Frequently Asked Quesions About Human Trafficking:
- What is human trafficking?
- Who are the victims of human trafficking?
- Who are the perpetrators of human trafficking?
- What is the current state of trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia?
Human trafficking is a term used to describe situations where one person obtains or holds another person in compelled service, a modern form of slavery. It can be generally defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons. This is done by means of threats, coercion, abduction, fraud, and deception. This can occur through one individual abusing their power over another or attempting to take advantage of a vulnerable situation, as well as through monetary transactions or the promise of benefits to achieve the consent of a person for the end purpose of exploitation.
The term "trafficking" is misleading, since most people assume it implies movement. Trafficking is not the same thing as smuggling. It does not require forced movement, transportation, or border crossing. A person can be trafficked in his or her own country, state, city, or even in their own home. These situations do not require physical force, abuse or restraint. The consent of a victim is irrelevant, as is payment or compensation.
Trafficking in persons takes many different forms, and sometimes the lines in identifying situations are difficult. However, some commonly agreed upon forms of trafficking include:
- Forced Labor. This makes up for the largest portion of human trafficking cases. A form of involuntary servitude, forced labor is work exacted from a person under the menace of any penalty, and for which the labor has not been offered voluntarily.
- Debt Bondage. A form of forced labor, this is a system common in Southeast Asia. Each generation is required to work a piece of land to pay off a debt owed to the landowners by the ancestors of the current generation. This process can begin as an unlawful exploitation of an initial debt.
- Domestic Servitude. Another form of forced labor, but in an informal work environment. Individuals are trafficked into private homes to work. Their place of enslavement is connected to their off-duty living quarters and workers in a household are often isolated.
- Child Soldiers. The unlawful recruitment or use of children by armed forces. Children can be forced or coerced into serving as combatants, doing labor for the armed forces, or providing sexual services.
- Sex Slavery. When a person is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution, or maintained in such a situation through coercion.
Children are legally not able to consent to travel or employment, so any of these situations involving children would automatically be considered trafficking. Child trafficking is especially heinous and has devastating consequences on the child victims.
Who are the victims of human trafficking?
Many movies portray victims of trafficking as people who have been kidnapped while on vacation or simply while walking on the street, but this is generally not the case. Though abductions do account for some of the cases, a victim of trafficking is more typically deceived. Recruiters can run sham agencies (complete with newspaper ads and application forms) offering jobs in other countries as au pairs, secretaries, housekeepers, and farmers, among other jobs. Recruiters can also work independently, meeting young women, seducing them, and convincing them to leave the city or country for a potential job elsewhere to the same eventual result: Victims are duped by this ploy and accept the offer, traveling willingly and legally to another city country, where upon arrival, they are greeted by someone who will exploit them. Their passports are taken away; they are abused and forced into some kind of labor (such as hard physical labor, domestic servitude, or sex work). In many cases, the victim is informed that they have accrued some enormous debt to the trafficker as a result of transit costs, housing, and board. The victim is forced to work in order to repay that enormous sum of money, all of which goes to the traffickers as profits.
There are other cases where there is initial consent to labor, and then the right to give or revoke consent is no longer available. For example, a willing day laborer might be sold into slavery by their boss, or a sex worker goes to a different country where the terms of agreement are changed and she does not consent. What makes something a case of trafficking is when a person is deceived, they do not give consent, and they are exploited.
In cases of child trafficking, parents sometimes send their children away with traffickers unwittingly. If a parent lives in poverty and a trafficker offers them the chance to give their children an education and better opportunities, a parent might comply out of desperation. Unscrupulous parents might also exploit their own children, either prostituting them out of the house in which they live or renting out a child’s domestic services or labor for extra income. In all of these cases, it is possible that the parents or guardians of children in question mean them no harm, but exploit them nonetheless. It is important to understand in these cases that poverty is a root cause. If a person lives in an environment that lacks certain resources and opportunities, such as adequate education, available jobs, and relative stability, they are more likely to be searching for better prospects. For many victims, this is the hope for a better life. They are vulnerable, and hope to escape war, instability, poverty, and abuse, only to be end up deceived and enslaved.
