United Nations News Centre - Strengthen preventative measures for victims of forced labour, UN expert tells United States

"Maria Grazia Giammarinaro noted that while the United States has made great strides in combatting trafficking among persons who are forced into sexual slavery, mechanisms were lacking among those who are trafficked for labour exploitation and domestic servitude."

"“In order to identify trafficking and protect trafficked persons’ rights, it is necessary to adopt a preventive approach and minimize vulnerabilities of people exposed to trafficking, especially undocumented migrants,” Ms. Giammarinaro said."

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United Nations News Centre - Strengthen preventative measures for victims of forced labour, UN expert tells United States:

Adam LaRoche spent 10 days undercover in Southeast Asia to help rescue underage sex slaves | For The Win

Adam LaRoche spent 10 days undercover in Southeast Asia to help rescue underage sex slaves | For The Win:

What does human trafficking look like today? How do we stop it? | KUOW News and Information

What does human trafficking look like today? How do we stop it? | KUOW News and Information:

Lack of clear definitions on human trafficking in South Asia is hurting victims | WNN – Women News Network

Source:| WNN – Women News Network:

(WNN/IRIN) Jakarta, INDONESIA, SOUTHEAST ASIA: A 2012 UNODC – UN Office on Drugs and Crime report on human trafficking recorded more than 10,000 cases of trafficking in persons in South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific between 2007-2010, but it is unclear what the situation is today. Tens of thousands of people are vulnerable to being trafficked in Southeast Asia, with governments struggling to understand and respond collectively to the problem, say experts and government officials.

Continue:
http://womennewsnetwork.net/2013/05/07/definition-on-human-trafficking-south-asia/

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[East Asia Forum] Human trafficking in Asia going online | For Yap State Citizens

Source: [East Asia Forum] 

Authors: Alistair D. B. Cook and Caitríona H. Heinl, RSIS

Human traffickers have an increasing number of targets online in Southeast Asia. The ASEAN region has a growing population of over 600 million — and internet users have doubled. Technology-facilitated trafficking is more diffuse and adaptive than initially thought, but online tools can also be creatively employed to counter cross-border trafficking.

Continue:
http://concernedyapcitizens.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/east-asia-forum-human-trafficking-in-asia-going-online/

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Professor researches human trafficking in Thailand, Cambodia

Source: Indiana State University

By: Jennifer Sicking, ISU Communications and Marketing Staff
January 9, 2013

Though Catherine Tucker spent two weeks of December in Thailand
and Cambodia, she didn't spend it on the beach or seeing famous ruins.
 The Indiana State University assistant professor and coordinator of the
 clinical mental health counseling program traveled with Destiny Rescue
to learn about human trafficking.

Destiny Rescue is an international non-profit organization that helps
 children leave the sex trade. It also provide counseling and training
for new employment in sewing shops, jewelry making, coffee houses
or hair salons. Destiny Rescue provides housing and income so the
children are less likely to be forced back into the sex industry.

"It's a natural extension of my clinical and research work with children
 who have experienced trauma," Tucker said about her work in
 combating human trafficking.

Read more:

http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=3390

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Prevent migrant smuggling to reduce human trafficking

http://www.unodc.org/eastasiaandpacific/en/2012/11/bali-process/story.html

SOURCE:UNODC

 

Bali (Indonesia), 12 November 2012 - Today, the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Organized Crime celebrated its 10 years of existence at the Tenth Anniversary Commemorative Conference that took place in Bali. 

Covering 46 countries in Asia and the Pacific, the Bali Process is a unique forum bringing states together in response to human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

Speaking at the inaugural session, Gary Lewis, UNODC Regional Representative for East Asia and the Pacific, called on Bali Process members to "end impunity and put the criminals out of business." 

In his scene-setting speech Mr. Lewis focused on human trafficking in Southeast Asia - specifically the Greater Mekong Sub-region - and the challenges posed by the related crimes of human trafficking and migrant smuggling. 

