Human Trafficking
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Human Trafficking
Introduction
Human trafficking is one of the thousands of transactional crimes conducted by various groups in today’s world. Human trafficking is an illicit trade of human being for the sake of profit. People are made to undergo forced labor, they are sexually and economically exploited. Thus trafficking has violated every rule of human rights and has become a norm. Most of the victims of human trafficking belong to developed countries like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Morocco (Haken, 2011. Sexual exploitation is the most prevailing form of human trafficking and most of the women and children are involved in this type of trafficking. 79 percent of human trafficking involves sexual exploitation and up to 18 percent of victims are involved in forced labors. Forced labor are children belonging to the African containment (Unodc.org, 2019).
Human trafficking is worth $150 billion industry and is among the fastest growing business of the 21st century (Unodc.org, 2019). Everyone is involved in the promotion of this industry directly or indirectly. If any entity is purchased being made by exploited labor then this act will also be considered as a contribution to the industry.
Sexual violence contributes more to the industry. The victim of sexual exploitation are women and both male and female children. International treaty law says that any child who is involved in the process of commercializing sex by fraud or by force is performing sex act for commercial gains. The US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA defines children as a person under the age of eighteen and the average age of children that were sexually exploited were between twelve and fourteen (Albanese, 2007).
However, a trafficker is someone who is paying off for the exploitation of another human being and generating profit out of that. But till now no specific trafficker has been identified (Albanese, 2007).
Human trafficking is a crime and it is violating human right laws. This crime can be analyzed based on the theories of sociology and those are Social control theory and Conflict theory. It will be highlighted why this crime is prevailing in almost every society and what the theories say about the prevailing factors of this crime.
Literature review
Transactional Organized crime has been a serious issue throughout the 20th century. Failure to develop policies to control transactional crime has made it an international issue (Shelley, 1995). The emergence of Transactional Crime Organization is the result of changes in economic and global politics. The formation of the global village in the mid-twentieth century changed the contact in which both legal and illegal business need to be operated. This gave a huge opportunity for the crime that are conducted in on an international level. The emerging of a single market globally due to globalization, international networks, and the union of major countries increased the frequency of international crime. Transactional activities also increased. The movement of people, money, and objects increased in respect to the bonding between them and countries become closer to each other. The transaction of tangible materials have very significant monetary value and it is considered as a service that is later assigned a monetary value. That is the reason that transactional crime is not surprising and the criminal has little obstacles in their ways to transfer commodities across the boundaries of national jurisdiction (Williams, 1994).
Transactional Crimes include offenses done by the occasional crime as well as the major sophisticated crime by professionals. The most dangerous transactional crimes that have threatened the whole international communities are drug trafficking, human trafficking, frauds, and terrorism. Transactional crime is a challenge to humanity as well as it is a great challenge for the political and economic sector as well. These transactional crimes give very huge benefits to the criminal and that constitutes a problem for the economy as well. Likewise, money-laundering is a challenge to policymakers who are unable to control this from centuries. It has strengthened its roots in every possible dimension and hijacking of transportations has also been increased (Bossard & criminelle, 1990).
The illegal flow of guns, people, drug and natural resources yields approximately $650 billion and illicit drug trafficking contributes the most in this business. Drug trafficking is an industry comprising up to $320 billion. This huge profit drives such criminal activities. The source countries that promote drug trafficking have the issues of forced labor as well because those countries hire labor to process drug activities (Haken, 2011).
Human Trafficking
Human trafficking and migrant smugglings are two different approaches. In migrant smuggling, the individual is being sent to a country to gain residential or economic benefits. Whereas human trafficking is defined as the act of transferring, recruiting, transporting and harboring them on purpose of exploitation. The control person receives money for them or for parts of their organs. Human trafficking and human smuggling are more or less the same things. Human smuggling might be like when an individual is being smuggled to another country and is made slave in order to pay his or her bill by doing chores is an example of human smuggling. Thus that individual is exploited so human smuggling is close to human trafficking (Haken, 2011).
Human trafficking is a modern type of slavery and is an issue of international criminal justices. Though it does not yet come to know that from where these victims of human trafficking originate but the majority of them are from developing countries. UNDO’S study of sex trafficking to the European countries show that the majority of them are from the Balkans and the states of the former Soviet Union. These victims are in rare cases forcedly sent to other countries, majority of them come on their own in search of a better life. Majority of the victims belong to countries like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Morocco (Haken, 2011).
