Kathryn Cullen-DuPont

From the proposal for this project:

In January 2006, President George Bush signed the “Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005.” Since then, the prominence of human trafficking in the news has only increased. In May 2007, for example, two Indonesian women escaped involuntary servitude in Muttontown, New York, and the couple whose home they cleaned were indicted on federal slavery charges. That same month, the New York State Legislature agreed to pass what will be one of the United States’ toughest state laws against human trafficking. Then, earlier this week, on June 12, 2007, the U.S. Department of State added seven countries—including allies Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar—to a list of countries failing to combat human trafficking. GLOBAL ISSUES: HUMAN TRAFFICKING, the newest volume in the Global Issues series, will provide a thorough and much-needed examination of this modern form of slavery. It will describe the suffering caused by human trafficking and the financial, legal, cultural and other conditions that make trafficking within national borders and between far-flung “origin” and “destination” countries possible. The efforts of the United Nations, national governments, and non-governmental organizations to combat human trafficking will be thoroughly discussed, as will efforts to provide direct aid to trafficking’s individual victims. (As part of its Research Tools section, GLOBAL ISSUES: HUMAN TRAFFICKING will also provide an exhaustive listing of the organizations recognized as doing the best work in this regard.)

The volume will begin with a discussion of the international scope of human trafficking and the estimated number of people affected by it. The U.S. Department of State, for example, estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked across national borders every year and that up to 4 million people may currently be held captive worldwide. In its own reports, the United Nations cites the State Department’s estimate of transnational victims, but points out that the U.S. numbers overlook millions of people trafficked within their own countries’ borders. Whether one is discussing both internal and transnational trafficking victims, or only those abducted across national borders, though, two estimates remain constant: approximately 80 percent of those trafficked are female and at least 50 percent of those trafficked are minor children.

The international overview will then examine how human trafficking is similar to and different from earlier forms of slavery. Particular attention will be paid to concepts central to the issue, such as “origin,” “transit,” and “destination” countries, and Tier 1, 2, and 3 countries (categories established to track individual countries’ efforts to comply with the minimum standards set in the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000). The varying, country-specific circumstances under which a person might be legally defined as a victim of trafficking will also be examined. (For example, prior to 2005, the Dutch Criminal Code defined only a sexually exploited person as a human trafficking victim and excluded anyone whose abduction resulted in forced labor. Other governments, while not distinguishing between forced sex and forced labor, define only the transnationally abducted person as a trafficking victim.) International examples of the various forms of exploitation faced by trafficking victims will also be discussed. These will include the forcing of women and girls into prostitution (a fate that is sometimes faced by boys as well), the forcing of persons into involuntary and/or unpaid domestic service, and the forcing of trafficking victims into occupations as diverse as camel jockey, fisherman, cocoa farmer, and ice cream salesperson. The trafficking of persons for involuntary organ donation will also be discussed. The international overview will end with a discussion of the broad definition of human trafficking set forth in the United Nations’ Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, which was adopted in 2000 and currently has 117 signatories and 112 parties.

GLOBAL ISSUES: HUMAN TRAFFICKING will next consider human trafficking in five different countries: The United States, Belize, Nigeria, India, and the Netherlands. According to the United Nations’ Trafficking Database, the United States is one of 10 countries that scores “very high” as a human trafficking destination. Persons trafficked into the United States come from Asia, the Caribbean, the Commonwealth of Independent States (11 former Soviet republics), Latin America and, less frequently, from Africa. This section will discuss the specific economic, cultural, legal, and other conditions within the United States that relate to human trafficking. It will also examine the patterns of exploitation faced by victims once they reach the United States or, in the case of internally trafficked persons, once they are forced into the trafficking system. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the United States’ efforts to combat trafficking within its borders and internationally.

A chapter on four additional countries—Belize, Nigeria, India, and the Netherlands—will provide global perspectives on the issue of human trafficking. Examination of the issue from the perspectives of each of these four countries will emphasize what is common to each country’s human trafficking problem, but it will also highlight the way different aspects of the issue emerge in different countries. Belize, for example, was absent from the United Nations’ 2006 list of origin countries, and it was scored “very low” as a transit country and “low” as a destination country. Nonetheless, in June 2006, the U.S. Department of State—which measures efforts to combat human trafficking as well as the numbers of people trafficked—listed Belize as a “Tier 3” country for failing to take measures to combat human trafficking. (Tier 3 countries, of which there area currently 16, face U.S. sanctions and loss of support for World Bank and International Money Fund loans.) Belize has since restructured its approach to human trafficking and, as a result, has been moved to the United States’ Tier 2 “watch list,” effective June 2007. Nigeria, in contrast to Belize, scores “very high” as an origin country. Nigerians are trafficked regionally to the Central African Republic, Sudan, North Africa, and Saudi Arabia, and transcontinentally to The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany, as well as to other countries. India scores “high” as an origin country, but many of its trafficking victims never leave the country: The U.S. Department of State estimates that up to 90 percent of India’s human trafficking for sexual exploitation is internal, with girls and women being trafficked from one village to another for forced marriage and prostitution. The final country, The Netherlands, shares a “very high” destination country score with the United States and, like India, it has a notably high rate of internal trafficking. That prostitution is legal The Netherlands—prompting some to claim that it is easier to identify trafficking victims in an open system, while prompting others to claim that the existence of legalized prostitution provides traffickers with a “legal front” for their victims—adds yet another country-specific factor to the discussion of this growing global problem. Each country’s section will set the issue of human trafficking against its own particular history, and each of these sections will discuss the pertinent country’s laws and efforts against human trafficking. The volume will conclude with well-chosen primary sources and a thorough presentation of research tools.