Human Trafficking In South Africa Essay

1185 Words3 Pages

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Human trafficking is the world’s third largest criminal activity following drug and weapons trafficking. According to Our Sexuality (Crooks, R.; Baur, K., 10th Edition), traffickers are criminals who exploit women and children from underdeveloped and socially, economically, or politically unstable nations. Traffickers usually promise employment and educational opportunity as bait. Victims are treated like objects and exploited for the benefit of the traffickers. Traffickers ‘own’ their victims and do everything possible to keep these workers who earn money for them to maintain their lavish lifestyles (Robinson 2001). The UN Protocol to Prevent, Supress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (2002), was the first internationally …show more content…

We can link poverty, increasing unemployment rates, and lack of opportunity to sex trafficking. The human need to survive makes them vulnerable to the promise made by traffickers. According to IOM’s 2008 report: “No Experience Necessary: The Internal Trafficking of Persons in South Africa”, traffickers take advantage of people’s aspiration for a better life. UNESCO labels such factors as “pull” and “push” factors. Pull factors are factors that make trafficking likely to happen, such as the lack of law enforcement agencies to prosecute traffickers. Push factors are direct circumstances that make certain people more susceptible to trafficking, such as unequal access to education that places limits on women. As a form of modern day slavery, human trafficking in general succeeds because of the profit it brings in. It is easier and cheaper to move human cargo across borders than it is to move drugs or weapon. The trafficking of human beings can be looked at as the act of recycling because human beings can be trafficked multiple times. Trafficking thrives as a result to demand and continues to thrive because of its underground operation that avoids the legal system. Human trafficking is secretive and thus dangerous. Involved persons are very careful to not let just anyone into the business and to keep their trafficked humans quiet and away from retaliating. Victims do not trust and are afraid of police as well because of their crooked involvement in this criminal activity. Human trafficking thrives is because of this low risk of retaliation by victims. The police are South African soldiers who patrol the border regions. Traffickers make a trusted contact of one or more of these soldiers to avoid any trouble in trafficking humans. (IOM, 2003 – Seduction, Sale, and

Open Document