Sexual exploitation is the most common form of human trafficking and women make the biggest portion of this trafficking. 79 percent of human trafficking involves sexual exploitation and 18 percent forced labor. Children make 20 percent of the trafficking victims. 100 percent of those children are from West Africa (Unodc.org, 2019).
Human trafficking is a violation of human rights:
Human right laws proclaimed the unlawfulness and immorality of a person who is making another human labor or misappropriating the personality of another human being. Human right laws have banned discrimination on the ground of race and sex. It has determined certain rights for non-citizens and forced marriage, sexual exploitation of children and women is forbidden. The right to leave and come back to a specific country is given by the human right laws. The international human right laws prohibit certain tasks of trafficking of the modern era. Debt bondages is forbidden by human right laws. The promising of services for the sake of debt payment and the value of those services is not liquidated or the time period of those services is not mentioned. Such services are banned by human right laws (Rezaeian, 2016).
Convention number 29 of human right declaration prohibit forced labor. The human right treaties, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women contain some references to this crime of trafficking. The trafficked individual is entitled to all human rights even though they reside outside their home countries (Feingold, 2005). There human trafficking is a crime as it violated international human right laws.
Theories
Social control theory:
The social control approach to give an understanding to Crime and is among the major sociological viewpoint in criminology. Social control theory became more popular in the 1960s and it is when Travis Hirschi included his view of control theory. That says that traditional rule in society can be strengthened by social connections. Crime happens when this bond is weakened and the cost of crime for that individual increases. It is unlikely to other theories which say why people show a different behavior, the social control theory says that why an individual abstains himself or herself from offending (Greenberg, 1999).
Thus criminality is a possibility for all individual in a society those have little or no attachment to the people living in their communities, in their families or in their friend zones. The social control theory is a theory of conformity. Instead of finding out the motivation behind the criminal behavior the social control theories ask why that specific person conform to crime. The answer to this problem lies with the conventional moral values, active institutional participation and individual behavior (Greenberg, 1999).
The theory was first given by Travis Hirsch’s in 1969. He presented this theory in his write up called “Causes of Delinquency”. The theory is based on the assumption of Hobbes that human behavior is not conforming inherently but criminal acts could also be attempted by human as a human is a farm of animals. Conformity can be achieved through socialization. According to Hirschi society comprise of four major building blocks. The stronger these elements the less likely be delinquent behaviors.
Attachment:
Is the effective ties of the individual with significant others. The family environment could be a great source of attachment and the parents become the role model and helps their children to learn acceptable behavior.
Commitment:
It is an aspiration to get an education and get a secured job. This is a type of investment in the conventional behavior which lessens down the risk of delinquency of the youth. Individuals with family members are the social circle involved in drinking or crime will affect his or her risk of conducting those crimes and commitment to goals will lessen down that.
Involvement:
Involvement refers to associations and participation in conventional tasks that develop social value systems. The quality of the activities of the youth and their connection with their future goal is important to lessen down delinquency. Time spent on educational tasks can be seen as always of achieving high rank in societies by getting jobs of high status.
The theory says that belief is something that is considered to be the acceptance of social rule and it is the central part of the theory of social control. If people are made less bound by rules the more they are likely to break it (Wiatrowski, Griswold, & Roberts, 1981).
Conflict theory:
Social Conflict theory focuses on the distribution of resources and the developing competition due to that. It is a macro-oriented pattern in sociology that defines society as a field of inequalities that become the causing factors of conflict and social change. The central aspect of the theory is that society is designed in a way that few get benefits with the expense of the majority of the people. It talks about the relationship between dominant and minority group. Karl Marx is the founding father of this social conflict theory (Gibbons, 1979).
Conflict theory examines economic and social factors as they are the causing force of criminal activities. The conflict theorists do not look at those factories as a positive social quality as considered by the functionalist. The conflict theorist challenges social disorganization theory that ignores socioeconomic and racial issues and did not take care of social trends. They correlate gender with wealth and crime (Tittle, 2018).
The theory is inspired by the thought of Karl Marx who used to believe that the general public is based on two groups. The bourgeois who control the means of production and all the wealth in society. The other part of the society is the proletariat who is dependent on the wealthy class for survival. He believed that the wealthy class has centralized the power in society and expanded their position in societies. He did not talk about the deviances but his ideas created conflict theory which highlights the interaction of deviance and crime with power and wealth (Tittle, 2018).
Crime is always linked with the underprivileged group of the society and the crime conducted by wealthy people is not frequently highlighted. Thus the privileged remain free and unpunished. The crime of burglary and motor vehicle theft lost $15.3 billion dollars and it is reported by FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated that the losses of the financial Ponzi scheme fraud were almost $50 billion (Unodc.org, 2019). This shows that class power is still prevailing in developed countries like the United States.