 

Mr. Lewis noted that "migrant smuggling has become a major driver in the process of irregular migration. As such, it makes people vulnerable to human trafficking. But the flip side is this, if you prevent migrant smuggling you can contribute to preventing human trafficking." 

Mr. Lewis concluded with nine practical recommendations to tackle human trafficking and migrant smuggling in the region. 

Background: 
With respect to human trafficking and migrant smuggling, UNODC's mandate is to promote global adherence to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols against migrant smuggling andhuman trafficking, and to assist states in implementing these instruments. UNODC is already engaged with many countries in the regions covered by the Bali Process and is providing practical support to the development of intelligence-led policing practices, specialist investigative skills, and victim-centered approaches to combating human trafficking. 

For example, in Southeast Asia, UNODC's PATROL Project facilitates cross border law enforcement cooperation through Border Liasion Offices and providing hands-on training to the border guards, police and immigration officers posted to equip them with knowledge and skills to better detect and respond to human trafficking and migrant smuggling. 

Another example of UNODC's work is the Voluntary Reporting System on Migrant Smuggling and Related Conduct (VRS-MSRC) in support of the Bali Process. The VRS-MSRC is an internet-based, secure system to collect, share and analyse data on irregular migration and migrant smuggling.

Sex selection in states spurring women trafficking, says activist | Firstpost

http://www.firstpost.com/living/sex-selection-in-states-spurring-women-trafficking-says-activist-473155.html

Source: Firstpost

Sept. 29, 2012
by Viji Sundaram

Republished from New America Media

Urmi Basu, founder and trustee of the Kolkata-based New Light shelter program for prostitutes and their children recently met New America Media editor, Viji Sundaram. The trip comes ahead of the US broadcast of the documentary, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which features the work of the activist.

The heart-wrenching film takes the readers to several countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and India where young girls are victims of unspeakable violence, but where women’s rights activists are providing them opportunities to get back on their feet when they leave their oppressors. The four-hour film was inspired by the widely acclaimed book of the same name by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn.

When and why did you start New Light, and could you describe the work you are doing?

Basu: I started New Light in 2000, a few years after I had an opportunity to visit a red light area in Mumbai while I was a graduate student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. That visit, as well as seeing the [1988] film, Salaam Bombay, made a lasting impression on me, especially when I realized that no concerted effort was being made to bring civic services to families living in the red light areas.

You say the widespread preference for boy children over girls has contributed to the problem of India’s child trafficking. What’s the connection there?

Basu: The gender ratio in parts of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Bihar has resulted in a shortage of girls in those states. In some places, for every seven boys there are only three girls. Traffickers see this as a business opportunity. They are bringing girls from Bangladesh and Nepal to those states.

Courtesy: New America Media

Are these traffickers from outside places?

Basu: It’s a total misconception to think that traffickers come from outside places. Most of them are from the villages from which the girls are trafficked. They entice parents with promises of jobs and a better life for their children. Parents, who are living in utter poverty, hand over their children, believing they will send money back home. For a month or two, the trafficker sends the parents some money. Then the trafficker goes back to the village and tells the parents that their child left him without his knowledge.

The New Light shelter is based in the heart of Kolkata’s red light district. The shelter houses children of prostitutes. But how do you persuade a prostitute to give up her child? 

Basu: Most of the girls in the shelter are former school dropouts. What does a mother do? Most times the mothers are grateful we have taken their children in.

We take the sons of prostitutes in as well because about 54 percent of the children who are sexually abused in India are boys. They too need to be given opportunities. And besides, when they are with us, we can teach them that girls need to be respected.

In a 2011 report, the US State Department ranked India as a “tier-2 country” in terms of sex trafficking, by which it means that the government is not doing enough to eliminate the problem, although it is taking steps to curb it. What is your take on this? Do you think that in the last couple of decades things have improved for women?

Basu: Women in India are far better off today than they were 20 years ago. They are better educated, entering the workforce in larger numbers and empowering themselves.

