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Question
9. What is the link between trafficking and the commercial
sexual exploitation of children?
The commercial sexual exploitation of children is defined
as follows:
Any person under eighteen, male or female, engaging
in sexual activities for money, profit, or any other
consideration due to coercion or influence by any
adult, syndicate or group.
While most forms of trafficking do not involve commercial
sexual exploitation, there are two major links between
them:
- Commercial sexual exploitation is one of the possible
purposes or possible outcomes of trafficking. In other
words, trafficking will sometimes be the chain of
criminal acts culminating in a child being brought
into commercial sexual exploitation;
- Trafficking of children – moving them away
from their normal context to other parts of a country
or across borders – increases their vulnerability
to commercial sexual exploitation – the so-called
"incidental exposure". Isolated from family,
community and normal protection mechanisms, often
unable to speak the language and deprived of legal
status, children trafficked for any purpose are at
high risk of sexual exploitation.
Question 10. What is
the link between trafficking, smuggling and migration?
The UN Smuggling Protocol of the Transnational Convention
on Organised Crime defines smuggling as
the
procurement of illegal entry of a person into a State
Party of which the person is not a national or permanent
resident, against a financial or other material benefit.
While the definition of trafficking contains the element
of coercion, that of smuggling does not. Further, smugglers
have a vested interest in not harming the person they
are helping to migrate; in a cash-on-delivery manner,
often payment for smugglers comes only after the successful
border breach. A smuggler's crime is against the State
of destination, and any States in-between, not against
the migrant herself. The crime of a trafficker, on the
other hand, is against the migrant, putting him or her
into coercive or exploitative situations. The main profit
in trafficking does not come from a one-off payment, but
from the ongoing proceeds of keeping a person in slave-like
conditions, and appropriating the money that is thus earned.
It is therefore important to distinguish between those
who get trafficked (they are victims of a trafficker)
and those who get smuggled (clients of a smuggler).
Question
11. Can there be trafficking if the movement is voluntary?
Many trafficking cases within the Mekong sub-region
start with a decision to migrate or, in other words,
a voluntary movement (even if this ‘voluntary’
choice is often made within an extremely limited range
of options). When a voluntary migrant asks for a smuggler's
help to cross borders, he or she is delivering herself
into a position of vulnerability for exploitation and
abuse. It should be noted that this vulnerability increases
in accordance with the degree of border control. A person
requiring assistance to sneak through a forest or across
a river, for example, is less exposed than one who requires
smugglers organised and powerful enough to produce false
travel documents. Through a variety of means, a migration
process that started voluntarily can turn into a trafficking
situation.
In these cases it is the end outcome (the exploitation)
rather than the victim's original intention (the migration)
that defines whether the situation is or is not trafficking.
The definition in the Trafficking Protocol also requires
intent on the part of the trafficker. If a person is
smuggled, and the smuggler had some intention to exploit
the person, then trafficking is indicated. If the smuggler
has only the intention to help the person defeat a country’s
migration controls, trafficking is not indicated. Much
depends therefore on the trafficker’s intention
– more than depends on the victim’s intention
as their intention can be influenced by ‘the improper
means’ deployed by the trafficker.
Question 12. What
is the link between child trafficking and HIV/AIDS?
There is a direct link. Women and children who are trafficked
for commercial sexual exploitation are usually forced
to have frequent, unprotected sex with multiple partners.
Even if they are aware of how to protect themselves,
and have access to condoms, they have virtually no negotiating
power to convince customers to use a condom. In some
cases, it has been seen that customers seek out young
children believing them less likely to have HIV. Children,
because of their fragile tissue, are physiologically
more vulnerable to contracting HIV.
Children trafficked into other forms of exploitation
(e.g. forced labour, domestic work) are also quite vulnerable
to sexual abuse by employers and/or family members of
employers, hence increasing their chances of contracting
HIV.
Question
13. Who are the traffickers and the clients of trafficking?
Traffickers range from organised networks able to produce
or buy fake documents, clear immigration requirements
for their victims, and conduct trafficking operations
spanning thousands of kilometres, to individuals seizing
an opportunity to cheat, sweet-talk or coerce their
victim into a situation of exploitation.