Who are the perpetrators of human trafficking?
Participation in the modern slave trade is often difficult to understand, and in a complex crime network it is difficult to find just one responsible individual. The term “traffickers” refers to all those involved in the criminal activity of trafficking in human beings. This can include recruiters, pimps, transport arrangers, counterfeiters who provide false identity documents, and those laundering the profits from the trade in human beings.
Traffickers can be men or women. In terms of the recruiting process, the gender of the trafficker can play a significant role. Recruiters are often selected based on their ability to garner trust from potential victims. The gender composition of traffickers can also play a role in the kind of trafficking occurring — trafficking operations run exclusively by females tend to make victims of women and girls, while mixed gender operations traffick men, women, and children.
Traffickers are driven by risk and profit. The trade in human beings is a lucrative business. There is no market rate for people, and the resale value does not depreciate over time. You can sell the product again and again, and there is no industry oversight. Traffickers are able to reap an enormous profit from the people that they sell at a relatively tiny risk. In many countries, there are corrupt officials who can be paid off, aiding traffickers in their ability to dodge the law and the criminal justice system. Even though it is mandatory for all signees to the Palermo Protocol to criminalize trafficking, the number of prosecutions remains low, especially when considered relative to the estimated scope of the problem. This lack of success in criminal courts sends out the message that trafficking is low on the legal priority list, and that traffickers will continue their practices without risk of punishment. The United States Trafficking in Persons Report ranks countries on their policies regarding human trafficking, pointing out those that do not comply with basic standards. If countries comply with these standards, they are more likely to establish rule of law in this domain, which can help put pressure on the current trafficking systems.
What is the current situation of trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia?
Cambodia is a country with a deeply fractured history and a people who, three decades later, continue to suffer from the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide. A motion to rapidly deurbanize Cambodia in the mid-1970’s resulted in a return to a poorly planned agrarian economy, and today the country remains impoverished with the rural poor particularly at-risk.
According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), nearly half of Cambodia’s population is living in multidimensional poverty, a term used to illustrate the various aspects of poverty today including: poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, lack of income, and an ongoing threat of violence and disempowerment. As of 2012, Cambodia’s gross national income per capita was $880 US dollars. These factors, coupled with a weak rule of law, civil unrest, and traditional cultural norms that tolerate gender inequality, leave Cambodian women and girls particularly susceptible to trafficking, exploitation, and gender-based violence.
Cambodia is a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking of men, women, and children. According to the United States 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), the government is not in full compliance with minimum standards toward eliminating trafficking. There is already an anti-trafficking law in place, but its enforcement is problematic, uneven at best. Despite the endemic corruption in Cambodia and evidence to indicate that it plays a direct role in trafficking, the government has done little to specifically address the issue. This in turn creates a sense of impunity among traffickers, a dangerous factor that pushes individuals in the industry. The number of prosecutions and convictions have been slowly rising in Cambodia, but these numbers remain in double digits leaving many more traffickers outside the law.
Cambodia is a country ready for change, ready to move on from its tumultuous past. The lack of government attention (regardless if it is caused by a lack of will or lack of resources), leaves nongovernmental organizations on the ground with a duty to step in and an opportunity to effect change. The social and economic issues described above are not harbingers of doom and hopelessness, they are heralds of hope and opportunity.
By serving victims and supporting organizations on the ground that help reach women and girls who have been exploited, we can to restore the lives of innocent victims. By empowering survivors with education, skills training and economic independence, we can fight poverty and gender bias. By improving police capacity, government training, and communal knowledge, we we can prevent future situations of slavery. Cambodia is on the verge of change, and SMF has the capacity, knowledge, and dedication to social justice to be instrumental in the process.