The Daily Clarity

Modern Day Slavery – the hidden monster in our midst

The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT)  released its report in February on human trafficking entitled, “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons”. It still makes for depressing if important reading.  At the time, the concerned in the world bemoaned the findings, railed that something must be done, but since then nothing has changed. In Cambodia, China, Zimbabwe, Sudan and more children, women and those least able to defend their interests are bought and sold as modern day slaves. Obama may visit the slave markets of Ghana and apolgize for America’s tragic legacy in that trade, but today it still goes on more secretly, but still at scale and with the complicity of many with whom we do trade. That is something that should never be apologized for, and never forgotten.

The scale of human trafficking is large. Even if we consider only the forced labor side of this extensive trade, there are an estimated 12.3 million people in forced labor worldwide, of which over 2 million were illegally and involuntarily trafficked into the position. The rewards of human trafficking are also potentially  large, and so many criminal groups are willing to take the risks involved. Recent UN estimates suggest that the global profits of trafficking in human beings are around $31.6 billion annually. Based on the previously cited numbers of trafficked persons, this translates into an annual illicit profit of $13,000 per victim.

What is more depressing is that according to UN GIFT is that their research, and this is the first global report on such trafficking , found a disproportionate number of female perpetrators, more than in any other crime, selling other women into slavery. Most of this “slavery’ is women selling other women into the sex trade. Sex slavery accounts for 79 per cent of all human trafficking, most victims being women and girls. The UN GIFT report used data from 155 countries to establish patterns in trafficking and what individual nations were doing to fight it. The office’s executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, was alarmed by cases in which victims went on to become ringleaders in the trade. “We need to understand the psychological, financial and coercive reasons why women recruit other women into slavery,” he said. After sex, the second most common trade was in forced labor. These victims were harder to identify than sex slaves, whose work was highly visible and concentrated in cities and along major roads, the report said. By contrast, forced laborers worked in mines, factories and in private homes as domestic slaves. “Their numbers will surely swell as the economic crisis deepens the pool of potential victims,” Mr Costa said.

The trade is an attractive area for the organized crime groups.  The International Monetary Fund assesses the annual turnover of criminal organizations at some $1,500 billion internationally.Trafficking in persons is believed to be the third largest source of the profits for international organized crime after trafficking in drugs and arms. According to a UN background paper ” Of a global sample of 40 organized criminal groups surveyed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2002, 8 were found to be involved in human trafficking activities, with 2 almost exclusively involved in human trafficking and the remaining 6 including human trafficking as one of a number of diversified criminal activities undertaken by the group. In 50 per cent of human trafficking cases in one destination country, the perpetrators were also engaged in illegal trade in drugs or arms. Links to other global criminal activities make human trafficking more profitable, as groups are able to use the safe and tested routes and work through known corrupt officials.”

It is a particularly hard crime to prevent and police. Most of the victims are plucked from poor countries and are members of the most economically distressed groups in these nations. No-one is sure just how big the potential pool of victims is. Data on these populations is vague and often inaccurate. There is a marked lack of documentation and, consequently, an inability to determine clear-cut objectives. Another  recent UN  report indicates: “Only 57 out of 163 developing countries have counted the poor more than once since 1990. Ninety-two have not counted them at all.” With this level of information gap, prevention, protection and policing (the 3 P’s of human trafficking) become impossible to pursue effectively.  UN GIFT was only established in 2007 enabled by a financial gift from the UAE, so the research on the size and scale of this issue is only now coming to light. The UN GIFT report release will be supported by a launch event in the UN New York offices, and similar events in several of the target victim countries, namely Thailand, Nepal, Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico and Pakistan. The UN GIFT makes many of its reports available freely for download and review at its site and the publications page can be found here.