Web Resources

Human Trafficking is a Web Resource dedicated to all things human trafficking. It seems to have just about every angle covered, from recent updates to the status of human trafficking in countries around the world.

The Polaris Project is a group working for a world without slavery which, while slightly more broad than my topic, also includes human trafficking. It deals primarily with the United States and its role in all these different aspects of modern day slavery, including where people can get involved in various cities both in the United States (such as Denver) and even Tokyo.

CBS News has a page dedicated to the story they did on forced teenage slavery and prostitution, titled “The Realities of Human Trafficking.” It is a good resource for news stories and other links like that, as a way to back up what the other website talk about.

The FBI has a page dedicated to human trafficking and how they are working to stop it. They encourage people to report anything they think might constitute human trafficking, as well as promoting resources for victims of human trafficking.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seems to have a more comprehensive site than the FBI, even walking a person through the prosecution that would happen of a person accused of human trafficking. It is, again, a good resource for people in the United States who need assistance. But the odds that a person being held against their will would be able to access the DOJ website and understand what it is talking about is slim, at best.

Interpol aims to provide communication and mutual assistance between law enforcement agencies around the world, this is their website on human trafficking. I feel these types of organizations are extremely important because one country putting its foot down will not be enough to truly end this problem; it will take international cooperation to really make a difference.

The UN GIFT (Global Intitiative to Fight Human Trafficking) provides some great resources and definitions of human trafficking. This is another international body that can work to get things done beyond a country’s borders, when needed.

This report on Estimated Human Trafficking in the United States provides information on a study funded by the United States Government in an attempt to find how much human trafficking does occur within the United States. A great resouce for detailed information on the United States and its role in this problem.

This Trafficking in Persons Report of 2007 was done by the State department. It is slightly more recent than the other report I linked to, but they both seem to be full of important information.

This Fact Sheet for Schools teaches people involved in the education system how to look for signs of trouble and what they should do if they suspect something. While people who have been trafficked are not often out in public I fee it is vital for people in those positions of authority to be trained in what to look for in order to help just in case they ever find themselves in that position.

This blog called Radical Left makes the argument that the Western Left is being hypocritical and pushings its values on other countries. I have a huge problem with the article – for one it uses the word “trafficked” in quotation marks to show their disbelief that these women are even forced anywhere against their will in the first place. All I have to say to that is… “wtf”???

Human Trafficking in War

The war contractor Blackwater USA became infamous when its employees shot 17 civilians in the streets in Iraq. As detailed by Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”, an extremely critical expose on the company and military contractors in general, Joseph E. Schmitz, the Inspector General at the Pentagon, was accused of failing to investigate allegations of human trafficking by Iraq contractors. Some companies, including KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton), had thirty-five thousand “third country nationals” working in Iraq. There was an article written by Cam Simpson of the Chicago Tribune called “Pipeline to Peril” documenting how twelve Nepalese citizens were sent to Iraq in August 2004, afterward which they were abducted and executed.

Other kinds of abuses, such as seizing the passports and other documents after they have entered the country so as to prevent them from leaving. This was after deceivng the workers about teir safety or contract terms, and in one case allegedly tried to force men into Iraq under the threat of preventing their access to food and water. It has been well known that the Coalition of the Willing, countries who joined in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, were fairly limited. The private contractors have found bodies within those countries, recruiting nationals from countries that forbid their military from engaging but could not keep their citizens from fighting of their own volition.

It is difficult to look at these instances from an outsider’s perspective without getting angry about what is happening and not being stopped. American-based companies like Blackwater are recruiting from countries like Chile and sending those troops, who have been trained both in their home countries in addition to Blackwater’s land in the United States, in to hostile territory. While the men (and it is mostly men) sign up on their own and are not forcefully conscripted the fact that they are sent to a war zone and possible forced into unsafe conditions is absolutely unbelievable. The act of holding somebody’s passport to make them work for you is the same situation workers face in countries like the United States and France in cases of domestic slavery, people forced to work as nannies, cooks and maids for no wages. The only difference with this situation is it is companies continuing the practice, not individual people, and that company is on direct contract with the United States of America.

A person could try to say that these men knew what they were signing up for, that it is their fault they are in that situation. But falsifying contracts is a common act in cases of human trafficking, and it in no way reflects the intelligence or competence of the person who finds themselves unwittingly trafficked. It is not their fault, something that has to be realized if any help can be directed their way. Sympathy for trafficking victims is usually reserved for children or people forced in to prostitution, and even then it is addressed by most people with either misunderstanding as to how people got in that situation or a serious amount of victim-blaming.

“How did they not suspect they were in danger?”

“Where were the parents, why didn’t they figure out what’s going on?”

None of those questions answer the problem of how the system allows for this to happen, yet they are what people think they need to be asking.

History of Human Trafficking

The secretive nature of human trafficking means the numbers are vague and details are hard to come by. The history of human trafficking is almost as difficult to pin down, with the stories varying by region, time period and technologies available at the time.

For simplicity’s sake I will be focusing on the human trafficking involving the history of the United States. By far the most notorious story of human trafficking in the United States was that of the the African people being brought to the Americas to work as slaves. The conditions were horrific and the legacy of those actions are still felt today, with over 20 million people forcibly transported over the Atlantic Ocean. At least 20% of the people died on the way, a staggering statistic when considering that it is probably a low percentage compared to the reality. That does not even take into account the internal displacement that happened during the time period, when practically the entire continent was caught up in the slave trade.

Other groups have been abused in the history of the United States, such as the Native Americans (Trail of Tears, reservations), people of Japanese descent (internment camps) and many other groups. While those may not technically qualify as human trafficking, it was government policy to forcibly remove these people from their homes and move them to another government-sponsored location for a variety of reasons. The majority of human trafficking, however, deals with non-government actors dealing with the sale of human beings for profit in the back market.

The United States did not begin monitoring trafficked people until 1994,  when it began  being covered in the Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. There have been numerous laws passed against it in the United States, and the U.S. has been active in advocating against it internationally as well.

However, what is important to note is the fact that even in the  United States, with all of its laws and all of the government action, this is still something that happens. Approximately 14,500 and 17,500 people are kidnapped and brought to the United States every year. Housemaids, sex workers, farm laborers or factory workers are brought in to the country – perhaps with their permission – but then held here against their will and not paid for their work, making them victims of human trafficking. These are groups of people that are already marginalized from the greater American society, due to cultural or language barriers and a growing nationalistic public that rejects the modern immigrant in favor of the “home-grown” American. When an entire group of people, migrant workers or other kinds of “untouchables”, is ignored by society at large it is relatively easy for the people who make up that class to be abused and have no justice on their behalf.

According to this article, approximately 800,000 men, women and children are kidnapped and transported every year. Keeping in mind that the number is probably lower than reality, it is a staggering amount of people this problem affects today in the world. (The source that provides that statistic is problematic, but still a good resource.) According to an abolitionist on Change.gov, eight out of ten of the people trafficked in the world are women or girls, and half of the trafficking victims are chidren.

There are no such thing as “firm numbers” when it comes to human trafficking, just like there is no such thing as an unbiased source. Abolitionists claim the higher numbers are accurate so as to bring more attention to their cause, while governments claim the numbers are lower so as to project success on their part in slowing the trafficking itself. Taking sources with a grain of salt is necessary, but at the same time completely disregarding different points of view is a mistake. As I further explore this topic it is something I will be keeping in mind as I look at sources and the information they present as fact.

Coming from the United States, and an immigrant background, gives me an interesting perspective on this topic. Hardly being aware of the existence of human trafficking, let alone the practice in this country, made the knowledge startling and difficult to deal with. Having a diverse background, with family coming from Barbados all the way to Quebec and up to Denmark, it made me examine how human trafficking might have played a role in all three parts of my heritage. Barbados was involved in the slave trade, Quebec in expelling its Native population and Denmark’s Viking heritage equally as brutal as anything we have heard about Columbus or the other various explorers who “discovered” the Americas. This is not something people usually think about in relation to their own social location, but I have been forced to as I chose this as a topic. Again, something to think about as I move forward into this project. Information is difficult to come by – typing in “history of human trafficking” on Google brings up links all the way back to 2003 or the slave trade but hardly anything inbetween. It is an interesting phenomenon that I hope to look at more in the future as I continue my research.