Human Trafficking of Young Women to be sold in Prostitution Essay

Before going into details, it seemed important to define what human trafficking is. Human trafficking regardless of its type is a criminal offense. The UN Convention against transnational crime define human trafficking as â€Å"the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of a persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the use 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† (UN Resolution 25, 2001, cited by Vandermey, Meyer, Rys, and Sebranek 2009, p. 246). Under Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are working hard not only to make sure the laws are put into practice, but also to contain this problem (Hart 2009, p. 43). The most severe forms of human trafficking have been defined in U. S. law as sex trafficking in which â€Å"a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained eighteen years of age†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Troubnikoff 2003, p. 3). In order to perpetrate this crime, it needs at least twelve to fifteen people who will be actors. These include an agency manager, office staffs (at least three), recruiters (at least two), a coordinator, drivers, safe house, document vendors, corrupt public officials, operator, cook, and at least six armed men who will take charge of the â€Å"recruits. † It also needs an office space, office equipments, and a safe house. This crime model further needs mobile communication equipments, tainted cars, and high powered guns, and contacts with other transnational crime syndicates are essential in this operation that will facilitate the deployment of women to their prospective clients. Where and how this crime model operates? This type of crime operates in countries where many people are poor and are longing to escape from the grinding poverty. Among their base of operation are the third world countries in Asia, the former Soviet republics especially Russia and Africa. They can easily prey on young women through their promise of dollar earnings plus other benefits that are not available in their country. This crime model operates on two fronts: by fronting a fake man power agency which lured young women into prostitution under a false pretenses of high paying jobs as waitresses, dancers, models, and au pairs abroad, and by kidnapping beautiful young women. The ‘hired’ and kidnapped women will then be required to stay in the safe house where they will be strictly guarded on a twenty four hour basis. The role each actor played On the democratic front, the roles each actor played in this crime model are crucial and communication with clients as well as secrecy is of utmost importance. The roles played by the recruiters, coordinators, the armed men, and the agency manager are the most crucial as they are the ones that are most exposed to their victims. They would be the one that will be subject of the victims’ families rage if their crimes are divulged as well as the object of police manhunt. Thus, they would need to create fictitious names, addresses, and pertinent information. Like in ordinary manpower agencies, the manager confirms the applicants’ application and provides assurance to their â€Å"client† as well as direction of the entire operation. The recruiters are responsible for recruitment and hiring of women. But they need to be very careful because of the government drive to contain the problem of human trafficking. Indeed, they need to use all their convincing power that they offer real job. The agency manager is also the head of the entire operation and is responsible to make their operation smooth and successful. The role played by the coordinator is also important. He is the one that has contact with the clients. In other words, he holds key position and is in contacts â€Å"in some segments† of the operation, and â€Å"organize their services (Zhang 2007, p. 97). Zhang pointed out that the coordinator is central to human trafficking operation though they have â€Å"nothing more than the right connection for to acquire the necessary services for a fee† (p. 97). Drivers, cook, and safe house operators are also important actors towards the deployment of women. Under the law all these actors are equally liable for the crime. But the operation of this crime will not be successful at all without the connivance of a corrupt public official. Corrupt government officials who hold vital responsibility towards the review and issuance of travel documents makes the operation highly successful. The document vendors provide real or false document needed for the deployment. But on the autocratic front, the most critical role played by the actors is that of the armed men who must insure that no one could get away or escape. It is critical because if any of the victims escape, the full force of the law will surely hunt them, as well as those behind them. These men therefore need to be heartless, ruthless, and hardened criminals who would not hesitate to shot or kill anyone would attempt to escape. The Blue print of deceit Ciment and Shanty (2008) asserted that there are various schemes of deceits human traffickers employed to collect and traffic women for prostitution. Among these methods is deception, the recruitment of prostitutes, purchase or rent from relatives, boyfriends, and friends, Kidnapping, and as payment of debt (p. 220). This crime model is a rich source of illegal money as according to estimates, a single individual or a group involved in trafficking women and children for commercial sex â€Å"can make about US$122,000 from one woman in a year† Ciment, J. D. and Shanty, F. G. 008, p. 221) or an estimated 12 billion dollars annually. Deceptions of women are usually done through the form of either false promise of employment or false promise of marriage, or in some cases, a false promise of education. False marriages and mail order brides are used a means of deception to bring women for overseas prostitution. But all these promises are broken