I apologize for always posting my same dull school papers. But i just find it much easier to keep it on my blog rather than saving it in a flash. This one is my final paper from last semester, still dunno what i got.Hope it will give you a little more information about human trafficking and slavery.

Human trafficking and modern day slavery

We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.
~Victor Hugo


Slavery has long been existent in our society. It can be traced back its root from the ancient Greek and Egyptian civilization, to the 15th century Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. In relatively modern times, the Nazi regime created labor camps that forced people to work to death. Same thing was existent in Russia during the 1930s to 1960s, with complex lagers (labor camps) consisting of thousands of laborers from Eastern Europe. Slavery in America also began soon after the English colonists first settled in Virginia.

Many people now believe that the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery along with the ratification of the 13th amendment. Still, we think that slavery was put to an end when most countries outlawed it in the 20th century. But as a matter of fact, there are more slaves in the contemporary world than it ever had in history. According to the census of the United Nations, there are over 4 million women being sold from one country to another, and there are over 10 million children in brothels around the world. These women and children are forced to become sex slaves without any escape. The victims of sex slavery are mostly women and children from the rural areas of third world country brought to the major cities across the border. This kind of human trafficking has been increasing significantly in recent years, and it has become the 3rd largest transnational crime in the world. Human trafficking is a highly organized crime with its links ranging from the legitimate corporations to terrorist activists. The study from UNICEF proves that a human trafficking is an international industry worth of 10 billion dollars.

Specifically, Southeast Asia is the heart of the human trafficking and sex tourism. Girls from the impoverished rural towns of Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Philippines are sold as low as $200, and some are promised a job offer in the cities but instead they would be locked up in brothels. In fact two third of those girls are sold, kidnapped, coerced by someone they know including relatives and family members. The pimps would tell the girls that they can buy their way out little by little until they are rich, or they would tell the girls that they send money to their family back home. A girl named Chantha from Cambodia who escaped from the brothel tells the reporters that she was offered to be a maid in a house, but instead kept in a brothel and forced to have sex with as many as 15 to 20 men a day.

There are many reasons why these inhumane evil still exist today. Under-education of women is a contributing factor to the forced prostitution. About 80% of women in Cambodia are illiterate and only 5% of the girls ever finish school and the rest only pass through 3rd grade. There is a very few availability of education in the rural areas, and the boys are chosen over girls for the opportunity to go to school. With such limited education and knowledge they are easily deceived. Poverty is another major factor that contributes to the sex slavery. Most of the people in these regions live on a daily basis of hand to mouth. Parents have difficulties providing food for their children, so some parents sell their children for strangers, and husbands sell their wives. Some girls sacrifice themselves in order to add a little more income to their families. Others are offered a job to do in cities to support their families, without knowing what they are getting into.

Young girls are sold into brothels as early as their 6 and 7 years. In the streets of Bangkok there would be 7 year olds dressed in miniskirts ready to be served in exchange of pocket money. Men are seeking for younger partners nowadays, because of the less possibility of getting infected from sexually transmitted diseases. The customers would not hesitate to pay higher price for HIV free virgins. But in the near 5 years or so, those little girls themselves get diseased with HIV or other diseases and left on the streets waiting for their death. Study shows that 70% of those who were child prostitutes are tested HIV positive. Once they are treated that way, it is almost impossible to go back to society and live a normal life. First, they are infected with diseases and second they carry the shame of their situation throughout their entire life. In other words, they become the untouchables of the society after such humiliation.

A British anthropologist Louis Brown spent several years in conducting intensive research on human trafficking in Asia. Along the way, based on his various works, he found out that majority of male customers of sex tourism are Asian men, and two third of all adult Thai men have visited brothels at least once. This shows us the human rights level in that area, and how the society tolerates such inhumane act.

There are laws against sex slavery in these areas, but often the girls are the ones who get arrested while the customers and the pimps remain behind the curtain. Some girls escape and run to police for help; but sex slavery is a highly organized crime that law enforcement agency workers are even involved in most of the cases. The street polices are rewarded with $700- 800 for hiding a case, and in fact they are the major customers of the brothels.

Despite the street polices there are diverse group of participants in the human trafficking business. Government officials, law enforcement agency workers, legitimate travel agencies, lawyers and even gamblers are involved in this business since it is an opportunity to make lots of money. In Indonesia, the brothel complexes’ annual income is estimated from $2 to $3 billion, which is around 1- 2.4% of its GDP. In Thailand, sex tourism produced $22-$27 billion dollars between 1993 to 1995, which was a 14% of the country’s total GDP.

