Noting that:
Every year an increasing number of people fall victim of trafficking, mainly for sexual exploitation (43%), but many for underpaid illegal labour. Such trafficking is the modern form of slavery, which treats human beings as a commodity to be bought and sold, to be put to forced labour, usually in the sex industry, but also, for example in agriculture, households, declared or undeclared sweatshops, to be paid a pittance or nothing.
Trafficking is the third largest source of illegal income after drugs and arms.
In 2000 the United Nations Member States agreed to a Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and supplemented this Convention with two Protocols. One against Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air and the other to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children.
In 2000 the Congress of Liberal International in Ottawa, Canada, adopted a resolution on “Trafficking and Prostitution, a modern form of slavery”.
In 2005 the Member States of the Council of Europe adopted a Convention on “Action against Trafficking in Human Beings”.
In 2006 in Bucharest the European Liberal Democrat Reform Party/ELDR Congress adopted a resolution on “Ending trafficking of human beings”.
The council of Europe has now opened the Convention for signing, also by non members, in the hope to speed up the entry into force of this Convention.
In 1981 the International Treaty on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women/CEDAW, which was adopted two years before by the United Nations General Assembly agreed in article 6 that States Parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women.
The International Network of Liberal Women notes with concern, that Human Trafficking is a form of slavery that should fill us all with shame. As Liberals we are committed to freedom, dignity and rights of the human being and therefore call on Liberal International, liberal member parties, liberal governments and other liberal organisations to:
Human Trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harbouring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of commercial sex or forced labour. What victims of trafficking have in common is that he or she is subject to the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit a person for profit.[1]
Traffickers lure naïve potential victims into working for them by making false promises of a better life in another country. The victims have to get a loan from their traffickers to pay for the journey. Upon arrival, they are forced to work in brothels or sweatshops to pay off alleged debts. Other forms of forced labour include construction or agriculture, as well as organ-removal or forced begging.[2]
There is no precise data on the exact number of victims, but the CIA estimates that about 14,500 to 17,500 victims are trafficked into the US annually,[3] while the International Labour Organization estimates that there are 12.3 million worldwide victims of trafficking at any given time. Other estimates range from 4 to 27 million victims worldwide. US-government sponsored research indicates that approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders annually, of which 80% are girls and women, and of which 50% are under 18. The majority of these are trafficked for commercial sex. Note that these number exclude victims trafficked within national borders.
In Niger, which the UN considers the second least developed country in the world, there are an estimated 43,000 slaves held. It was not until 2003 that Niger made slave ownership a punishable offense. In Mauritania, an estimated 40% of the population are slaves or ex-slaves. In Sudan, about 12,000 people remain in bondage after having been enslaved during the two-decade long civil war. The form of slavery that affects the greatest number of people, however, is bonded labour, which is prevalent in India, Pakistan and Nepal, where about three quarters of the estimated 12,3 million slaves are held. India and Pakistan are struggling to enforce their anti-trafficking laws, along with corruption that makes human trafficking possible. Niger is a highly unstable democracy that fails to even acknowledge the problem, let alone address or tackle it, while Sudan is a criminal state that actively encourages rampaging militias.[4]
The traditional flow of trafficking finds place from developing countries in Africa, Latin-America and Asia to developed nations in Western countries. Of an increasing concern, however, is the growing number of people trafficked into the EU from Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, Russia and Moldova, among others. These former Soviet states have become countries of transit, origin and destination of trafficking.[5]
Despite Human Trafficking having been made a top priority by the Bush administration and the United Nations, an astonishingly low number of prosecutions and convictions have been made.[6] A lead researcher and writer at Shared Hope International said that human trafficking crimes are underreported for a number of reasons. Victims are often reluctant to come forward in fear of repercussions from their traffickers or because of shame and cultural inhibitions. Another reason might be that law enforcers are unaware of anti-trafficking legislation or see women working in the sex industry as deserving of their own fate.[7]
Regardless of the lack of hard evidence on the number of victims, the TIP report concluded that “the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing.”[8]
[1] U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2007, Washington, DC, June 12th, 2007
[2] The Economist, Sea of Tears, September 21st, 2006
[3] Jerry Markon, How Prevalent Is Human Ttrafficking? US Estimates Thousands of Victims, But Efforts to Find Them Fall Short, Washington Post, Sept. 23rd, 2007
[4] The Economist, Still With Us, March 9th, 2005 and Chris Buckley, Surging Economies, Corruption Fuel Asian Slavery; Debt Bondage, Child Labour, Human Trafficking among sourced of coerced workers worldwide, Toronto Star, June 25th, 2007
[5] The European Commission, Background Document: Trafficking in Human Beings, Brussels, Sept 18, 2002
[6] Jerry Markon, How Prevalent Is Human Ttrafficking? US Estimates Thousands of Victims, But Efforts to Find Them Fall Short, Washington Post, Sept. 23rd, 2007
[7] Sally W. Stoecker, Hype and Horror in Human Trafficking, The Washington Post, Sept. 26th, 2007
[8] U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2007, Washington, DC, June 12th, 2007
