Human Trafficking

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HUMAN

TRAFFICKING

by Peter Cruchley

Some figures

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), an estimated 40.3 million victims are trapped in modern-day slavery. 1 24.9 million were exploited for labour. 15.4 million were in forced marriage. There are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world. 2 There are more enslaved labourers than trafficked sex slaves. Many people associate modern-day slavery with sex trafficking, but in reality, 68 percent of enslaved persons are trapped in forced labour. 3

The trade is economic, the reasons are economic and so are the solutions

Many will ask what should we do about Human Trafficking, what can we do to help those who have been trafficked. There are groups working on this and their advice will be best for action in specific contexts. But, a crucial question to ask is why do we have Human Trafficking? Slavery was apparently abolished around the world through the middle of the 19 th Century, so why has it come back? Especially why has it come back in the age of globalisation?

1

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/ index.htm

2

https://www.stopthetraffik.org/about-human-trafficking/ the-scale-of-human-trafficking/

3

https://borgenproject.org/top-10-modern-day-slavery-facts/

4

https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it/5-shocking-facts-about -extreme-global-inequality-and-how-even-it-davos

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It is not just traffickers that enslave people. It is the system. Traffickers and trafficked people are products of an economic system which fails to deliver prosperity and security for all. The roots of Human Trafficking lie in unjust economics and its solutions lie in changing our economic systems. We live with global, national and local economic systems that generate and perpetuate poverty and inequality and recognise no intrinsic value to human beings. In such systems the bodies of women, men and children are used as commodities to satisfy the demand for cheap labour and sex. The people who are trafficked are a reminder that we have economies which commodify people and assigns unequal values to people based on their gender, race, status and sexuality. ‘High status’ people in societies are never victims of trafficking, only those assigned ‘low status’ in their society. The only time a white male, for example, might be trafficked is if he is poor, gay or disabled.

We should read some of the statistics about Human Trafficking in the light of an economic system that delivers escalating wealth inequality. According to Oxfam, 2017 saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history, one more every two days. Billionaires saw their wealth increase by $762bn in just 12 months (March 2016 - March 2017). This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. 82 percent of the new wealth created has gone to top 1 percent, while 0 percent has gone to the world’s poorest 50 percent. 4 At the Council for World Mission (CWM) Africa Hearing on the Legacies of Slavery in 2017, one participant commented that “we live with such poverty that now young people would not have to be captured by slavers but would willingly swim out to boats to be taken”.

Some of the statistics about Human Trafficking in the light of an economic system that favours capital over labour: Human Trafficking brings in $150 billion annually, which adds up to be more than the combined revenues of the world’s four richest companies. About half of the world’s slaves exist in India. Fourteen million modern-day slaves live in India. Many of these people are “debt slaves”, meaning that people in debt are forced to work to pay off their debt. It extends to their children and grandchildren, becoming a multi-generational chain of slavery.

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We should read some of the statistics about Human Trafficking in the light of an economy which privileges men. Gender inequality is reflected in figures of hunger and poverty: it is estimated that 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women and girls. 6 Oxfam shows that women are in the lowest-paid work. Globally, they earn 23 percent less than men. 700 million fewer women than men are in paid work. Where they are in work, 75 percent of women in developing regions are in the informal economy - where they are less likely to have legal rights or social protection, and are often not paid enough to escape poverty. 600 million are in the most insecure and precarious forms of work.

Women work longer days than men when paid and unpaid work is counted together. That means globally, a young woman today will work on average the equivalent of four years more than a man over her lifetime. 5 Thus, it is no surprise that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime state that the vast majority of all human trafficking victims – some 71 percent – are women and girls and one third are children.

Almost everyone is contributing to the profitability of human trafficking. Human trafficking for forced labour feeds into industries which are crucial to the modern consumer lifestyles. People are enslaved in industries which service the production of consumer goods, in agriculture, textile, chocolate, mining and other industries that many people purchase from, directly or indirectly, on a daily basis. Global brands have been shown to use trafficked forced labour in their supply lines. In 2016, the Fair Labour Association produced an assessment of Nestle in Cote d'Ivoire and found evidence of forced labour and child labour. In 2016, Nike admitted only 86 per cent of their factories were up to the minimum standards they set. A 2016 ILO report stated that as of Dec 31, 2015, 31 out of 72 H&M suppliers were using illegal contracts. Walmart refused to sign the 2013 Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh that 200 companies signed following the collapse of Rana Plaza where 1,100 garment manufacturing workers died.

Work is needed on prosecuting traffickers and on warning vulnerable people and communities how to avoid being trafficked. But the only thing which will stop human trafficking is economic justice.

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5 https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it/why-majority-worlds-poor-are-women

6

Source: World Food Programme (WFP) Gender Policy and Strategy. http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures