Introduction
Transnational organised crime has been escalating in recent decades as globalisation impacts more regions, resulting in a decline of nation states and border controls. In the 1960s, most of the growth of transnational crime was linked to the growth of the drug trade in such regions as Asia, Latin America, Africa and even Italy, home of the original Mafia. By the late 1990s, the illicit trade in drugs represented an equal share of the legitimate trade in textiles and steel (7.5 per cent of world trade) (UN International Drug Control Programme 1997: 124). Though the drug trade remains the most lucrative aspect of transnational crime, the last few decades have seen an enormous growth in organised human trafficking and smuggling.
Many criminals have switched to this area of transnational crime because of the high profits and low risk. Others, not previously involved in transnational crime have entered this trade because of the low initial costs of entry and the large demand for smuggled and trafficked people.
As appalling as human trafficking is, it is a growing transnational phenomenon. International trafficking of women and girls for the sex industry, while not new, has spread to new regions of the world and become a larger part of the illicit global economy. The stunning growth in human smuggling and trafficking occurring in the last 20 years has transpired due to both structural reasons within the international economy, and the increased risk for narcotics traffickers. Moreover, drug traffickers can sell their commodity once,
while human traffickers can sell trafficked people repeatedly, thereby deriving extensive profits.
As rational actors, transnational criminals have seen tremendous business opportunities in the human trafficking arena. They are rarely prosecuted because of their ability to neutralise law enforcement through bribes and intimidation. Yet they also thrive in a globalised world because the legal controls are state based, whereas the crime groups are transnational. The criminals’ links with the political system exist often not only in their home environment but also in transit and destination countries. Through their flexibility and because of their network structures, they avoid cumbersome legal procedures, which prevent law enforcement from striking effectively at the smuggling networks that cross regions and continents.
Defining the problem
The trafficking problem has existed for decades. As other chapters discuss, the problem of trafficking in women, or the white slave trade, was a concern at the beginning of the twentieth century (see Lee, Morawska, Lindquist and Piper, Chapters 1, 5 and 7 in this volume).
International efforts were made then to combat the problem. But in the rest of the twentieth century, the two World Wars followed by the Cold War provided numerous other problems that demanded significant attention. Human trafficking, concentrated primarily in Asia, remained purely a regional concern. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the problem of trafficking from the former socialist countries emerged on a global scale. Growing international attention was then paid to combating trafficking, including the development of international instruments to combat the phenomenon. The Protocol on human trafficking that was signed in Palermo in 2000 accompanied the United Nations Convention on Transnational Crime. The decision to address human trafficking within the context of transnational crime is highly significant, as it defines the problem not as a small scale one but as a phenomenon tied to international organised crime.
Its status as one of the few protocols attached to the Convention recognises the centrality of trafficking to the phenomenon of transnational crime. By defining human trafficking as a crime problem rather than as a migration, human rights or security issue, the international community is recognising that criminal law and law enforcement institutions must play a key role in addressing the problem of transnational human trafficking. Although its causes may
be social and economic, the solutions to it lie in the adoption and enforcement of laws.
After years of negotiation among member states, the UN adopted the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. This Protocol defines trafficking as:
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of Persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. (UN Protocol, Article 3 (a)) A different protocol was adopted to address human smuggling. There is some overlap between human smuggling and trafficking but they are really two different phenomena. Many people who engage in human trafficking are small specialised groups who move relatively small number of victims. In some regions of the world, human traffickers are individuals with higher education who have not previously participated in crime. Therefore, their modes of operation differ from the human smugglers who have less education and move large volumes of people.
Dimensions of the problem
Very broad approximations of the size of the trafficking problem by the US government estimate that some 600,000 to 800,000 people were trafficked worldwide according to the United States Trafficking in Persons Report of 2004, of which 80 per cent were women and girls and 70 per cent were trafficked for sexual exploitation (Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report 2004: 2; for a discussion of such estimates, see Di Nicola, Chapter 3 in this volume). The 2006 Report focuses on the large number internationally engaged in slave or forced labour situations with estimates ranging from 4 to 27 million (TIP Report 2006). These crimes are now globalised. Almost every country in the world is involved in human trafficking either as a source, host or transit country; indeed, some countries function in all three
categories simultaneously. In many parts of the world, trafficking occurs within the context of large-scale migration with some of the migrants, especially women and children, winding up as trafficking victims (Human Rights Watch 1995; Singh 2002). This is due in large part to the enormous population migrations into the major cities in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Europe is also facing increasing illegal migration from Africa and Asia, with an estimated 400,000 entering Europe illegally each year (Smucker 2004: 2). The US alone is estimated to have over 10 million illegal migrants (Moreno 2005:
A02).
