ARTICLE 1

Human Sex Trafficking

By
Neha A. Deshpande, 2013
Human trafficking is defined as any form of recruiting, transporting,
transferring, harboring, or receiving a person by means of threat or
use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, or
deception. There are approximately 800,000 people trafficked
across international borders annually and, of these, 80% are women
or girls and 50% are minors. Victims of sex trafficking are forced into
one or more forms of sexual exploitation. Sex trafficking is an
umbrella term that may include commercial sex work such as
prostitution, but also pornography, exotic dancing, stripping, live sex
shows, mail-order brides, military prostitution, and sexual tourism.
Although victims of sex trafficking can be of any age and of either
sex, the majority are women and adolescent girls. Although many
nations have outlawed the trafficking of females, it is still widely
prevalent on a global scale.
Methods of Coercion, Recruitment, and Enslavement
There are several recurrent tactics of manipulation used to coerce
victims into situations of sex trafficking. Most commonly, victims are
promised a good job, education, or citizenship in a foreign country
or offered a false marriage proposal that is turned into bondage.
Many victims are sold into the sex trade by parents, husbands, and
significant others, whereas others are unwillingly and forcibly
kidnapped by traffickers. The most common tactic of coercion used
among victims is debt bondage, an illegal practice where the victim
has to pledge personal services in order to repay some form of debt,
such as transportation into a foreign country or living expenses. Sex
traffickers may often approach families living in poverty and seek to

purchase girls or young women with the promise of a better life in a

richer nation or may approach women who are already engaged in
prostitution to be transported overseas. Another tactic used is
traumatic bonding, where the victim is instilled with deep-rooted
fear coupled with gratitude for being allowed to live. Traffickers
and/or pimps commonly recruit potential victims who are either
economically or socially vulnerable. These include women and girls
who are susceptible to poverty, societal isolation, drug addiction,
violence in the family, a history of child sexual abuse, family
dysfunction, school failure, or a history of criminal behavior. It may
also include orphans, women with physical disabilities, and those
who are innumerate and illiterate. Typically, victims are recruited
through either finesse or guerrilla pimping. Finesse pimping involves
using compassion, kindness, and psychological games such as
luring victims through small gifts of cash, clothes, shelter, food, and
drugs that make them feel obligated or indebted to the pimp.
Guerrilla pimping involves using violence, threats, intimidation, or
aggression in order to recruit and then enslave the victim. Once
women and girls become involved in the sex trafficking industry, it
becomes very difficult for them to escape. Victims may face legal
barriers, where the traffickers will confiscate or sequester all forms
of immigration and citizenry documentation. Language barriers,
fear, limited knowledge, and lack of money are other barriers that
women and girls may face to prevent them from escaping the sex
trafficking ring. In many parts of the world, legacy prostitution, or
the involuntary enslavement of future generations of girls in the sex
trafficking industry, becomes an expected societal norm.
(532 words)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3651545/ (27th March,
2016)

ARTICLE 2
Human Trafficking for Forced Labor
By
UNGIFT, 2016
The movement of people for the purpose of forced labor and
services usually involves an agent or recruiter, a transporter, and a
final employer, who will derive a profit from the exploitation of the
trafficked person. In some cases, the same person carries out all
these trafficking activities. With increased possibilities for travelling
and telecommunications, and with a growing demand for cheap
labor in the developed world on the one hand, and increasingly
restrictive visa regulations on the other, possible channels for legal
labor migration have diminished. Private recruitment agencies,
intermediaries and employers may take advantage of this situation
and lure potential migrants into exploitative employment.
Not only is the journey hazardous for the victims, but upon reaching
their destination they are subject to low paying menial work which is
often degrading and work that they have to undertake in conditions
close to slavery and bondage.
Trafficking for Forced Labor: Bonded Labor

One form of force or coercion is the use of a bond, or debt, to keep a

person in subjugation. This is referred to in law and policy as
"bonded labor" or "debt bondage." It is included as a form of
exploitation related to trafficking in the United Nations protocol on
trafficking in persons. Many workers around the world fall victim to
debt bondage when they assume an initial debt as part of the terms
of employment, or inherent debt in more traditional systems of
bonded labor. In South Asia, this phenomenon exists in huge
numbers as traditional bonded labor in which people are enslaved
from generation to generation.

Trafficking for Forced Labor: Involuntary Servitude

People become trapped in involuntary servitude when they believe
an attempted escape from their conditions would result in serious
physical harm or the use of legal coercion, such as the threat of
deportation. Victims are often economic migrants and low-skilled
laborers who are trafficked from less developed communities to
more prosperous and developed places. Many victims experience
physical and verbal abuse, breach of an employment contract, and
may perceive them to be in captivity- as often they are.
Trafficking for Forced Labor: Domestic Servitude
Domestic workers may be trapped in servitude through the use of
force or coercion, such as physical (including sexual) or emotional
abuse. Children are particularly vulnerable to domestic servitude
which occurs in private homes, and is often unregulated by public
authorities. For example, there is great demand in some wealthier
countries of Asia and the Persian Gulf for domestic servants who
sometimes fall victim to conditions of involuntary servitude.