The PBS documentary features trafficked and abused girls in East and West Africa and several Southeast Asian countries, as well. How does the problem there compare to what it is in India?

Basu: India is far ahead of Southeast Asian countries when it comes to prosecuting cases of trafficking because of the laws the government has passed.

Also, after Hillary Clinton visited Kolkata earlier this year and met with a number of NGOs who are working in the field of human trafficking, she made it clear that she was committed to doing everything she could to end (what she calls “modern day slavery.”) That sends out a signal to us that we need to pay attention to the way girls are treated. She said she was our (the NGOs) greatest cheerleader.

Bollywood actor Aamir Khan has used his celebrity to make a television show that shine a light on some of India’s social ills, including child sexual abuse. Has that helped your cause?

Basu: If there’s one human being we should take our hats off to, it is Aamir Khan. He is someone I have a lot of respect for. If he ran for political office tomorrow, I’d vote for him.

How did New Light come on the radar of the documentary makers?

Basu: I’ve known Nicholas Kristof for some seven or eight years now. He has visited our shelter and seen what we are doing – in fact, he has mentioned us in his book, Half the Sky. He must have seen we were not a fly-by-night operation.

It must be really expensive to run all the shelters and feed and educate so many children. Do you think that after people see the documentary, donations to New Light will spike?

Basu: We have been getting donations all these years from people in different countries, some of whom have not even visited us. Our operating budget is about $250,000 a year, about 80 percent of which comes from foreign donors. If the documentary brings in more donations, we will welcome that.

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In a world hungry for cheap shrimp, migrants labor overtime in Thai sheds

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-a-world-hungry-for-cheap-shrimp-migrants-labor-overtime-in-thai-sheds/2012/09/19/3435a90e-01a4-11e2-b257-e1c2b3548a4a_story_1.html

Source:  Washington Post

Jason Motlagh/For The Washington Post - Burmese migrant workers peel shrimp at a processing factory in Samut Sakhon province in Thailand. High standards allow the factory to export its seafood to the United States.

By:  Jason Motlagh   September 19

MAHACHAI, Thailand — At an age when she should have been in a classroom, Thazin Mon discovered her knack for peeling shrimp. To help support her Burmese migrant family, the 14-year-old pulled 16-hour shifts, seven days a week, for less than $3 a day. “I am uneducated, so I work. I have to work bravely,” she says.

Although she was the best peeler in the factory, speed was never enough. Mon was beaten if she slowed down, she said, and when she asked for a day off to rest hands swollen with infection, her boss kicked her and threatened rape.

Thanks to a bottomless appetite for cheap shrimp in the West, Burmese migrants such as Mon are the backbone of a Thai shrimp industry that is the world’s third largest. The United States is Thailand’s top customer, accounting for a third of the country’s annual shrimp exports.

Rights groups say that overseas demand for shrimp products in greater volume has fueled a culture of exploitation in the Thai industry. They insist that the failure of foreign companies to sufficiently verify the origin of the shrimpthey import allows abuses to persist.

“If you look at the cost of shrimp overseas, it’s very, very cheap, and that comes from the exploitation inherent in the shrimp industry,” says Andy Hall, an expert on migration at Mahidol University who tracks Burmese labor in the Thai seafood industry.

Brisk business with major U.S. retailers such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam’s Club and Red Lobster pumps more than $1 billion in revenue each year into the Thai economy, the second largest in Southeast Asia. As Thai living standards have risen, a shortage of unskilled labor has attracted tens of thousands of Burmese migrants looking to escape the poverty and job scarcity that has gripped their homeland for decades.

Most head to Samut Sakhon province, the heart of the processing industry just south of the capital, Bangkok, where modern facilities line the highway alongside fast-food chains and car dealerships. The more prominent factories are the size of football fields, with neon signage and billboards that feature smiling children. But there’s a darker side behind the scenes, activists say.

Of an estimated 400,000 migrants at work in the province, only about 70,000 are legally registered. The rest are employed illegally inanonymous peeling sheds that supply the larger companies that must fill massive orders from abroad. At this lower end of the supply chain, according to migrant activists, crooked brokers and employers trap scores of Burmese in abusive conditions tantamount to slavery, particularly in the shrimp industry.