Explaining the growth
The increased speed and ease of communication is an important characteristic of the globalised world. The rise of the internet has had a major impact, as organised crime groups in India and Russia are able to buy and sell women with the ease of a mouse-click. In the countries of the former USSR, hundreds of thousands of websites exist promoting brides and sexual services, and in Europe, websites promote sex tourism, particularly in Latin America and Asia. These activities are facilitated by organised crime groups, which are particularly well-developed in South East Asia, as well as in many other regions such as Latin America (Lintner 2003; International Drug Control Programme 1997: 122–44). In Africa, much smuggling is based out of the Sahara, in particular, Mali (Smucker 2004). The strategic locations both of Turkey and the Balkans have made these countries key routes between Asia and Europe, receiving an increasing number of trafficked individuals. The US–Mexico border remains an important crossing point for traffickers and smugglers moving individuals to the US.
With globalisation, trafficked women and children are often found far from their countries of origin. In many parts of the world, much trafficking occurs within the country or the region; however, women and children increasingly travel long distances to their endpoint. This has been seen particularly in the Asian countries bordering northern India and Thailand (International Organization of Migration 2000: 13;
Human Rights Watch 1995). Women from the former Soviet Union are trafficked to Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and North America (Erokhina 2005; Stoecker 2005). Similarly, women from the Dominican Republic are trafficked to Spain as well as many other European countries (Migration Information Programme 1998: 26–29).
Italy is the primary recipient country of women trafficked from Nigeria, and women from the Balkans wind up in Western Europe (Lindstrom 2004: 45–53). Chinese groups are significantly involved in the sex industry in Thailand and the neighbouring countries (Lintner 2003: 222–23). Thai women are trafficked by Thai and other Asian crime groups to Japan and the US. Japanese organised crime, yakuza, are major actors in the Asian sex trade (Kaplan and Dubro 2004), organising sex tourism to Thailand and importing girls from Thailand, the Philippines and Russia to Japan. Not as well known in the international crime literature is Indian organised crime, which is involved in the international trade of girls from Nepal and Bangladesh, to major urban centres, particularly Mumbai (Singh 2002).
The criminal actor
Traffickers are enormously diverse. They range from diplomats and employees of multinational organisations who traffic a young women for domestic labour to the large organisations of Asia which specialise in human smuggling and trafficking. There is every size of organisation in between the family business and the multinational criminal organisation. The high social status of some human traffickers contrasts sharply with that of drug traffickers who originate primarily from poorer families or criminal environments, such as triad (or Chinese organised crime) or mafia families. Women assume a larger role in this form of transnational crime as recruiters, madams and even kingpins of major smuggling operations. This is the only aspect of transnational crime where women assume a leading role.
Human smugglers and traffickers are not always exclusively motivated by profit. Some consciously engage in this activity to fund a terrorist group, a guerrilla movement or an insurgency. A terrorist in prison in Europe ran a prostitution ring of trafficked women from Moldova to fund Hezbollah, a nightclub with trafficked Russian-speaking women in a resort town in Southern Turkey run by Kurdish criminals helps support the PKK, and Marxist guerrillas in Nepal traffic girls to India to fund their cause.1 Rebel leaders in Africa will traffic the women and children of their defeated enemy just as they sold their captives to slave dealers in earlier centuries.
Smugglers and traffickers are of diverse ethnicities and operate on every continent, often in coordination with each other. The trafficking of Indians to Western Europe requires the cooperation of crime groups across the former Soviet Union, in Turkey and in Western
Europe. Groups that might never cooperate in legitimate businesses work together in trafficking. Illustrative of this is the cooperation of Arabs and Jews in the trafficking of Russian-speaking women from Egypt through the Sinai into Israel.2
Groups that have no prior history of involvement in trafficking have moved into this activity because of the significant profits. Illustrative of this is the recent involvement of US motorcycle gangs in the kidnapping of smuggled aliens.3 Motorcycle gangs have historically engaged in extortion, drug trafficking and many forms of contraband trade but they are also now active in human trafficking. MS-13 gang members have diversified their crime activities to include human smuggling (Abadinsky 2003: 4–18; Swecker 2006).
Women as traffickers
Human trafficking and smuggling are the only areas of transnational crime, where women assume an active and prominent position. The notorious chief of an entire Chinese smuggling organisation, Sister Ping, was recently convicted for alien smuggling, hostage taking, money laundering and conspiracy. Her smuggling operation resulted in 10 deaths, as smuggled aliens unable to swim were forced into freezing waters after the vessel entitled the ‘Golden Venture’ was detained (Ice News Release 2006). After years of careful investigative work on several continents, it was determined that she ran a multi-national smuggling organisation with tens of millions of dollars in profits. The profits of her business would be acceptable for a mid-size drug trafficker (Bernstein 2006: A1).
Yet this is not the only significant trafficking network run by a women. A major prostitution ring with trafficked women generated
$7 million annually in Los Angeles. The ringleader of ‘White Lace’, Rimma Fetissova, was a Ukrainian women and her chief financial officer was also a woman from the former USSR. This case is illustrative of the role of women in trafficking – as recruiters, entrepreneurs and managers (Los Angeles Police Department Press Release 2002). Many women are also present at the lower levels of trafficking organisations. They can manage the brothels, recruit a few girls for a trafficking network or be bookkeepers of an organisation.