Explanation of the human trafficking crime in perspective of Social control theory and conflict theory.
Trafficking is an issue of huge concern for the world. Human trafficking is a very weird form of commercialization of innocent people by the top criminals. Most of the victims in this business are women and children. Trafficking emerges where poverty prevails. In countries like western Africa, poverty is a symptom of social structure and 100 percent of the children that are victims of human trafficking belongs to this part of the globe. Poor people are motivated and promised to give quality life and thus global poverty is the cause of this business (A. Patel, 2015).
According to social control theory, involvement and commitment of an individual towards a positive thing can prevent criminal activities. The investment in education will set positive goals for the individual but in poor societies, children are in search of labor works so that they could get something for survival. Poor parents are willing to send their children to other developed countries so that they could fight against poverty.
Sexually exploiting of women and children in a society lead to moral and social destruction. It is against human right and the social bonds in societies disturb due to this. Such societies are unable to develop a social value system, and people in those societies do not focus on long term planning of for top school and get a well-reputed job. They focus on the fasts means of getting money so that they could get rid of poverty thus send their women and children are sent to other countries for sexual activities. In such cases, a better life is not set by an educational goal but by getting wages. So the women and children are more exploited sexually and economically to get a high wage.
So poverty is the main cause of human trafficking and this crime can be reduced by generated source of income for the families so that they could focus on the positive up bringing of their children. They cannot be able to teach positive behavior to their children and the social connection disturbs and criminal activities emerged in society.
This criminal act of human trafficking can be analyzed by the help of conflict theory as well. According to conflict theory, social life is competition and based on the distribution of wealth, and power (Boulding, 1962). The criminal mindset in society is emerged due to the unequal distribution of resources in a society. The economic and social factors that lead to unequal distribution of wealth are the main causes of criminal activities in society.
Human trafficking is a global phenomenon and poverty is the driving factor of this crime. Most of the victims of this crime belong to developing and underdeveloped countries. Africa, Central and Eastern European countries, Asia, former the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, Caribbean and Latin American countries. Poverty versus wealth is the indicator of trafficking and migration in these countries. The people in these countries have the desire to get wealth and thus they get exploited by criminals. In many cases the victims are asked to pay their debt by providing services thus they became the part of this business (Fayomi, 2009).
The conflict theory says that the wealthy people have centralized the power and thus the unequal distribution of the wealth occur in a society. The developed countries have control over all the resources and peripheral countries have to work for them for their survival. Human trafficking is the result of the same phenomenon of unequal distribution of wealth. The victim belongs to that country which has the highest rate of poverty. The top 27 world’s poorest countries belong to the African continent with a 30 percent poverty rate (N. Patel, 2018). Therefore, most of the victims belong to Africa and it is poverty that is compelling them to be involved in the illegal business of high-class people of developed countries like USA, Canada, China, Japan, and Western European countries. So people struggle to get resources from the wealthy society and involved in criminal activities.
The limitations of this explanation:
This explanation is mainly based on “poverty” as a driving force behind human trafficking. It does not explain that in a globalized world with full fleshed human right laws why still such crimes prevail and why not poverty is controlled in these countries.
It is not discussing the drawbacks of policies in those countries which are more involved in human trafficking. It is not arguing that the developing countries are giving platforms for human trafficking’s and all the developed countries are hosting such crimes. The explanation is not giving any suggestions regarding the strengthening of social bonds so that a child or women will not be sexually exploited but will be helped by the local people.
Conclusion
Human trafficking is an international crime and is driven by poverty. Most of the underdeveloped countries become the victim of this crime. Extreme poverty can be controlled by making policies like Food and Peace Reform Act by USAID. This act says that combating against the food crises and hunger issue will assist those who are being effected without disturbing the local economy (Martin, 2014).
The social control and conflict theory say that social ties and wealth distribution are the factors that can control the criminal actions in a society. Thus if poverty preventive measures are designed by equally distributing wealth and by investing on the educational goals of the youth then such huge crimes can be controlled. People are in competition with each other due to the unequal distribution of wealth in a society. They forget their social and moral values and tried their best to get their desired wealth. The children who belong to the poor community do not have the platform to help those set goals for themselves so they become victims of such criminal activities.
References
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[["http://zotero.org/users/local/LY9XXHSK/items/NIGXCPSF"]],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Albanese, J. (2007). Commercial sexual exploitation of children: What do we know and what do we do about it. National Institute of Justice Special Report. December 2007.
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