Main forms of human trafficking Essay
It is possible to distinguish the following main forms of human trafficking (Winterdyk & Reichel, 2010; Aronowitz, 2009).
1) Human trafficking, especially women and children for sexual exploitation, including:
– for the organization of commercial prostitution;
– for the organization of prostitution in the field of military operations and troop deployment;
– for the organization of sex tourism;
– for the production of pornography.
2) Human trafficking for exploitation of slave labor, including:
– in “sweatshops”;
– in the informal shadow economy;
– in the household (domestic slavery);
– child labor (car washing, agricultural work, etc.).
3) Human trafficking for the purpose of begging.
4) Marriages for the exploitation (including the use of “mail-order brides”), including:
– for use in the household (as the maid);
– for forced pregnancy and childbirth;
– for serving the sick and elderly relatives, children, etc.
5) Human trafficking for forced surrogacy.
6) Human trafficking for forced organ and tissue transplantation.
7) Human trafficking for forced adoption.
8) Human trafficking for the use in armed groups during armed conflicts.
Thus the typical spheres of employment of trafficking victims are: entertainment (dancers, strippers); public service (staff of hotels, restaurants, bars, fitness facilities); domestic services (nanny, housekeeper); sex services, low-skilled production (e.g., construction, garment factories).
The main stumbling block in the determination of different forms of human trafficking and at the same time the key point of disagreement in the understanding of this phenomenon is the issue of voluntariness and coercion, as well as the exploitation of the “sold” people (the forms of so-called voluntary and involuntary slavery). There is no agreement so far in the understanding of exploitation of labor, in determining where it begins and where it ends. If a woman pays thousands of dollars to get herself a job in another country and to get transported there, can she be considered a victim of exploitation? This question seems absurd to many, so the criterion for classifying a particular action in human trafficking is considered to be any violent acts, coercion or deception (Rijken, 2009). To decipher the concept of exploitation the specific forms of human rights violations are given:
– use of physical and psychological violence, threats
– suppression of documents
– debt bondage,
– forced labor,
– restriction on freedom of movement
– deception.
A few years ago it was commonly recognized that it is important to distinguish those migrants who were forcibly sold for forced labor and those who voluntarily agreed to the job, such as sex-related job abroad. Today, workers who emigrated voluntarily and went voluntarily to work in exploitative conditions are classified as victims of human trafficking and human rights violations in relation to such migrants should be treated as seriously as for those who were exported forcibly. The CATOC definition does not take into account coercion to migration or labor (Article 3, b) (Goodey, 2008).
The consent of a victim of trafficking in relation to the forms of exploitation, identified in subparagraph (a) of this article should not be taken into account if any of those listed in subparagraph (a) forms of exploitation has been applied.
Our view is that it is necessary to distinguish between criminal and procedural understanding (and definition) of human trafficking and the social aspect of the problem. Considering the migration of women into risky areas of employment as a social problem (i.e., not in terms of criminal punishment, but in terms of measures of social policy) it is impossible to base on the principle of “coercion” and consider only the cases of violence, which are within the competence of law enforcement. Firstly, the use of the principle of coercion to prostitution in the international interpretation of human trafficking as a problem-generating trait actually makes the problem into a criminal one, taking it away from the social context, which consists in finding the social causes that contribute to sex-employment and social policies that can limit this phenomenon (Rijken, 2009).
Secondly, frequently (for example, speaking of the work in the field of entertainment) women’s voluntariness in providing sex services is relative. In many cases, it is a “forced voluntariness”, dictated by the established state of this employment – the choice in a situation where there is no other choice. Thirdly, the application of the “principle of violence” narrows the contingent of female migrants in need of special protection mechanisms, such as those migrants who were forced into prostitution. At the same time due to the weak legal framework and the prevalence of shady relationships in the field, migrant women working voluntarily in the sex services are no less in need of protective programs.
There are some arguments in favor of not restricting the problem to cases of coercion. Firstly, human traffickers gain no less revenue from the sale of “voluntary” workers than from those who are forced to work. Second, according to estimations, there are significantly more “volunteers” than the victims of direct violence. And human rights violations in voluntary migrants are perhaps not as egregious, but they are much more numerous (Rijken, 2009; Goodey, 2008).
It this way, any form of human trafficking is accompanied by: the deprivation of liberty of action, suppression and retention of documents, debt dependency, physical violence or threat of violence, the use of psychological violence, blackmail (the threat of deportation, threats against the family victim, blackmail by publicity of unwanted information, etc.), restricting freedom of movement, communication with family, fraud, coercion to work without pay, denial of formalizing the employment relationship (employment contract), non-payment of the salary, illegal ban of the dismissal (retention of an employee). However, the appearance of voluntary slavery in the contemporary world more vividly reveals the socio-economic reasons of human trafficking (Rijken, 2009; Shelley, 2010).
