Human Trafficking and Kidnapping

Human Trafficking and Kidnapping
Student`s name
Instructor`s name
Course title
Submission date
Human Trafficking and Kidnapping
Introduction
The U.S. federal law describes human trafficking victims as children who are engaged in sex commerce, adults and over eighteen year olds who are forced to work as sexual workers. In addition, any person who is forced to do any kind of work, which include "domestic workers held in a home, or farm-workers forced to labor against their will" are all victims of human trafficking (Polaris Project, 2012). Irrespective of the type of work that a person is forced to undertake, it is of paramount importance to note that each of it has the elements of coercion, force or fraud in it. This is the reason why all are referred to as human trafficking because the involved parties use the same methods to achieve their targets.
Globalization has ensured that it is now easy to transport goods as well people across various borders. However, as the movement of goods has increased across the borders so does the abduction and trafficking of human beings. It is of paramount importance to note that although "cases of kidnapping and ransom continue to be common in African and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria and Venezuela, the majority of organized human trafficking cases are actually in Europe" as several countries report an increase in the number of people who are being exploited for financial gains (Germain, 2009).
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) acknowledges that the problem of human trafficking has been on the rise since the year 2006 with reported cases of human trafficking of about 270,000 in Europe. However, this may be an underestimate because most probably most cases go unnoticed. However, despite the high numbers of trafficking cases only about 1 in 100,000 are convicted for the offences. This led to UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa observing that maybe "Perhaps police are not finding the traffickers and victims because they are not looking for them," but "Lives should not be for sale or for rent on a continent that prohibits slavery and forced labor, and prides itself on upholding human dignity" (Germain, 2009).
This implies that although Europe has enacted laws that prevent human trafficking and kidnapping, the state organs are not enforcing them. This is a very dangerous path to take because innocent people are suffering at the hands of traffickers while the traffickers are making a kill out of their (victims) situations. In most instances, law enforcement officers are eager to arrest prostitutes in the streets and they do not care the circumstances, which brought the prostitutes there in the first place. It is important to come up with agencies that will help prostitutes and ascertain whether they are on the streets on their own volition or otherwise.
Human traffickers are members of almost all the as shown by a research that was conducted by Wilson and Dalton in 2010. The two were able to find out that "The offenders and victims involved in the sex trafficking cases were largely from the local area, whereas those involved in the labor trafficking cases primarily involved foreign nationals, thereby illustrating at least one role the heartland plays in transnational crime" (p. 150). Their study showed that immigrants as well as natives of many US states where in this kind of business. This means that every one should be wary of the kind of neighbors they have.
Human trafficking is an act that involves illegal trade on human beings for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, reproductive slavery, a modern-day form of slavery, or forced labor (Kara, 2009). It is of paramount importance to acknowledge the fact that the most affected people in the society are children and women. The United Nations enacted the Trafficking Protocol with the aims of preventing and punishing human trafficking that involves women and children in the year 2000 in Palermo, Italy (UNODC - Signatories to the CTOC Trafficking Protocol, 2011). This is an internationally recognized protocol of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The protocol was the first instrument that legally binds all the countries in the globe and has a clear definition on the term human trafficking. In addition, it recognizes a child as any person who is under the age of eighteen years. According to UNODC - Signatories to the CTOC Trafficking Protocol" (2011) "The Trafficking Protocol entered into force on 25 December 2003. By June 2010, the Trafficking Protocol had been ratified by 117 countries and 137 parties."
On the other hand, kidnapping happens "when a person, without lawful authority, physically moves another person without that other person's consent, with the intent to use the abduction in connection with some other nefarious objective" (Diamond, 2005, p. 15). This impose that trafficking and kidnapping are intertwined because a victim of kidnapping may end up doing things that s/he does not want. For instance, a person may be kidnapped for transporting him/her to another country where she will work as a prostitute against her will. However, it is worth noting that kidnappings occur for different reasons which may vary from obtaining "a ransom or reward; facilitating the commission of a felony or a flight after the commission of a felony; terrorizing or inflicting bodily injury on the victim or a third person; and interfering with a governmental or political function" (Lawrence, 2011).
Statistics show that human trafficking is a very lucrative business and is growing at a very fast rate. Polaris Project (2012) notes "Because human trafficking is considered to be one of the fastest growing criminal industries, the U.S. government and academic researchers are currently working on an up-to-date estimate of the total number of trafficked persons in the United States annually." In fact the trade is only second to drug trafficking in terms of the illegal trade with the best returns. It is of paramount importance to note that a difference exists between human trafficking and human smuggling because in the latter, a person is willing to move to another country and s/he pays a smuggler who facilitates ones movement.
Types of trafficking
After a person who has been trafficked arrives to his/her destination, that person is not allowed to leave the country or place at his or her own will. However, the traffickers or others force the person to do certain jobs at low or no pay at all.
Three main types of trafficking are known around the world. These are
* Debt bondage
* Forced labor
* Sex trafficking
In debt bondage, a person accrues a debt that s/he is unable to pay. As a result, the person is forced to work in a bid to repay the loan. However, since there are no clear terms of service for the person, in the end the person ends up doing work that has greater value than the original debt. It is worth noting that the person is not given the opportunity to choose the job that he likes but the trafficker chooses the job for the trafficked person. It is worth noting, "Human traffickers used bonded labor to trick their victims. Their victims believe that one day they will be free. They believe that if they work hard they will be able to repay their debts" (Hart, 2009, p. 6) However, this never happens because the debtors keep on changing their goal posts by insisting that the loan is not yet fully paid.
Forced labor, which commonly targets men for unskilled labor, is common since unskilled labor is in high demand across the world. In this arrangement, victims do not have choices and are forced to jobs by threats of violence or any other punishment that the trafficker deems fit. Some of the jobs that victims are forced to do are
* Agricultural labor
* Janitorial work
* Domestic servitude
* Sweatshop factory labor
* Begging
* Food service and other service industry labor (Kara, 2009)
In Thailand, the most commonly practiced form of forced labor is working in the seafood processing pants because they labor intensive and they are growing at a very high rate ((Nieva, 2009). However, since coercing men to go to work in other countries proves to be hard, in most instances the victims are kidnapped mostly through drugging and transported to their workstations where they are forced to work under deplorable conditions. On the other hand, in the US the most common jobs on forced labor are "domestic servitude and small-scale "mom and pop" labor operations, to more large-scale operations such as farms and factories" (Polaris Project, 2012).
On the other hand, sex trafficking involves the trafficking of the most vulnerable women in the society. These include the homeless, teenagers who have run away from their homes, drug addicts and refuges among others. It is of paramount importance to note that although people may think, "trafficked people are the most vulnerable and powerless minorities in a region, victims are consistently exploited from any ethnic and social background." This implies that every one in ...