Fast Fact about

Trafficking
Question 1. What is trafficking?
Human trafficking is the criminal and illegal trading of human beings for the purpose of exploiting their
labour. It is defined by a movement (or migration) into a non-consensual situation of exploitation (or
harm) that results in the loss of control by an individual over his or her situation. Trafficking can occur
within a country or across national borders.

The UN Trafficking Protocol of the Transnational Convention on Organized Crime (known colloquially as
the “Palermo Protocol”) defines trafficking as:

• "The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons" (the movement).

• "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"
(the means).
• "For the purpose of exploitation" (the purpose).

The Protocol notes that "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."

Question 2. What is the purpose of trafficking?

The purpose of trafficking is exploitation, and this can take many forms such as (but not limited to) the
following:

• Forced begging and soliciting;

• Forced and exploited labour (work in mines, on construction sites, in markets, in small shops, in
factories);
• Forced prostitution;
• Forced or exploitative domestic service;
• Forced work on plantations; and
• Forced work in fisheries.

Trade in human beings has developed into one of the most lucrative illegal growth markets, next only
to trade in weapon and drugs. The UN reckons that the yearly profits from Trade in Human beings is
approximately seven billion dollars

Question 3. Who are the victims of trafficking?

Trafficking affects men and women as well as boys and girls. However women and girls are known to be
disproportionately more vulnerable to being trafficked.

Question 4. How does child trafficking differ from adult trafficking?

Trafficking in adults and trafficking in children (defined as human beings under the age of 18) differ in
three major ways:

• Children are often more vulnerable to trafficking than adults;

• While adult trafficking (and trafficking of young people in the 15-17 age group) often starts with
voluntary migration, younger children do not usually migrate on their own.
• While informed adults can give their consent to a situation considered "exploitative", this is
impossible in the case of children. The recruitment and transportation of a child for the purpose of
exploitation shall always be considered “trafficking in persons”.

Question 5. What is the magnitude of the problem?

Several factors make it extremely difficult to provide reliable figures:

• The clandestine nature of trafficking;

• Ongoing disagreement regarding the legal classification (based on national laws, many of
which are not in line with the Palermo Protocol) and subsequently, identification of trafficked
victims; and
• Lack of coordinated reporting

No UN agency, government, or NGO has so far managed to provide any accurate or universally
acceptable estimate. Rough estimates of the number of victims trafficked worldwide on an annual basis
range from 700,000 to two million (and in one occasion even four million), but with little clear basis in
any case.

Question 6. Is the problem getting bigger?

Many people believe that trafficking has grown significantly over the last few years, but this may reflect
the increased attention given to trafficking, rather than an increase in the phenomenon itself. Others
focus on improvements in global communication and transportation networks and come to the
conclusion that these will naturally lead to greater levels of human trafficking.

Question 7. What are the root causes of trafficking?

While virtually no country is totally sheltered from trafficking (either as receiving or sending), trafficking
seems to be thriving when four conditions are met: a flawed system unable to prevent it from
happening, demand for trafficked persons, opportunities for traffickers, and a vulnerable pool of
potential victims.

A flawed system is one in which adequate laws to prevent trafficking and protect victims are not in
place or not enforced; where corrupt authorities (including law enforcement agencies) allow trafficking
to happen and may even benefit from it. It is also a system where migration policies are not consistent
with labour market realities, that is, where the opening of borders and the improvement of
infrastructure and transportation have not led to a concomitant relaxation of restrictions on movement
and migration for labour – thus exacerbating labour market imbalances and increasing the extent of
irregular migration.

Demand for trafficking can be defined by:

• Demand for low status, low paid workers;

• Demand for commercial sexual exploitation, particularly of children;
• Demand for labour in sectors in which nationals of the country are no willing to work for a
variety of reasons, such as dangerous conditions of work

Demand is often found in work which can be characterized as "the three Ds": dirty, dangerous, or
degrading.

Opportunities for traffickers exist when the act of trafficking is rewarded, when traffickers can act with
impunity, or when it results in a low risk of consequences for traffickers. Increased border controls, and
crackdowns on the smallest, poorest links in the migration chain, push people into more and more
organised and dangerous forms of migration, thus adding to opportunities for traffickers. Lack of access
to justice for victims and potential victims allows traffickers to operate with impunity.

Vulnerability factors play a role in pushing people into the hands of traffickers. Some of these factors
are listed below:

• Poverty and economic disparities between countries, provinces and regions encourage
migration in search of survival or better opportunities;
• Limited job prospects for adults force them to leave, and unemployment of primary caregivers
forces children to earn money;
• Abusive family environments (sometimes influenced by alcohol and drug use) encourage
children to leave home, thus putting them at risk of being trafficked;
• Lack of education and lack of access to information regarding the realities of migration do not
allow people to make informed choices;
• Lack of birth registration, legal status, and citizenship, which affects many people in India and
the region, particularly certain ethnic groups and castes, affects the rights to own land, access
to education, health and legal services, and the ability to move legally and to obtain legal
employment;
• Armed conflict or war situations push refugees on the roads in situations of extreme
vulnerability;
• Consumerism and the hunger for consumer goods, fuelled by indiscriminate messages fro the
media, create a desire for more money;

Question 8. What happens to children who are trafficked?

