Global Report on Trafficking of Persons

On Thursday February 13 SIMN was present at the United Nations in New York for the presentation of the “Global report on Trafficking of Persons.” Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) underlined some of the main points of the report.
 
The term trafficking in persons can be misleading: it places emphasis on the transaction aspects of a crime that is more accurately described as enslavement. Exploitation of people, day after day. For years on end.

After much neglect and indifference, the world is waking up to the reality of a modern form of slavery. Hearing this wake-up call, politicians as well as ordinary people ask me two sets of questions. First, they want to know how big the crime of human trafficking really is: how many victims are there? Who are the traffickers, what are their routes and their gains? What are the trends namely is the problem getting ever more severe? Why and where? Second, people want to know what to do, individually and collectively.

First, over the past few years, the number of countries that have taken steps to implement the foremost international agreement in this area - the UN Protocol against Trafficking in Persons - has doubled. However, there are still many countries, particularly in Africa, that lack the necessary legal instruments.

Second, the number of convictions is increasing, but not proportionately to the growing awareness (and
probably, size) of the problem. Most convictions still take place in only a few countries. As of 2007/08, two out of every five countries covered by this report had not recorded a single conviction.

Third, sexual exploitation is by far the most commonly identified form of human trafficking (79%), followed by forced labor (18%). This may be the result of statistical bias. By and large the exploitation of women tends to be visible, in city centers, or along highways. Because it is more frequently reported, sexual exploitation has become the most documented type of trafficking in aggregate statistics. In comparison, other forms of exploitation are under-reported: forced or bonded labor; domestic servitude and forced marriage; organ removal; and the exploitation of children in begging, the sex trade, and warfare.

Fourth, a disproportionate number of women are involved in human trafficking, not only as victims (which we knew), but also as traffickers (first documented here). Female offenders have a more prominent role in present-day slavery than in most other forms of crime. This fact needs to be addressed; especially the case where former victims have become perpetrators.

Fifth, most trafficking is national or regional, carried out by people whose nationality is the same as that of their victims. There are also notable cases of long-distance trafficking. Europe is the destination for victims from the widest range of origins, while victims from Asia are trafficked to the widest range of destinations. The Americas are prominent both as the origin and destination of victims in the human trade.

This report increases our partial understanding of the forces at play in modern slave markets. Yet internationally standardized data are still not available. As a consequence, we still lack a global understanding of the subject, and of how its components interact to make the whole. We do not have as yet the logical categories needed to establish multidimensional data bases. We should be, but we are not, able to segment today’s slave markets into their components (demand, supply, trafficking, and related prices). We must, but cannot, catalogue (for lack of data) the different types of slavery: exploitation through child-begging in Europe is different from what goes on in a brothel, or on a street corner in Australia. Preventive measures must also be adapted to take into account that an Asian father sells his under-age daughter under circumstances different from what forces an African teenager into a rag-tag army of killers, or what pushes an illegal immigrant into a sweat shop in the Americas. Measures to rescue victims and punish criminals must vary accordingly.

In his final remarks, Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime pleaded with social scientists in academia, and especially in governments, to work more intensively with UNODC to generate the logical categories and the statistical information needed for evidence-based, antislavery policy. He said: “The crisis we face of fragmented knowledge and disjointed responses intensifies a crime that shames us all.”

For the full report see: www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report
or http://www.ungift.org/