Classwork Exercise and Series (Civic Education- SS3): Human Trafficking

Meaning of Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is the trade in humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation for the traffickers.

Human trafficking can be defined as the act of recruiting, transporting, or receiving a person through force, coercion or through other means for the purpose of exploiting them.

Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery where people profit from the control and exploitation of others.

Although slavery is commonly thought to be a thing of the past, human trafficking still exists today throughout the United States and globally when traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control other people for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex or forcing them to provide labor services against their will. Traffickers use violence, threats, deception, debt bondage, and other manipulative tactics to trap victims in horrific situations every day in America. All trafficking victims share one essential experience – the loss of freedom. Over 55% of victims of human trafficking are women and children.

Agents of Trafficking

The Agents of Human Trafficking are

1. The traffickers: The traffickers are the people either individual or group of persons who engages in the forceful or coercive recruitment of the victims , they include all the people that work towards the success of the human trafficking, they include the recruiters, transporters, receivers, the guards, the producers of false documentation.
2. The Trafficking victims: These include all the women, men, children both boys and girls and even the youth who are deceived or transported by force into the hands of those who exploit them for profit.

Characteristics of Human Trafficking

1. Traffickers compel their victims to accept a job through forms of deception, coercion or physical force.
2. They trapped their victims in forced labor situations from which they cannot freely escape.
3. In extreme situations, victims are forced into an employment relationship because they were sold by a family member or physically abducted or kidnapped.
4. Most time they are characterized with deception, for example, a trafficker may promise a woman a job abroad to work as a nanny earning a minimum wage, but when she arrives she is instead forced to work in a sweatshop where her wage are withheld, she is forced to work eighteen hours a day and she is not allowed to leave the premise

Causes of Human Trafficking

The following points below are causes of human trafficking,

1. Poverty: This is a situation where a person fall short of a level of economic welfare, where a person lacks the basic human want which are clothing, food and shelter .A person who is poor can easily be deceived to come over to another place with the promise of getting a good job and become a victim in the hands of the traffickers.
2. Lack of employment opportunities: Due to the bad economic situation of some countries that made some people jobless, some people therefore get lured and deceived by traffickers because they want to get out of the country and thereby using them as slaves and prostitutes in other countries.
3. Profit: Because of the profits the trafficker wants to make from doing trafficking business make them to engage themselves in such evil business all because of profit.
4. Low self esteem: Many people because they do not know their worth and value, they see themselves as nobody thereby making them vulnerable and they fall into the hands of traffickers and because they have low self esteem they allow any body to direct them to anywhere.
5. Illiterates: Illiterates are those who are not able to read or write, illiteracy has made so many people to become a victim of trafficking, for instance, signing on a paper you do not have any knowledge about. They deceived them by telling them they will enroll them into school and teach them many things, because they want to be educated they then fall victim of trafficking.
6. The search for greener pastures: Some people believe that it is by travelling and relocating to another place before they can make it in all aspects of life.
7. Economic system: Because of poor economic system of some countries the citizens prefer to live somewhere else and would not mind to go anywhere and because of this they become a victim.
8. Greed: Some people are not satisfied with what they have, because of the love to earn more than what they can have they end up falling into the hands of traffickers.

Test and Exercise.

1. The recruitment of people of people with force, deception and threat from one place to another for the purpose of exploiting them is called (a) human abuse (b) human trafficking (c) human disgrace (d) drug trafficking.
2. One of the characteristics of human trafficking is (a) it is characterized with love and affection (b) the profit made from it is usually given to the victims (c) victims are usually trapped in hard labor (d) they consider the victims before doing anything.
3. The two major agents of human trafficking is (a) traffickers and victim (b) government and society (c)community and society (d) all of the above.
4. All of these are causes of human trafficking except (a) greed (b) poverty (c) illiteracy (d) information.
5. The people who involve in the coercive recruitment of people like the transporters, the guard, the producer of false documents are all regarded as (a) victims (b) traffickers (c) government (d) society.