“The small factory owners know that most of their workers are undocumented, so they can control the workforce however they want — such as locking workers in until they finish their work,” says Sompong Sakaew, a labor activist based in Mahachai, the provincial capital. “There are also teenagers between 12 and 17 years old in the workforce.”

Sold into waking nightmare

Problems for Burmese migrants typically start as soon as they link up with brokers who promise steady work and a decent salary, only to sell them into a nearly inescapable cycle of debt bondage.

Min Oo, 28, a Burmese farmer who lost his home in a flood, said he paid a broker the equivalent of $500 to smuggle him across the border to Samut Sakhon, with the guarantee of a minimum-wage (about $10 a day) factory job. Instead, he said, the broker sold him into a waking nightmare, with 18-hour workdays in a shrimp-processing factory and net earnings of no more than $20 a week, leaving almost nothing to send home.

In some cases, migrant workers and rights groups allege, police officials or their relatives hold an ownership stake in unregistered peeling sheds. More commonly, the critics say, the authorities or those they protect shake down undocumented workers for bribes to supplement their incomes, knowing that the migrants would rather pay up on the spot than be deported to Burma.

Despite occasional police action and robust anti-trafficking laws, Sakaew, the labor activist, estimates that fully a quarter of the 1,200 to 1,300 factories in Samut Sakhon province are unregistered and, therefore, ripe for abuse. With so much profit-induced apathy on the Thai side, activists say reform pressure must come from Western companies whose trade partnerships drive the shrimp industry.

Codes of conduct

It is difficult to establish precise links between the larger Thai companies that process shrimp of dubious origin and the Western companies whose consumers increasingly demand ethical sourcing.

To do business overseas, Thai companies must qualify for membership in the Thai Frozen Foods Association, which adheres to globally recognized codes of conduct and carries out unscheduled inspections. Spokesman Arthon Piboonthanapatana asserts that anyone found guilty of labor ­abuses would be expelled. In more than three years of inspections, he said, this has never happened.

“If the shrimp is from TFFA members, I can 100 percent guarantee” that it is produced without labor exploitation, he said.

But critics say that until the Thai shrimp industry requires larger factories to provide records of lower-level suppliers and follows through with random inspections, the shrimp it exports will remain tainted by human trafficking and labor abuses.

For the past three years, the State Department has given Thailand a poor grade on human trafficking, citing it among countries that do not fully comply with the minimum standards for efforts to combat the problem.

After the release of the department’s report in 2012, Thai Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said his country would improve its performance by strengthening cooperation among agencies tasked with fighting human trafficking.

Motlagh reported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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Living In Bondage: Thailand's Illegal Workers | Pulitzer Center

http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/thailand-immigration-human-trafficking-politics-burmese-refugees

Source:  Pulitzer Center

Published August 30, 2012

ADAM JANOFSKY, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER

Human trafficking brokers can easily transport workers illegally across Thai borders. A small wooden boat crosses the Mekong River from Laos to northern Thailand. Image by Adam Janofsky. Laos, 2012.

Ko Aung Kyaw isn’t your average worker, but then again neither are most Burmese refugees.

While other Southeast Asian countries are seeing rapid economic growth and progressive social changes, Burma stands alone for having a stagnant economy, poor healthcare system, and one of the most totalitarian governments in the world. Although changes over the past few months have brought a wave of optimism, many Burmese citizens are desperate to escape to neighboring countries like Thailand.

Kyaw said that he left Burma at the end of December 2011 with no life goals. He came in contact with a broker by the name of Kyaw Moe and agreed to pay him the equivalent of $150 for providing transportation to Thailand and producing a fake migrant work permit.

When Kyaw arrived at a canning factory in Kanchanaburi—a large province that borders Burma to the west—he was told that the brokerage fee was $400. With a daily income of $6 with which he needed to pay for uniform fees, rent, food, and other necessities, Kyaw found himself stuck in a typical situation of debt bondage—like many victims of human trafficking he was faced with a nearly-impossible debt.

