Human Trafficking
Background Information
What is human trafficking as it exists in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS)?
Human trafficking – essentially the recruitment, transport, receipt and harboring of people for the purpose of exploiting their labor – affects almost all parts of the world and is widely believed to be increasing in both scale and gravity, though statistics are still quite incomplete. Although trafficking has existed for centuries, the uneven effects of globalization have, in recent times, contributed to an environment in which trafficking has been able to flourish into a highly profitable and generally low risk criminal business.
The Mekong region compared to many other parts of the world contains very diverse patterns of human trafficking – internal and cross-border; highly organized and also small-scale; sex and labor, through both formal and informal recruitment mechanisms; and involving the victimization of men, women, boys, girls, and families. Thus, within the GMS, there is not so much a single pattern of trafficking in persons as a range of different patterns, with various victim profiles and criminal profiles. Examples include:
Trafficking also occurs from the Mekong countries to destinations further abroad. For example, women and girls from Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam are increasingly being found in forced prostitution or domestic servitude in Malaysia. Many utilized formal labor recruitment agencies in the hopes of migrating safely and legally, but were still deceived and exploited at destination.
Trafficked Thai women are also found in the sex trade in Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei/Taiwan, Japan, South Africa, the Middle East, the US, and western European countries. Western Europe, especially the UK, is reporting increasing numbers of trafficking cases involving Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese women.
Extra-GMS trafficking is not confined to women or to sex work – in fact, extreme exploitation and slavery of Cambodian, Myanmar, and Thai men in factories and on fishing boats from which they cannot escape extends into the South China Sea area as well as the Middle East.
Human trafficking is not narcotics trafficking: the ‘evidence’ is a human being, trauma from exploitation and lack of appropriate victim support challenges their participation in justice responses, and a handful of kingpin busts will not send human trafficking networks toppling. Direct force and abduction are rarely used, challenging case identification by authorities who are not specially trained. Most traffickers use more subtle means of coercion and deceit, and the situation gets more complicated when victims themselves become recruiters in order to save themselves from further exploitation.
The Mekong countries as well as other ASEAN neighbors such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines all have legal frameworks that could easily prosecute traffickers, using definitions of human trafficking according to international conventions. At this point in May 2009, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand all have comprehensive anti-trafficking laws in force that protect male, female, and child victims of sex and labor trafficking, both internal and cross-border.
The other three Mekong countries – China, Lao PDR, and Vietnam – do not have specific anti-trafficking laws, but they do have Criminal Codes or Penal Codes with articles that punish forced labor and forced prostitution. All countries also have labor laws that levy punishments and fines for forced and exploitative labor.
Now that the process of legal framework strengthening is nearly complete in the six Mekong countries, the counter-trafficking community has an arsenal of existing criminal, labor, and civil laws such as anti-trafficking laws, child protection laws, Criminal Codes, anti-slavery laws, and labor protection laws to bring justice to exploiters and traffickers in the Mekong region.