There are extensive linkages between the traffickers
in all parts of this spectrum of sophistication; for
example many less sophisticated traffickers engage in
their work not knowing the ultimate recipient to be
organised criminals.
Individual or non-organised traffickers often operate
across land borders, while more sophisticated and organised
traffickers tend to operate more complex schemes and
will often go to more trouble to seek a higher return
for the trafficking victim by selling him/her in more
distant markets.
Traffickers are also those who exploit adults and children
in brothels, in illegal factories, or by employing them
as slaves in domestic work, on fishing boats or in plantations.
In commercial sexual exploitation the clients of traffickers
come closest to being direct users of trafficked people:
men who use the services of forced and under-age prostitutes
are direct clients of traffickers, not always knowingly.
Finally, people who buy or consume goods produced by
trafficked victims in slavery also contribute, though
indirectly, to the perpetuation of trafficking.
Question 14. What are the major
routes of trafficking in and from the Mekong Sub-Region?
There are a number of quite distinct forms of trafficking
within the sub-region, including:
- Trafficking from Cambodia, China, Laos and Myanmar
to Thailand for forced labour and other forms of labour
exploitation, including the sex trade, within the
context of widespread irregular migration;
- Trafficking of children from Cambodia to Thailand
and Vietnam for begging, and lately from Vietnam to
Cambodia, Laos and Thailand for the same purpose;
- Trafficking of women and girls from Vietnam, Laos,
and Myanmar to China for forced marriage;
- Domestic trafficking of kidnapped children in China,
for adoption and of women and girls for forced marriage;
- Trafficking of women and girls from Vietnam to
Cambodia for the sex trade.
Trafficking also takes place from these countries to Malaysia
(often travelling through Thailand) and to other parts
of Asia (e.g. Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and the world
(mostly Europe, the United States, Australia, and the
Middle East). Thai women have historically been the ones
most frequently trafficked outside the region, but as
their vulnerabilities decrease, traffickers have also
been targeting people from China, Myanmar, Vietnam, and
other countries in the region. The willingness of well-meaning
Western couples to pay up to $20,000 to fast-track the
adoption process in Cambodia led to a new trafficking
market for stolen babies which subsequently prompted a
suspension of visas for adopted babies from Cambodia going
to North America and Europe.
Question 15.
Are families selling their children for profit?
Contrary to a die-hard stereotype, this is extremely uncommon..
This myth seems to take root in anecdotes that arise from
the following situations on the ground:
- Poverty forces some families in the Mekong sub-region
to send their children to work away from home. Children,
thus made more vulnerable, may then fall into the
hands of traffickers and exploiters. It is important
to note, though, that in most cases this does not
occur.
- Lack of education and lack of knowledge of the realities
of migration may make parents naïve and gullible
to traffickers' tricks, truly believing their promises
of a better future for the child and the family;
- Parents may know that the job prospect awaiting
their child is not great, but still ignore its actual
inhumane and slave-like conditions;
- Parents may in some cases ‘rent’ their
children to someone who promises good returns and
work elsewhere;
Question 16.
Does trafficking happen because of lack of awareness?
Although awareness of trafficking and of the dangers linked
to migration is fundamental, awareness is not the end
of the story. Awareness raising efforts tend to start
with the assumption that if fully informed, children,
adults and families will be able to act differently. This
is not always the case. It is important, while focusing
on awareness raising efforts, to also develop projects
that give children, adults and families other choices
and opportunities.
Question
17. Are governments facilitating trafficking and slavery?
Governments may be facilitating trafficking in a number
of ways, by act and by omission:
- By denying the existence of the problem in their
own country and concomitant lack of real political
will to combat the traffic;
- By lack of effective legislation and criminal justice
processes which contribute to traffickers operating
with impunity;
- By lack of effective law enforcement mechanisms
or targeting the wrong people such as trafficked victims,
small-scale people movers and even parents; and
- By corruption among police and other authorities.
Authorities in the sub-region have been known to warn
brothel or factory owners of planned raids; to collaborate
with exploiters and traffickers; and in some cases,
to own the exploitative businesses themselves;
- By poor migration management policies, which fail
to allow legal, regulated mechanisms to match labour
demand and labour supply across borders;
- Through trade and economic policies which continue
to extend the gap between the richest and the poorest
within countries, and between countries in the sub-region.
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