Kyaw’s situation was hardly unique. According to Burma’s Deputy Labor Minister Myint Thein, 700 undocumented Burmese workers are employed in the same factory where Kyaw was working. While there are almost 3 million legal Burmese immigrants, it’s impossible to know the number of Burmese refugees who work illegally in Thailand, partaking in every form of manual labor.

As one of the world’s largest rice, fish, and fruit exporters, Thailand depends on its agriculture for a large share of its wealth, and its agriculture depends on illegal immigrants. Lax policing of human trafficking and outdated laws have led to a system of exploitation—on boats, in factories, and on farms throughout the country.

The fight against human trafficking and debt bondage has been a losing battle for the past several decades, but as of last month Thailand might be forced to clean up its act.

Thailand was expected to be listed as a Tier 3 country—the lowest ranking possible—on the U.S. State Department’s 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report. The consequences could have been disastrous and might have led to the Thai fishing industry losing its largest customers and facing trade sanctions across the board. However, a last minute exception granted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let Thailand remain as a Tier 2 country as long as an immediate plan to stop human trafficking was put in place.

A few weeks later, on July 24, 2012, a meeting was held in Bangkok with representatives from Burma and other Southeast Asian countries, with the goal of tackling the region’s problem with human trafficking. Although the Thai government suggests that all neighboring countries need to work together to solve this issue, there is little said about the plan itself.

Kyaw quickly realized that he was essentially an indentured slave to his broker, and he decided to flee his factory after working there for only one month. He managed to take public transportation to Bangkok and now lives in Pathum Thani, a province just north of the city. He currently works at a car equipment factory, where he earns almost twice his old salary, works normal hours, and doesn’t have to pay off a broker. But he is still an illegal immigrant.

As for an estimated 1 million other Burmese immigrants working illegally in Thailand, it will take time to see how they will be protected in the future or if they will face deportation in the country’s effort to stop human trafficking.

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• Illegal Burmese Fishermen Rescued From Traffickers | Pattaya Daily News - Pattaya Newspaper, Powerful news at your fingertips (trafficking-monitor.blogspot.com)

Call for Trafficking Action

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/arrests-08152012135408.html

2012-08-21

Source: Radio Free Asia

The heads of two companies linked to human trafficking in Cambodia are likely to have fled the country.

RFA

CARAM-Cambodia Executive Director Ya Navuth speaks with reporters, Aug. 14, 2012.

The directors of two labor recruiting companies in Cambodia accused of human trafficking by more than 100 victims are on the run and likely hiding outside of the country, authorities said, after several rights organizations pressured the government to apprehend the men.

Rights groups CARAM-Cambodia, Licadho and Adhoc said they have received complaints from 102 victims against domestic labor recruiter T&P Co. Ltd. and Taiwanese firm Giant Ocean International Fishery Co. Ltd. facing charges of human trafficking, rights abuses, torture, and kidnapping.

The three groups jointly appealed to the Ministry of Labor, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, and the Ministry of Justice to order the two firms to compensate the trafficking victims and to arrest their local chiefs.

But according to Anti-human Trafficking Deputy Director General Chiv Phally, who is investigating the allegations, the two directors have fled the country to avoid arrest and questioning by the court.

“T&P Co. is owned by Sam Pisey, a Khmer national,” the investigator said. “Sam Pisey is hiding outside Cambodia because he knows that the police have had an arrest warrant out for him since 2011.”

The Taiwanese local head of Giant Ocean International “is hiding outside of Cambodia as well,” he said, adding that investigations are under way.

Arrest complicated

Moeun Tola, the head of the labor program at the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), said that while Giant Ocean International is headquartered in Taiwan, the company had maintained a branch office in Phnom Penh which functioned as a domestic labor supply firm.

The office has been closed since early 2012, according to the rights groups.

