FORCED LABOR AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING

1. FORCED LABOR AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING

2. In this topic, we are discussing issues of: • Forced labor • Modern day slavery • Human trafficking • Child soldiers

3. One estimate is that there are 27 million slaves in the world today. • Based on that number, and numbers from the forced sex trade business, it is estimated that slaves generate profits of $13 billion. • The CIA estimated that 50,000 forced slaves were coming into the United States each year.

4. BASIC FORMS • Chattel slavery • Debt bondage • Contract slavery ( or forced labor) • Sex slavery

5. Human Trafficking • The movement of people to places for the purposes of forced labor. • Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery in which people, mostly women and girls, are abducted, deceived or coerced into situations of forced labor. • Human trafficking includes buying, selling and moving people from one location to another against their will, and it constitutes a grave violation of human rights. • Trafficking occurs in unregulated and unprotected labor sectors including agricultural and industrial production, domestic service and sex work.

6. Human Trafficking • Human trafficking is an international problem involving almost every country in the world as a source, transit or destination country. In addition, many people are trafficked within their own country. • The root causes of trafficking include poverty, violence and political conflict.

7. 1. The U.N. estimates that one to four million people are trafficked worldwide each year. 2. Human trafficking is the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world after illegal drugs and black-market guns, generating $9.5 billion in annual revenue. • 3. In 2005, the International Labor Organization estimated that there were 9.5 million victims of forced labor in Asia alone.4. Women constitute 70 percent of the world's 1.3 billion absolute poor, those living on less than $1/day.

8. The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (one of three "Palermo Protocols"), defines trafficking in persons as: • • The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

9. Many nations misunderstand this definition, overlooking internal trafficking or forms of labor trafficking in their national legislation, and often failing to distinguish trafficking from illegal migration.

10. HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS THE “PERFECT CRIME” • Chances of being caught are slim • Small penalties • Huge profits • People are a commodity that can be used & reused, sold & bartered.

11. PROSTITUTION AND SEX TRAFFICKING • Prostitution and related activities, including pimping and patronizing or maintaining brothels, fuel the growth of modern-day slavery by providing a façade behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation operate. • Where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery.

12. Of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked across international borders annually, 80 percent of victims are female, and up to 50 percent are children. Hundreds of thousands of these women and children are used in prostitution each year. • • A 2003 study in the scientific Journal of Trauma Practice found that 89 percent of women in prostitution want to escape prostitution. Children are also trapped in prostitution despite the fact that a number of international covenants and protocols impose upon state parties an obligation to criminalize the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

13. Field research in nine countries concluded that 60 to 75 percent of women in prostitution were raped, 70 to 95 percent were physically assaulted, and 68 percent met the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder in the same range as treatment-seeking combat veterans and victims of state-organized torture.

14. International Laws and Conventions • The 1949 United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others • The 2000 United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime • The 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children • The United Nations Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking of May 2002

15. Laws in the United States • U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIII • Civil RICO, 18 U.S.C § § 1960-1964 • The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) 2000 • The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) 2003, • In December 2005, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) 2005