Living conditions in the brothels are terrible, and usually two, three girls share a room that virtually consists of single mattress. One girl from Nepali who was trafficked in a brothel in India said that she was kept in a dark room with no window for 2 years along with two other girls. Often they were beaten and raped by unknown men and they were fed only once a day. And the girls would sometimes talk about how it would be to feel the sunshine again. (Brown p.226)

Speaking of India, India is the lead country that dominates the human trafficking victims. According to a sociology professor in Roehampton University Kevin Bales’ data, India only by itself contains estimated number of 20 million slaves. (Zhang, p.108) Here people are mostly trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh; recently Nepali girls younger than 10 year old are becoming one of the main targets of sex business in India.

So, Nepal and Bangladesh girls are smuggled into India, Cambodia and Myanmar girls are sold into Thailand. Unfortunately, this human trafficking does not only take place in Southeast Asia. Girls from Eastern Europe are smuggled and sold into the rich metropolises of Europe such as London, Paris, and Berlin etc. In America, the US state department intelligence reported that there are between 45000 and 50000 women and children being trafficked each year. Majority of these girls are from Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American countries.

If you see this pattern, you might have realized that human trafficking business which has its roots from excessive poverty starts from the rural areas of a country to the cities and from the cities to overseas. Most of the victims of human trafficking are citizens from post-communist countries. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union along with opening of China, the world has been experiencing the largest rate of human migration. The mighty Soviet Union collapsed in a matter of overnight and proved the absolute failure of communist utopia. The government has been creating artificial employments, and the communist regime could not handle it anymore. The factories no longer held 5 workers for a job that actually required one worker; no longer had they needed 5 people to milk one cow. Within a night millions of people found themselves a surplus; jobless and homeless.

China took an inauguration policy shifting all the resources to the central cities leaving the rural citizens behind, while Soviet Union did not know how to respond. The whole Eastern bloc was under a crises during the early 1990`s, with the same reason. The people of Lenin had no idea how to respond to a capitalist system and how to make a living, as they were so used to the ex-government control. In search of jobs and way of living, they migrate from their rural towns and to the cities, but intense competition for jobs in the city would not give them a chance. Many of them try to flee to a different country, hoping it would accept them in the society. Unfortunately, at each step of the migration, those people become more and more vulnerable. Meanwhile, others are organized into networks to take advantage of their vulnerability by exploiting the migrants for their filthy profiteering.

In the contemporary world, globalism not only ensured the free movements of trade and capitals. But at the same time, it increased the mobility of human smuggling and transnational crimes. With increased mobility and networking, the human trafficking is the fastest growing cross-border business, with its executives and advocates ranging from regular pimps to multi-millionaires, and political leaders. From a different perspective, globalization does not bring equal opportunities for people. The difference between a third world and first world countries are very transparent in a global capitalism, and rather than filling the gap between the two bipolar, administrators of political spectrums see the situation silently with tolerance.

Within an overnight, communism collapsed and Western capitalism swept the whole Asia-pacific. Not only it brought new ideology, it brought new value to the whole region. People were considered as rich by the acre of lands they owned, by the number of cattle they raised. But the western capitalism forced its own economic value too quickly, that many countries could not make the adjustment. They were offered the capitalist dreams, but now they are left on the markets. In this new century of “human rights” and “equality”, the people from a vulnerable society are being used as serving agents to the capitalist markets. In fact, the human trafficking business does not end, because the demand for it does not let it stop.

The exploitation and slavery are the central debates against globalization and human rights in a modern world. But as we struggle through this debate, there are new forms of human trafficking that are not yet recognized by law and have not been heard in mass public. After the breakdown from the Soviet Union in Mongolia, and following the collapse of communism in the early 1990’s, the first generation of street children was born in Mongolia. Due to economic crises, many parents abandoned their children and created the first generation of orphanages as well. Those kids live around the main public centers such as mall and restaurants begging for food and money, and in winter they live inside underground holes where the heating pipes go through. However, in the past few years it was vivid for the society that the visibility of those street children was far less that what is used to be.

Unfortunately, it is not because the economy is improving or the street children are being taken care of. Sadly, it has been suspected that those children were sold to Korea for body parts trading. Healthy organs can cost thousand of dollars in a developed country, and there were some serious suspects and probabilities of human trafficking business which they export the street children and sell their hearts, lungs etc for different purposes.