“They had operated the office without the company logo or any signage,” Moeun Tola said, adding that he had no contact information for the branch office since it was officially shuttered.

Moeun Tola said that the CLEC recently had trafficking victims take them to the place they were had been recruited, only to find a vacated apartment building.

He confirmed that the authorities have been unable to identify the branch office’s director and that the court is conducting an investigation with the aim of issuing an arrest warrant.

CLEC assisted in the rescue of 10 fishermen allegedly trafficked to Taiwan through Giant Ocean International in 2011 and helped to rehabilitate four fishermen rescued in June from a fishing boat owned by the company that was operating in South African waters.

Moeun Tola charged that T&P Co. was “backed by a high-ranking government official” and that Sam Pisey is only “a small piece of the puzzle,” without elaborating further.

Neither Giant Ocean International nor T&P officials could be reached for immediate comment.

Joint appeal

CARAM-Cambodia, Licadho, and Adhoc last week called on the authorities to apprehend the men and to seek compensation for victims who never received their salaries while working as domestic servants in Malaysia or on fishing boats around Southeast Asia.

“The compensation must be on a case-by-case basis. Some victims want compensation, some want the companies’ directors to be prosecuted,” CARAM-Cambodia Executive Director Ya Navuth told a press conference.

“The decision should be made by the court. We, as the civil societies, can only raise the victims’ concerns so that the government can resolve the issue.”

Licadho President Pung Chhiv Kek said that some of the victims who had worked as maids in Malaysia claimed they had been abused and raped, but that the two companies never sought justice for them.

“This problem can’t be swept away,” she said. “The victims have been calling my cell phone.”

Pung Chhiv Kek told RFA that some of the maids she had spoken to said they were placed in the homes of the two companies’ directors, who had used cameras to monitor them. Others said they were forced to sleep in the garage of the homes they worked in and were not given enough food to eat.

A 32-year-old trafficking victim named Mao Sopheak, who said he was sent to work in Fiji’s fishing industry in 2011, told reporters that he had been promised U.S. $150 a month. Instead, he said, he was forced to work 18-20 hours a day and was given no financial compensation.

“Sometimes I worked 29-30 hours. And sometimes they only gave me food every two to three days,” he said.

Trafficking

Precise figures on human trafficking in Cambodia are hard to come by, but the country is known to be a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking.

A primary destination for trafficking victims from Cambodia is neighboring Thailand, where an estimated 100,000 Cambodian migrant workers are living illegally.

Many of them are recruited with the promise of better wages, but soon find themselves deceived about payment and length of service, and without any rights as illegal residents.

In 2011, more than 100 Cambodian men forced into labor on Thai fishing boats were repatriated after escaping from their traffickers or being rescued during raids, the U.S. State Department said in its 2012 global Trafficking in Persons report.

In June, the department honored Cambodian trafficking victim Vannak Anan Prum, who suffered years of forced labor on fishing boats in Thailand and on a plantation in neighboring Malaysia, as one of its “Heroes Working to End Modern-Day Slavery” for artwork he published about his experience.

Reported by Sok Serey and by Samean Yun for RFA’s Khmer service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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New Eastern Europe - Sex trafficking from East to West: A flourishing criminal industry

http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/node/396

Source: New Eastern Europe


2012-07-19


Author: Charlotte Guériaux

 Human trafficking has become a large and lucrative business for criminal groups. Everyday throughout all Europe, hundreds of thousands of women (and girls, men and boys) are threatened and transported across borders, often illegally, and most are eventually used for sexual exploitation in the “sex industry”. Human trafficking is today one of the three largest organised criminal businesses worldwide, along with drugs trafficking and trafficking in weapons. In particular, trafficking in women from 

Eastern and Southern Europe has grown significantly in the past two decades.

The United Nations estimates that there are 2.7 million victims of trafficking around the world; of these, 80 per cent are women and children. This modern-day slavery includes different forms, such as trafficking in women for sexual exploitation (when women are lured by promises and forced into sexual slavery) or trafficking for forced labour, for instance in agricultural or construction work. Human trafficking is also about commercial sexual exploitation of children in tourism or trafficking of body organs. The clear common characteristic is the abuse of the vulnerability of the victims.

