A Persistent Evil

How the world can end human trafficking
Some evils are hard to shake. To the surprise of many, an estimated 27 million people are currently enslaved worldwide. As a result of human trafficking, people across the globe are routinely coerced into exploitive relationships for the monetary benefit of others, often for the purpose of forced labor or prostitution. As professor Jacqueline Bhabha, Director of the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies, told the HPR, trafficking occurs within countries as well as internationally, with victims transported by everything from bicycles to airplanes. The U.S. Department of State estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, and the number trafficked internally is certain to be much higher. To truly eliminate slavery, developed countries must support nations attempting to defeat trafficking and must pressure apathetic and corrupt governments to address the problem. On the domestic front, all countries must eliminate the factors that make trafficking profitable and afford protections for victims.
Combating Trafficking Abroad
Because of the global nature of human trafficking, developed countries must help end slavery abroad if they wish to prevent victims from being trafficked across their borders. According to Blair Burns, Director of Operations for South Asia at the International Justice Mission, the United Nations provides material and informational support to combat trafficking through the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime. Dr. Kevin Bales, Director of Free the Slaves in Washington, D.C., told the HPR that the United Nations could play an expanded role by providing countries with increased aid in the form of law enforcement and satellite imaging to track perpetrators. But the nature of the United Nations suggests that whatever role it plays will have to be a minimal because, according to Burns, it is “stuck in this role of being everyone’s friend,” which prevents it from coercing uninterested countries. If trafficking is to be defeated in those countries, therefore, much of the pressure needs to come from individual states.
The U.S. State Department, for example, assesses the performance of foreign countries in containing human trafficking and provides resources to attack the problem. Diplomatic sanctions are often imposed against countries that fail to make an effort to combat trafficking, though experience suggests this tool is more effective in smaller, poorer nations than in wealthier ones. As Burns noted, countries receiving substantial foreign aid, such as Cambodia, are far more eager to comply with American requests to increase anti-trafficking efforts than those countries that are more financially vigorous. American efforts in this regard could be augmented by other developed countries; as Dr. Mark Lagon, Executive Director of the Polaris Project, explained to the HPR, western European countries have undertaken successful efforts to eliminate domestic trafficking operations but could do more to discourage the practice overseas, particularly among trading partners and former colonies.
Reducing Profitability
The profitability of trafficking often results from a failure to enforce anti-trafficking laws, especially in underdeveloped countries. Burns attributed the profitability of sex trafficking to several factors, one of which is the lucrative nature of the industry that allows perpetrators to buy the protection of corrupt government officials and law enforcement agencies. Those who cannot be bought do not take action out of fear of retribution by traffickers. Labor trafficking, according to Burns, is frequently facilitated by apathy: in many areas the practice of forced labor is culturally ingrained. Anti-trafficking laws must be rigorously enforced to ensure that perpetrators are penalized. Additionally, as Bales explained, resources must be devoted to protecting potential victims, particularly in impoverished countries populated by unprotected women and children.
Of particular interest in the matter of sex trafficking is government policy towards prostitution. Although, as Dr. Lagon explained, legalized prostitution creates a “magnet” for traffickers, others argue that prohibition may create an underground economy where the industry is less prone to regulation. Lagon suggested a successful model employed by Sweden that decriminalizes prostitutes but punishes traffickers, pimps, and customers. The goal is to punish those responsible for prostitution rather than victims, which may be the most effective strategy for eliminating the profit motive for sex trafficking while protecting the innocent.
Another determinant of profitability is taxation. Countries such as the United States, which derive most revenue from personal income taxes, effectively encourage an influx of organized crime because criminals are able to avoid paying federal taxes. One solution to this problem is the replacement of the income tax with a consumption tax, which everyone would have to pay on legal domestic purchases. Though taxes could be levied against prostitution itself or other “unsavory” industries (such as Texas’ tax on sexually-oriented business, the so-called “S.O.B. tax”), Lagon pointed out that, while such taxes may be effective to some extent, many believe the act of imposing such taxes concedes that prostitution has a right to exist. In any event, governments must design tax policies that do not encourage trafficking and that punish it to the greatest extent possible.
Protecting Victims
Although the State Department’s trafficking list has brought some success, professor Bhabha noted that this and similar strategies have placed too little emphasis on protecting victims. Persons trafficked across international borders, for example, are designated illegal immigrants, often a considerable social stigma. Prostitutes, needless to say, are generally even more despised by mainstream society. As Dr. Lagon told the HPR, protecting a trafficking victim is only possible if he or she is recognized “as a victim rather than a criminal, an illegal alien, or a disposable person.” To that end, governments and nongovernmental organizations must educate law enforcement, medical personnel, humanitarian workers, and the general public about the problem of trafficking and ensure that the perpetrators, rather than the victims, are stigmatized.
True Equality
Although such policies as these would yield obvious humanitarian benefits, many of the countries best positioned to combat trafficking may have an obligation to do so out of democratic principle as well as concern for the oppressed. Dr. Lagon explained to the HPR that acute trafficking problems exist in such democracies as Japan and India, and the C.I.A. estimates that, despite the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States., between 14,500 and 17,000 slaves are trafficked into the country each year. Lagon pointed out that, although the rule of law that characterizes democracy is a good antidote to trafficking, a country’s being nominally democratic is “not enough if certain marginalized groups in society are deemed to be subhuman and worthy of enslavement.” Indeed, it would seem that a country is not truly “democratic” unless it genuinely recognizes and promotes the equality of humanity. It stands to reason that the world’s most powerful countries, most which are democracies in some form, have all the more reason to eliminate slavery wherever it exists.