International Human TraffickingHuman trafficking, or trafficking in persons, as defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or position. A person can also be trafficked through the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to attain consent of control over another person in order to exploit that person. Exploitation involves prostituting persons or using other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs.
Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It violates human rights and is a form of transnational organized crime. There are an estimated 2.4 million victims of human trafficking at any given time who fuel the industry that profits around $32 billion per year. Because human trafficking takes place in every country in the world and often times involves moving people across international borders, this issue is of international concern. Even though it is often associated with the migration of persons, the definition of human trafficking includes anyone obtained by force, coercion, or fraud and subjugated to forced labor, commercial sex or involuntary servitude, whether or not they have been transported or moved. This means that country leaders must be cognizant of not only human trafficking victims coming into or leaving their country, but also victims that are trafficked within the country's own borders. People are trafficked by unscrupulous people who offer jobs, training, opportunities, money, and a better life. But they are subsequently trafficked into forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced to be child soldiers. Those living in poverty are the most vulnerable group because they are strongly driven to find a better life for themselves and their families. There are many ways people become a victim of the human trafficking industry: - Women and children are kidnapped - Children are sold to traders by parents - Children are sent with a trader by their parents with a promise that the child will get a good education, a job, a better life, or simply just food - Women unknowingly marry a man who has sold them into the sex industry - People respond to job advertisements that offer pay for manual labor, but are imprisoned on arrival and forced to work for many years with no pay - Women apply for a job or education overseas and travel willingly only to find that the agencies were a sham and are subsequently imprisoned, raped, and forced into prostitution. |
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