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is the most socially damaging but also the most lucrative market. The International Labour Organisation estimates that this transnational organised criminal activity has the annual value of 39 billion dollars.

 A contemporary story: “Igor and Victoria”

Let’s take the story of Igor and Victoria to illustrate what is human trafficking in Ukraine. Igor could not find a job in his hometown because of the high rate of unemployment. This is why he agreed to leave Ukraine to find paid, although illegal, work in Portugal as a labourer. After paying a “contact” 300 dollars he was promised to get an 800 dollar-a-month job in a factory, which would be enough money to live there with his wife. They left the country together, quite optimistic. However, once they arrived, they were coerced, threatened and beaten. Igor’s patrons forced Victoria into prostitution. They never got paid and no one listened to their complaints. They eventually managed to escape but they ended up with nothing and at a great cost to their health, emotional well-being and standing in the community. Igor and Victoria are classic victims of human trafficking. This kind of case study is presented by specific public institutions or NGOs: the message is clear, anyone can become a victim of trafficking.

Igor and Victoria escaped their traffickers but thousands of people in Europe do not have this chance. The life conditions of a trafficked victim are often extremely difficult, to put it mildly. These people are not only forced to live in unsanitary and drastic conditions, but they also suffer from constant threats and emotional or physical abuse. Deception, rape, sleep deprivation are the routines of a sex trafficking victim, connected to forced abortions and probable contraction of AIDS, Sexually transmitted diseases, or Hepatitis B and C.

The “Europe of sex”: The informal routes of human trafficking

Clear classification of certain countries as origin, transit, and destination countries is not as simple as one might suppose. Europe seems to be divided into two when it is the question of human trafficking: Eastern, Central and the Balkans are the source and the transit places, while Western, Northern and partly Southern Europe are the final destinations. Ukraine, Poland and Bulgaria as sources, transit and destination countries deserve a look to understand the broad and the variety of this European “sex economy”.

To start, Ukraine is today both a source and a destination country for trafficked women. The country remains one of the largest exporters of women not just to the European Union, but also to the Middle East and South East Asia. On the other hand, the country is also becoming a sex tourism destination, with new trafficking victims that originate from South East Asia, Africa or other Eastern European states. Moreover, domestic trafficking in Ukraine is extremely significant: most women work as prostitutes against their will and can suffer from other forms of exploitation such as forced labour. An alarming 7,000 to 8,000 cases of sexual abuse and exploitation are officially reported annually (UNICRI). And the number of street children has grown progressively each year. Surveys have shown that more than 30 per cent of the prostitutes in Ukraine are aged 11 to 18 years old.

Poland is another scenario. An EU member state, Poland is a transit and destination country for victims of sex trafficking because of its central geographical location in Europe, between rich Western EU countries and the poorer states of the former Soviet Union. The country remains also a country of origin for this “sex industry”: women are trafficked to Western Europe, Japan and North America. Since 2000, Poland made significant steps in the fight against organised crime and sex trafficking in ratifying the relevant international treaties and in enhancing its legal instruments, in particular provisions on the protections of trafficked victims. In the country, human trafficking is punishable under the criminal code for “forced prostitution,” “pimping,” and “trafficking.”

A point to underline is that traditional human trafficking flows to Europe from the Russian Federation or Ukraine have decreased; while the “sex industry” has significantly developed in South Eastern Europe, especially in Bulgaria and in Romania.

New trends in sex trafficking?

Bulgaria and Romania hold the record for the most severe flows of trafficked victims in Europe. They are more important than any other European origin countries in terms of the wide range of destinations of the trafficking.