Child trafficking violates a child's most fundamental rights as outlined in the Convention of the Rights of
the Child. For all the complexities of trafficking, trafficked children are child slaves. Children who are
exploited in this way are often:

• Forcibly removed from their home area;

• Raped, abused physically and emotionally;
• Treated cruelly;
• Exposed to severe health risks;
• Threatened and terrorized;
• Deprived of their right to education;
• Discriminated against;
• Exploited economically;
• Exposed to hazardous work and materials;
• Forced to work long hours with no rest or recreation;
• Receive low or no wages.

Question 9. What is the link between trafficking and the commercial sexual
exploitation of children?
The commercial sexual exploitation of children is defined as follows:

Any person under eighteen, male or female, engaging in sexual activities for money, profit, or any other
consideration due to coercion or influence by any adult, syndicate or group.

While some forms of trafficking do not involve commercial sexual exploitation, there are two major links
between them:
 • Commercial sexual exploitation is one of the possible purposes or possible outcomes of
trafficking. In other words, trafficking will sometimes be the chain of criminal acts culminating
in a child being brought into commercial sexual exploitation;
• Trafficking of children – moving them away from their normal context to other parts of a
country or across borders – increases their vulnerability to commercial sexual exploitation – the
so-called "incidental exposure". Isolated from family, community and normal protection
mechanisms, often unable to speak the language and deprived of legal status, children
trafficked for any purpose are at high risk of sexual exploitation.

Question 10. What is the link between trafficking, smuggling and migration?
The UN Smuggling Protocol of the Transnational Convention on Organised Crime defines smuggling as

the procurement of illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or
permanent resident, against a financial or other material benefit.

While the definition of trafficking contains the element of coercion, that of smuggling does not. Further,
smugglers have a vested interest in not harming the person they are helping to migrate; in a cash-on-
delivery manner, often payment for smugglers comes only after the successful border breach. A
smuggler's crime is against the State of destination, and any States in-between, not against the migrant
him/herself. The crime of a trafficker, on the other hand, is against the migrant, putting him or her into
coercive or exploitative situations. The main profit in trafficking does not come from a one-off payment,
but from the ongoing proceeds of keeping a person in slave-like conditions, and appropriating the
money that is thus earned.

It is therefore important to distinguish between those who get trafficked (they are victims of a trafficker)
and those who get smuggled (clients of a smuggler).

Question 11. Can there be trafficking if the movement is voluntary?

Many trafficking cases start with a decision to migrate or, in other words, a voluntary movement (even if
this ‘voluntary’ choice is often made within an extremely limited range of options). When a voluntary
migrant asks for a stranger’s help to cross national or provincial borders, he or she is delivering
him/herself into a position of vulnerability for exploitation and abuse. It should be noted that this
vulnerability increases in accordance with the degree of border control. A person requiring assistance to
sneak through a forest or across a river, for example, is less exposed than one who requires contractors
or smugglers organized and powerful enough to produce false travel documents. Through a variety of
means, a migration process that started voluntarily can turn into a trafficking situation.

In these cases it is the end outcome (the exploitation) rather than the victim's original intention (the
migration) that defines whether the situation is or is not trafficking.

The definition in the Trafficking Protocol also requires intent on the part of the trafficker. If a person is
smuggled, and the smuggler had some intention to exploit the person, then trafficking is indicated. If
the smuggler has only the intention to help the person defeat a country’s migration controls, trafficking
is not indicated. Much depends therefore on the trafficker’s intention – more than depends on the
victim’s intention as their intention can be influenced by ‘the improper means’ deployed by the
trafficker.

Question 12. What is the link between child trafficking and HIV/AIDS?
There is a direct link. Women and children who are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation are
usually forced to have frequent, unprotected sex with multiple partners. Even if they are aware of how
to protect themselves, and have access to condoms, they have virtually no negotiating power to
convince customers to use a condom. In some cases, it has been seen that customers seek out young
children believing them less likely to have HIV. Popular myths about sex with virgins curing STDs
aggravate the problem. Children, because of their fragile tissue, are physiologically more vulnerable to
contracting HIV.

Children trafficked into other forms of exploitation (e.g. forced labour, domestic work) are also quite
vulnerable to sexual abuse by employers and/or family members of employers, hence increasing their
chances of contracting HIV.

Question 13. Who are the traffickers and the clients of trafficked persons?
Traffickers range from organised networks able to produce or buy fake documents, clear immigration
requirements for their victims, and conduct trafficking operations spanning thousands of kilometres, to
individuals seizing an opportunity to cheat, sweet-talk or coerce their victim into a situation of
exploitation.

There are extensive linkages between the traffickers in all parts of this spectrum of sophistication; for
example many less sophisticated traffickers engage in their work not knowing the ultimate recipient to
be organised criminals.