Trafficking for Forced Labor: Child Labor

Most international organizations and national laws indicate that
children may legally engage in light work. By contrast, the worst
forms of child labour are being targeted for eradication by nations
across the globe. The sale and trafficking of children and their
entrapment in bonded and forced labor are particularly hazardous
types of child labor. Forced conscription into armed conflict is
another brutal practice affecting children, as armed militias recruit
some children by kidnapping, threat, and the promise of survival in
war-ravaged areas.
Victims of trafficking for forced labor lose their freedom, becoming
modern-day slaves. They usually experience permanent physical
and psychological harm, isolation from families and communities,
reduced opportunities for personal development, and restricted
movement. Victims are often wary of law enforcement and
psychologically dependent on their traffickers. Child victims are
denied educational access, which reinforces the cycle of poverty and
illiteracy.
(570 words)
http://www.ungift.org/knowledgehub/en/about/trafficking-for-forcedlabour.html (April 1st, 2016)

ARTICLE 3
Human Trafficking for Organ-Harvesting
By
U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking (2014)
The practice of organ transplantation has surged in the past 25
years. The increasing ability to transplant organs has led to
incidents of organ theft, the removal of an organ from an
individual said to be kidnapped, murdered or otherwise coerced or
deceived.
As in other forms of human trafficking, the extreme poverty of the
victims is exploited for the procurement of organs. The typical route
of organs is from the poorest to the richest countries, usually from

Southern to Northern nations. Persons trafficked for the removal of

organs encounter health risks both during and after the organ
removal. They usually lack post-operative care and may be sent
home days after the removal of an organ. Deteriorating health often
prevents the victim donors from performing any job in the future
that would generate income for themselves or for their family. As
with any form of human
trafficking, there are psychological effects. Victims report feelings of
shame, depression and in societies where organ removal is taboo,
social stigmatization.
Donors are recruited by a variety of illicit methods, including
coercion and fraud. The recruiter may coerce the victim to travel to
another country under the fraudulent pretense of a job. When the
donor realizes the job does not exist and that they do not have the
resources to return home, the recruiter will offer money for payment
of a donated organ. The sale of organs is illegal in most countries,
Iran being the exception. In some cases, a person is trafficked to
another country and killed for the organs. Crime and corruption is a
factor in all forms of trafficking. This is perhaps even more
pronounced in cases of trafficking for organ removal because of the
needed skills of various medical professionals in the transplantation
network. Little is known about the health consequences of
recipients. Since the donors are poorly screened, one would expect
an increased incidence of infections, illness and rejection of the
transplanted organ.
The driving force behind the trafficking of human beings for organ
removal is the great disparity between the need for organs and the
supply of viable organs available for transplant. There is a persistent
and increasing demand for organs worldwide. The desperation of
those in need of organ transplants creates a lucrative opportunity
exploited by trafficking networks. Recipients of organs generally live

in situations dramatically better than those of the victims and

provide the funds necessary, often innocently, to finance the
activities of the human traffickers. To date, organ recipients have
not been charged in criminal investigations related to the trafficking
of persons for the removal of organs. Thus far, wealthier nations,
where the demand for organs is great, have failed to address this
aspect of human trafficking, leaving the burden solely on the
countries of the victims and counties where the transplants are
conducted. Information available to date does not reveal a pattern
of victimization based on gender, however traffickers tend to target
the most poor and vulnerable in society, which disproportionately
tend to be women and children. The trafficking of human beings for
organ removal is usually not included among the agenda of
organizations working with human trafficking victims. The role of
medical professionals and legislation in most countries prohibiting
the sale of organs for transplantation adds to the complexity of this
form of trafficking. Although the number of trafficking victims for the
purpose of organ removal is small compared to other forms of
trafficking, the growing demand for viable organs underscores the
need for greater attention in this area.
(586 words)
http://www.sistersagainsttrafficking.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/USCSAHT-HT-and-Organ-Harvestingmodule.pdf (April 3rd, 2016)

ARTICLE 4
Social Impacts of Human Trafficking

By

The social impacts of human trafficking are rather universal.

This does not denote them as being not a serious matter,
nonetheless. Those who have truly experienced human trafficking
are the ones who must cope with the majority of the social impacts.
Although, HIV and AIDS can be spread because of human trafficking,
which can affect any and all of the population. Despite there being
shared impacts of human trafficking, the specific incidents tend to
differ from country to country.
If a person has had to experience human trafficking, they
have known a life worse than death itself. The conditions those are
forced to live in the brothels are thoroughly atrocious. Victims of
human trafficking have absolutely no freedoms, and experience
horrors such as abuse, violence, deprivation, and torture. These
kinds of conditions often lead to trauma. With that in mind, it can be
understandable how these people would feel the urge to escape.
Unfortunately, this misdeed will never go without punishment, which
are never minor. One person once had to submerge their body in a
barrel filled with water contaminated with scorpion and other
vermin, and sit there for one week. As if that wasnt enough, they
also had to sit in the darkness all-lonesome. Another way to make
the victims more cooperative would be to inject them with drugs,
leading to addiction, which meant the brothel was eventually their
lifeline. Many people who have been trafficked fought it at first, but
eventually accepted they lost that battle from the beginning. They
have even been seen smiling and flirting, but it is only an act. On
the inside, they are broken and crying.
Since human trafficking involves selling a person for sex,
pregnancies would be expected. No matter, human traffickers have

even found a way to make that seem dark and twisted. They force
those who are pregnant to have abortions, with unclean instruments
by non certified practitioners. This lack of sanitation is one of the
many factors in the ever spreading HIV in the human trafficking
world. The relationship between human trafficking and HIV isnt
always completely obvious. Really, the fact that there was any
relationship at all between these two problems is a recent
realization. Currently, there is not much research to show the
connection, but more studies are being conducted in order to have
that sufficient information necessary for ending the social issue of
human trafficking. What is known thus far is that many are not
properly educated in the area of sexually transmitted diseases,
meaning they are typically unaware of what they are and most
definitely whether or not one would have them. This means people
all over the world, especially in the world of human trafficking,
people are spreading life threatening diseases, such as HIV and
AIDS.
(462 words)
http://htia.weebly.com/social-impact.html (April 3rd, 2016)