In Bulgaria, organised prostitution and trafficking in human beings are certainly the most profitable criminal activity, even if this market has contracted recently due to the economic turmoil in Southern Europe. Bulgaria is a source country for human trafficking and to a lesser extent a transit and destination country for women and children trafficked into the sex slave industry. Today, between 11,000 and 21,000 Bulgarian prostitutes are exploited abroad, in particular in Germany, in Greece and in the Netherlands. This organised crime still generates the largest revenues for Bulgarian criminal networks, amounting to nearly 800 million dollars (650 million euro) per year.

Some populations are extremely vulnerable to different forms of trafficking, such as the Roma community. Ethnic Roma people represent more than the half of trafficked persons in Bulgaria due to ethnic discrimination, poverty, the high level of unemployment, homelessness and complicity of family members trafficking their own.

A new trend in the European “sex industry” is the growing diversification of the origins of human trafficking victims: new nationalities have appeared in the last years, such as Chinese, Paraguayan, Sierra Leonean and Uzbek victims.

The increase in human trafficking is obviously a product of economic globalisation, of labour mobility and technological advances - especially through the rapid and unregulated enticement and movement of human capital via the internet. This multifaceted and growing phenomenon can also be explained by the significant and progressive demand for personal services in the developed world and the increase in unemployment among women in some countries.

Most trafficking victims are unwilling to participate in this European “sex market”. However, the “push and pull factors” can explain the voluntary departure of people from their homelands, pushing women into the hands of traffickers. These factors include economics, violence and corruption of officials. The increase in human trafficking in Moldova can thus be explained by high rates of unemployment, few economic opportunities and corruption that all feed a black market economy that sells goods as well as people.

Moreover, many women from Eastern Europe that have been willingly trafficked for sexual exploitation to the Netherlands often end up in the hands of traffickers and organised criminal groups. Victimised and usually threatened, these women are the victims of different criminal networks collaborating throughout Europe, especially from Eastern and Central Europe, and their related networks in the Netherlands and former Yugoslavia. In the Netherlands, the recognition of the social problem of victimisation of prostitutes is thus a recent process because prostitution is a legal economic activity there.

In the former communist countries, trafficking is the product of transnational political criminal relations and of progressive and strong relationships between individual criminals, organised crime networks, corrupt officers, police, the judiciary and high profile government officers. Through the unregulated transition from socialism toward democracy and a market economy, organised crime groups and corrupted officials have seized control of much of the state apparatus and business sector, leading in many countries to the criminalisation of the state and economy. Europol, the European law enforcement agency, reported that criminal organisations use a rich variety of corrupt means to obstruct law enforcement and judicial processes.

The key: political commitment

Human trafficking is an abhorrent violation of the dignity and rights of human beings. In January 2010, this notion of human trafficking was confirmed by the European Court on Human Rights, which recognised trafficking in human beings, in line with Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as a form of slavery and forced labour.

However, the overall number of victims trafficked in the EU is still unknown, and only estimates are available. What is clear is the fact that the number of victims is much higher than the official statistics. Indeed, most of the victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation are part of a “hidden population” made up of illegal migrants, which is one of the most challenging problems that faces researchers. The defencelessness and invisibility of the victims, such as children or poor and desperate women, as well as the lack of public debate and responses from the Member States to commercial sexual exploitation of people, are some of the most serious features of these forms of abuse.

Organised crime is without a doubt a threat to European citizens, businesses, state institutions as well as to the economy as a whole. A comprehensive and transnational strategy must be developed to fight these organised criminal activities. It is necessary to develop methods for preventing children and women from falling into the hands of traffickers and protect the trafficked victims who often end up penniless and without rights in foreign countries. At the European level, EU agencies such as Europol, Eurojust and CEPOL are dedicated to the combat against these criminal networks operating throughout Europe. NGOs are also very active in this field, such as the Polish section of La Strada.

The key to tackling the problem is political commitment because there is clearly a lack of official concern about these realities and the subsequent absence of reliable statistical data.

Charlotte Guériaux is a French student in a double masters program in European politics and studies between the Institute of Political Sciences of Strasbourg and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her academic interests include Central and Eastern Europe politics, organised crime and corruption, and energy security.

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