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Fishing in the Stream of Migration
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MODERN SLAVERY The majority of victims are entrapped after they have voluntarily left their communities and are often forced into bonded labor
Fishing in the stream of migration. This description of how traffickers approach victims aptly evokes the dangerous situation faced by many women and children as they leave their homes to seek new opportunities in unfamiliar places. Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, reliable statistics are difficult to obtain. But it has been estimated that as many as 200,000 women and children are caught up in human trafficking networks across Asia every year. From individual stories, a picture emerges of women—and too often children—setting off on journeys with high hopes for a new life. Unscrupulous traffickers dash these hopes, treating their victims as commodities, bought and sold to meet the insatiable demand for cheap and expendable labor from many sectors.
Poverty and abuse at home may prompt a child or young woman to consider recommendations from a relative or a friend of a friend of a place to look for work, or a contact to meet along the road who will help find a job. But along the road, terrifying things happen, and these women and children find themselves trapped—literally locked up—and often sexually assaulted to increase fear and obedience. Then they are passed into the hands of others—women as well as men—who will demand that they work as prostitutes, in sweat shops, or in households where duties may be endless, with little or no regard for normal working conditions, and little or no pay.
Whatever the circumstances, this modern form of slavery causes enormous harm to thousands of individuals and diverts vast profits into the hands of criminals. These impacts not only permanently deny trafficking survivors their full potential and undermine development efforts, but also represent a particularly pernicious form of human rights abuse.
The key characteristics of trafficking identified by the United Nations (UN) are that an individual is forced to travel to a destination where he or she works under varying degrees of coercion and exploitation, from whose work a third party benefits. Many third parties benefit from trafficking—by setting up the initial contacts, housing or transporting the victims, and others—and to a much greater extent, by directly benefiting from the work carried out such as those buying services from trafficked commercial sex workers and factory owners.
Numerous myths have been created around human trafficking. It is common to assume victims are kidnapped, and then forced into sexual slavery. However, the majority of victims are entrapped after they have voluntarily left their communities. If encountered by police, these victims may be desperate to keep traveling to escape more difficult circumstances at home, and hence remain with a suspected trafficker—making it hard to judge rapidly and prudently when trafficking is taking place.
Basic literacy, vocational skills, and experience in negotiating with strangers can go a long way toward resisting traffickerswant to move
It is often assumed that poor families, or those from specific ethnic groups, ruthlessly sell their children to brothel owners; but for many parents, they hand over their children to relatives on the promise of a job in someone’s house or better opportunities for schooling. Parents may never know where their children end up. Very often, poor people are forced to take decisions they would not otherwise take, and seeing a child leave in the care of others is difficult for nearly all parents.
It is also often thought that most trafficked women and children end up in the commercial sex industry. Bonded labor practices, however, are still used extensively in factories in many parts of Asia. Traffickers, for a fee, provide contacts with employers, but the worker cannot leave the factory until the fee is repaid. When these circumstances require movement to a new place and either the worker or their families are threatened until the debts are paid (which may be delayed for weeks or years), human trafficking has taken place.
Women and girls are particularly easy to fish out of the stream of migration—they are less familiar with the outside world than men. Stereotypes of behavior for young women tend to reinforce a sense of being helpless and unprotected without a man, a vulnerability quickly recognized by opportunistic traffickers. Women and girls are also most likely to suffer from stigma once they return to their communities after such experiences, and have fewer options for alternative survival strategies. So the traffickers can increase their control over and isolation of women and girls through fear of further being victimized. Boys and men are also trafficked, but to a lesser extent, and their exit options are greater than those for girls and women.
Many organizations, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are seeking ways to combat trafficking in its many forms. One important step toward prevention is to extend to girls and women the capacities required to take up good job opportunities and to cope with new and different situations. Basic literacy, vocational skills, and experience in meeting and negotiating with strangers can go a long way toward resisting offers of false promises from traffickers. These opportunities can be offered through well-designed poverty reduction initiatives that recognize the importance of empowering women and men to take greater control of their lives. Providing information about potential dangers during migration—even if it is only into the nearby city—can also help build resistance to traffickers. These messages are now being developed by nongovernment organizations in many countries, and used in ADB-funded community development projects.
Highways are a notorious hangout for traffickers. Women, and sometimes even children, are often lured into commercial sex work by transport workers or passengers in roadside restaurants and bars, and are then seized by traffickers—fishing in these waters—and shipped to other destinations. Initiatives have been successfully tested in India to discourage the demand by truck drivers for what are often trafficked sex workers, and messages regarding the dangers of trafficking are now part of many HIV/AIDS prevention programs among commercial sex workers in several parts of Asia.
In areas where trafficking is a significant risk, ADB is encouraging infrastructure projects to actively seek opportunities to involve organizations combating trafficking, for example, as partners in developing bus shelters or rail stations. Similarly anti-trafficking messages and initiatives have to be part of any project involving migrant populations such as in urban slums or those escaping natural disaster or conflict. ADB has prepared guidelines for staff designing projects in relevant sectors, as well as an analysis of the cycle of trafficking in South Asia, which highlight factors to be considered in poverty reduction analysis.
Migration is an excellent option to escape poverty or abuse, and women should not be denied this choice through fear of trafficking or as a side effect of legislation to capture organized criminals. Sustainable economic and social development relies upon the freedom for workers to move safely to where good jobs are. Addressing poverty and facilitating empowerment, particularly for those women and children most at risk, will go a long way to addressing the root causes of this flagrant human rights violation.
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