once the women are in the hands of the traffickers. They are then turned over to the safe house operators who insure maximum security with the help of armed men assigned to secure any possibility of escape. Recruitment of prostitutes also involved deception as despite these women knew what type of job awaits them. Ciment and Shanty noted that what they are not aware of is â€Å"the degree of exploitation to which they will be subjected (p. 220). The danger for this operation however is that when the supposed victims verify the identity of employment agency with proper government authorities regarding the legality of such employment agency, or the truth about the offered job with embassy of the particular country where the jobs are supposedly available. The same with the mail order bride, there is a need to verify the information of the man to be marrying with the embassy of the country where that man lives. If this is the case, there is a tendency that the whole operation will be disrupted as when formal complaints is made with government authorities regarding the discovery, the whole operation might be disrupted This operation therefore requires careful planning especially with regards to hiring, keeping and deploying women. One particular problem for them is that the families of these women are keen on the developments regarding their daughter’s longing to work abroad. In other words, they might be sensitive to anything that might be suspicious relating to working abroad. With various laws that apply to this crime such as kidnapping, illegal detention, illegal recruitment, exploitation of women and children and anti-human trafficking laws, they can easily be rapt by the authorities. That is, the families and friends of the victims can report to the authorities what ever they perceived as irregularity on the processes, the very time their daughter left their home as they are supposedly in touched with her, all through out the entire processes. In other words any thing that would create suspicion would mean risk for this business; risk in the sense that these families and friends might report to the police the disappearance of their daughters. Thus, they need to carefully lay out plans for deceitful their schemes. They might even involved in civic duties and social functions, befriend people in high places, and to even to the point of disguising as philanthropist in order to project an image that will unlikely to be suspected of crime involvement, and be generous to the families of the victims during the initial stages of the hiring. The actors in this crime model therefore appear harmless, genuinely concern, and would hardly be suspected of any crime involvement. Outwardly, they are not dangerous, dignified, and innocent but inside; they are ruthless, cruel and hardened criminals. The actors of this crime group however will use its entire means to control these women once they have gotten in their hands these women. They will confiscate all communication devices such as cell phones and devices, as well as passports and other travel documents to ensure no one will dare of escape. In order to appease the families of the ‘hired victims’ the agency might provide cash incentives or advance payment to which after everything has been facilitated particularly the deployment of women to their prospective clients, the office will banish in the thin air to transfer to a new location with a new name, new address, new schemes, but the same people, the same processes, and the same modos operande. Upon hiring of women, they need to provide assurance that everything is fine to avoid any suspicion. However, when this democratic approach proved ineffective, they will use violence to silence the families of the victims. Beeks and Amir (2006) cited that once a woman is in trafficker’s hands, the latter uses any and all means to control her: violence, including sexual assault, threats to the victim’s and her family’s lives, drugs, and threat to turn the woman over to unsympathetic authorities (p. 68). Beeks and Amid stated, â€Å"many women refuse to cooperate with the authorities because there was little or no protection, and they faced deportation, and threats against their families if they cooperate with foreign law enforcement† (p. 68). The extent of this crime model Trafficking of women for prostitution is the worst of all the types of human trafficking. According to Ciment and Shanty, there are an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 individuals that trafficked each year to which the majority come from Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, India, Thailand, and Cambodia. The former Soviet Union is now seen to be growing source of trafficking for prostitution and the sex industry (p. 195). The extent of human trafficking is not only confined in Asian countries and the former Soviet Union. Nicola (2009) noted that trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation, â€Å"has involved all the European Union and more in general Western European countries in the past twenty years (p. 3). The extent of human trafficking for prostitution apparently is global because the demand for commercial sex is global. There are no doubts that about the global extent of trafficking in women for prostitution as according to Jeffereys (1997) prostitution has been â€Å"industrialized internationally† (p. 307). Jeffreys pointed out that prostitution is a result of the increasing â€Å"internationalization of the world economy, in which local communities in the third world become an integral part of the industrialized countries† (p. 308). Jeffreys explained that as a consequence of the lost traditional resources, such as land, paid labor or other means of income were felt greatly by women and girls who have to take care of children and family because of tradition or the disappearance of male support (p. 308). Jeffreys asserts, â€Å"Military prostitution and sex tourism have increased the global demand for prostitution† (p. 309).