with the protocol while some others had partial legislation in effect (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2021). In countries that lack specific legislation regarding human trafficking, law enforcement may charge identified human traffickers with offenses such as pandering, corruption of minors, illegal adoption, or labor law violations. The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime requires member nations to criminalize all conduct related to human trafficking, including attempts to commit trafficking, participation in trafficking as an accomplice, and organizing or directing others to commit trafficking.

The United States Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000 and amended the legislation in 2003 and 2004 to incorporate UN recommendations. Data for the United States from 2003 to 2007 showed a rising trend in investigations, prosecutions, and convictions for human trafficking offenses, indicating that specific anti-trafficking legislation and increased public awareness had strengthened the ability of law enforcement and the courts to prosecute human traffickers. Nevertheless, by 2018, about 9 percent of countries worldwide had not recorded a single conviction for human trafficking. In 2018, each country reported an average of thirteen victims of trafficking per one hundred thousand people (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2021). In the United States, cases where the victims are US citizens are typically the ones that are prosecuted, and few convictions are made for human trafficking but for lesser offenses (Farrell, Owens & McDevitt, 2014). According to a 2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, more than 90 percent of offenders prosecuted in 2015 were US citizens and less than 60 percent of cases brought that year were prosecuted due to insufficient evidence or jurisdictional issues. In 2023, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report indicating that in fiscal year 2021, US attorneys received 2,027 referrals of suspected human traffickers and initiated 1,197 federal human trafficking prosecutions. By the end of the year, 1,657 people were in state prison serving sentences for human trafficking.

In order to better understand the scope of human trafficking, law-enforcement organizations worldwide need access to more and better data. There is a significant need for international standardization of trafficking definitions so that countries collect similar data sets for comparability. There is also a dire need for improved international cooperation in data-sharing and law-enforcement efforts in this realm. Well-resourced and well-trained justice agencies are also critical in fight against human trafficking. Because local police departments are often the first law-enforcement agency to uncover evidence of trafficking offenses, it is imperative to improve the training of local police officers in identifying signs of human trafficking and reporting cases to the appropriate national and international bodies.

Terms & Concepts

"Second Wave" Recruiters: Enslaved women who are forced to enlist up-and-coming candidates to secure such roles.

T Visa: Allows immigration immunity to human trafficking victims who are willing to assist the US authorities.

U visa: Allows immigration immunity to crime victims who "have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse as a result of the crime" and who are willing to assist the US authorities in investigating or prosecuting the crime.

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