The other shape of human trafficking that is not well known among us is the link between human trafficking and terrorism. Obviously, terrorists do not rely on growing corns and rice to support its terrorist activities. They tap into already established illegal channels to acquire the needs and funds to continue their mission. In many parts of the world, especially in the Balkans and Southeast Asia, money made from human trafficking is used for arms sales and funding of terrorism.

In Eastern Europe, the destruction of social fabric caused by the war, massive migration flows, and the economic collapse of the early 1990’s all contributed together to create fertile ground for dealers of human being and arms sales. There is hardly anyone who has conducted a research on that very link between human trafficking and terrorism. Most of our knowledge on that matter comes from anecdotal stories in the newspaper, or reports. Dejan Anastasijevic is one of the few researchers who write on such topic. He is a free-lance Balkan correspondent for “Time” magazine, and according to him, vast quantities of weapons left over from the World War II are in the hands of dealers, to be exported and used for terrorist activities. Dejan writes that during the war Yugoslavia maintained 4th largest army in Europe, accompanied by the matching industrial complex. Nothing was thrown away destroyed after the war; instead they are stashed in secret warehouses for trade and future use. Albania, Serbia, Kosovo and some in Bosnia and Croatia are well loaded by the remaining army stockpiles as well.

These weapons are exported illegally through the use of already established illegal transnational channels such as human trafficking. These groups might have been engaged to help Saddam Hussein and according to Dejan, “The series of contracts, secretly closed between Saddam's and Milosevic's governments in late 1999, resulted in a flow of weapons and equipment to Baghdad, including armor-piercing missiles, rockets, anti-tank ammunition, tank engines, various explosives, chemical stabilizers, and grenade launchers, as well as missile fuel, MiG aircraft engines, spare parts and expert advice on how to configure air defenses against the US.” The human trafficking and illegal arms sales are deeply intertwined as both of them are embedded in the pervasive culture of corruption.

The people of these regions are sick and tired of being exploited by transnational criminals. While writing this paper, I came to a conclusion that the population explosion that flooded the post communist market and the revolution of economic globalization, accompanied with human violence and corruption are the major factor that created this vulnerable society of millions of people. The sweeping economic globalization forced the rural people for migration and dispossessed them to slavery and exploitation. Now, the new market economy is stretching its arms and taking advantage of this vulnerable society.

It is not the first time happening in the world, as a matter of fact the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America brought a similar social distinction to the population. Now, the newly developing countries are facing the same challenges and repeating the same pattern. While rapid economic growth brings luxury and new technology to some, others are being consumed and sucked into this system to be used as a cheap labor and to be taken advantage of. The only care we can show this social stratification, is to eliminate the extreme poverty. You have read that how people in these regions live on a daily basis of hand to mouth, and how they become vulnerable to trafficking and slavery when they are in desperate need of money. To make matters worse, population rate is high in the third world countries, and rural regions of the world as opposed to the developed countries. The population growth rate of France is 0.5, Germany -0.3, UK 0.27, US 0.88, Italy -0.02 compared to developing nations of Asia such as Cambodia 1.75, Bangladesh 2.02 ; Nepal 2.05 and Philippines 1.73. The surplus population of these vulnerable societies is in fact born outside the system of universal human rights. 1 out of 10 children in these poor regions will become prostitutes, as if they were destined to do that.

Sadly, the world is generating this human rights distinction by tolerating it with ignorance and silence. Amnesty International, Greenpeace and UN have millions of supporters worldwide, but their concentration on fighting against human trafficking is very little compared to their over-all mission. The only main groups working against human trafficking is Free the Slaves in America, and Anti-Slavery International in Britain. ( Bales, Kevin p.258) But together they have fewer than 15 thousand members world-wide. And the rest of their work is trapped by public ignorance.

In America, people are not aware of what is going on outside of the border. It is a common notion to think that the world evolves around them, and other issues are simply treated with ignorance and arrogance. It is written in the first article of universal declaration of human rights, that: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the universal Declaration of Human Rights, without distinction of any kind, such as race, creed, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

Still, the world itself generates the distinction between people based on their race and economic level. The reason why human trafficking does not get the public awareness as it is suppose to is because, the victims are all from a small countries. Not just human trafficking, terrorism has long been existent in our society, yet it only got mass media attention after 9/11 and America got involved in it. The human trafficking issue that involves millions of women and children in different parts of the world should be a world phenomenon that must be addressed. After all, we need to remember that “The tears of the red, yellow, black, brown and white man are all the same” and start caring for things that are going on across your border as well.