Individual or non-organised traffickers often operate across land borders, while more sophisticated and
organised traffickers tend to operate more complex schemes and will often go to more trouble to seek a
higher return for the trafficking victim by selling him/her in more distant markets.

Traffickers are also those who exploit adults and children in brothels, in illegal factories,
or by employing them as slaves in domestic work, on fishing boats or in plantations. In
commercial sexual exploitation the clients of traffickers come closest to being direct
users of trafficked persons: men who use the services of forced and under-age prostitutes
are direct clients of traffickers, not always knowingly. Finally, people who buy or
consume goods produced by trafficked victims in slavery also contribute, though
indirectly, to the perpetuation of trafficking.

Question 14. Is it true that families are selling their children for profit?

Contrary to a die-hard stereotype, this is quite uncommon. This myth seems to take root
in anecdotes that arise from the following situations on the ground:

• Poverty forces some families to send their children to work away from home. Children, thus
made more vulnerable, may then fall into the hands of traffickers and exploiters.
• Lack of education and lack of knowledge of the realities of migration may make parents naïve
and gullible to traffickers' tricks, truly believing their promises of a better future for the child
and the family;
• Parents may know that the job prospect awaiting their child is not great, but still ignore its
actual inhumane and slave-like conditions;
• Parents may in some cases ‘rent’ their children to someone who promises good
returns and work elsewhere;

Question 15. Does trafficking happen because of lack of awareness?

Although awareness of trafficking and of the dangers linked to unprepared migration

is fundamental, awareness is not the end of the story. Awareness raising efforts tend
 to start with the assumption that if fully informed, children, adults and families will
be able to act differently. This is not always the case. It is important, while focusing
on awareness raising efforts, to also develop projects that give children, adults and
families other choices and opportunities. It is also important to address those
underlying causes of trafficking, which are rooted in poverty, social exclusion and
gender discrimination.

Question 16. What can governments do or not do to reduce trafficking?

Governments may be contributing to trafficking in a number of ways, by their act and by omission:

• By denying the existence of the problem in their own country and concomitant lack of real
political will to combat the traffic;
• By lack of effective legislation and criminal justice processes which contribute to traffickers
operating with impunity;
• By lack of effective law enforcement mechanisms or targeting the wrong people such as
trafficked victims, small-scale people movers and even parents;
• By corruption among police and other authorities. Authorities are known to warn brothel or
factory owners of planned raids; to collaborate with exploiters and traffickers; and in some
cases, to own the exploitative businesses themselves;
• By poor migration management policies, which fail to allow legal, regulated mechanisms to
match labour demand and labour supply across borders;
• Through trade and economic policies which continue to extend the gap between the richest
and the poorest within countries, and between countries in the sub-region.

Question 17. What should be done to combat human trafficking?

Law and law enforcement

• Ratify relevant international conventions and protocols;

• Define national strategy, and develop a national plan, for opposing human trafficking,
• Draft and implement relevant laws against trafficking that criminalize human trafficking
against women, men, and children for all end purposes;
• Enhance international law enforcement cooperation and mutual legal assistance mechanisms;
• Reduce official corruption;
• Ensure effective investigation and prosecution of traffickers;
• Recognise that all human beings have inherent basic rights, regardless of legal status;
• Increase effective channels through which victims and witnesses can report trafficking crimes,
and ensure protection for such witnesses and victims;
• Increasing the traffickers’ perception of risk by simultaneously implementing penalties that
accurately reflect the severity of the crime, and increasing the capacity of law enforcement
agencies to advance trafficking cases.

Promoting safe migration

• Promote safe migration, and provide awareness raising and education that ensures intending
migrants know the dangers of human trafficking;
• Create and support mechanisms for safe and efficient legal migration;
• Develop safeguards for the protection of migrants, particularly in destination countries
 • Promote creation of empowered networks of migrants in destination provinces/ countries to
provide information about how trafficking occurs, and assist victims;
• Bring migration laws in line with current labour market realities in the region.

Trafficking prevention

• Recognition of education as a key preventive measure against child trafficking;

• Improved awareness among vulnerable children;
• Improved protection networks at community level.

Protection of trafficking victims and survivors

• Adoption of measures for the protection of and assistance to victims of trafficking;

• Improved mechanisms for return and reintegration;
• Reduction of the discrimination and social stigma for returned trafficked children;
• Protection of returnees from retribution by trafficking gangs, corrupt authorities, or employers;
• Creation of assistance programmes and employment opportunities for returnees
• Availability of avenues for recourse for victims of trafficking

Question 18. Should trafficked victims be punished for their illegal status?
No. Children and adults who are trafficked should not be victimised twice. Unfortunately, they are often
treated as criminals even when rescued and placed in detention.

Victims of trafficking should be given access to shelters where their human rights are protected. They
should receive such treatments as temporary residence permit, assistance on food, rehabilitation, and
employment. They should be granted the right to stay permanently or be assisted with repatriation.

Adopted from the UNIAP website (Source: [Link] )