Many of these have previously worked as prostitutes, for others it is an opportunity to make more money than is possible through legitimate employment. As one former bookkeeper of a trafficking organisation explained to the author, as an immigrant to the US she
was saddled with many unanticipated expenses, including purchase of a car, legal fees to regularise her status and expenses for her daughter. An immigrant in legal limbo with limited English, the offer of employment in a trafficking organisation seemed an ideal opportunity to solve her financial problems. The morality of working for a prostitution organisation did not affect her decision. It was only as she observed the deaths of some prostitutes in other rings and abuses within her own organisation that she began to have reservations (for a discussion of the ‘second wave’ of trafficked women as recruiters in Central Asia, see Kelly, Chapter 4 in this volume).
Women also rationalise their role in human smuggling. Sister Ping, arrested for her involvement in the ill-fated voyage of the Golden Venture, believed she was providing a public service for the migrants who could not enter the US without her services. Members of the Chinatown community where she resided for many years reinforced this conception as a service provider to the community (Keefe 2006).
Women traffickers are generally not associated with large scale crime groups in Latin America or Western Europe. They differ in this important respect from the groups that specialise in the narcotics trade (Bruinsma and Bernasco 2004: 79–94). Trafficking is a much more important part of the criminal equation of the larger crime groups in Africa, Asia and the former Soviet Union. In Latin America, trafficking is more common among the lesser-known crime groups of the Dominican Republic. Within Europe, Albanian criminals, and smaller crime groups from Russia are key participants. In Asia, however, pre-eminent crime groups, such as the yakuza in Japan and the triads of China, often traffic in women. Apart from these major groups, smaller but important crime groups in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India rely on trafficking to make their profits (Tumbahamphe and Bhattarai 2003). In all regions, the crime groups are able to function effectively because they cultivate close links to law enforcement. In some societies, law enforcement officials are part of the crime groups that traffic the women. In other cases, a significant part of their income is derived through their facilitation of trafficking (Phonpaichit et al. 1998).
Criminal groups engaged in trafficking
Many transnational trafficking organisations are large and traverse numerous continents. Yet most prosecuted trafficking cases worldwide consist of only a few individuals, leading to the erroneous perception
that the traffickers are only small scale entrepreneurs. As the recent study conducted by the United National Office on Drugs and Crime discovered, there are significant variations in trafficking organisations.
Some specialise in human trafficking but more often the groups are multifaceted, engaging simultaneously in smuggling, trafficking and other forms of illicit activity (UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2006: 68).
Many trafficking groups are relatively small scale. But these are often the easiest to catch as they do not have the resources of larger organisations that can pay-off law enforcement in multiple countries.
Investigation of a large scale criminal trafficking organisation, such as those which held auctions of Eastern European women at London airports, requires significant financial investment by law enforcement (Bennetto 2006). Extensive resources are devoted to investigations of narcotics trafficking organisations but only limited resources are devoted to the pursuit of human trafficking. More often, these cases become the responsibility of the overburdened and underfinanced vice squad of the local police or become just one more task assigned to an over-burdened smuggling unit of the police.
The resources needed to reach a Sister Ping are significant. Such an investigation requires years of police work, the retention of translators to interview the victims and analyse confiscated records, and the use of sophisticated computer programmes to map the identified networks and their victims. Without this complex analysis, trafficking and smuggling appear as individual and uncoordinated cells that exploit only a limited number of individuals.
Regional differences among traffickers
There is not one model of trafficking. The trade in human beings is not a uniform business and operates very differently in different cultural and political contexts. Human trafficking and smuggling are not unique businesses but share much in common with the trade in legitimate commodities from their region of origin. Traditional patterns of trade and investment shape the trade in human beings as they do the trade in ‘other commodities’.
Enormous differences exist in the trade in human beings from post-socialist countries. China, the countries of the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia and Albania differ dramatically. China uses trade in people to generate revenue for investment whereas the traffickers from the former USSR sell off human beings as if they
were a natural resource like oil or timber with no thought to the future. The Chinese model is based on family ties but Russia, with less historical reliance on the extended family, is more focused on the individual (Shelley 2000). Former Yugoslav groups, influenced by the Civil War and violent conflicts from the Balkans, are the most violent entrepreneurs (Shelley 2004). They, however, operate using traditional clan structures. This suggests that pre-revolutionary traditions of trade, family and historical factors may be more important in determining the business of human trafficking than the common features of the socialist system.
Likewise, human trafficking out of Latin America differs from that emanating from Africa. For example, the volume of women moved for sexual exploitation from Latin America and men for labour exploitation is based on a wholesale market model. The emphasis is on volume of people rather than on the quality of recruits. Profits are made by the sheer numbers that are moved. Consequently, little attention is paid to the survival rates and the conditions on which they are moved. In the case of traffic out of Africa involving multi-faceted crime groups, the contemporary trade in people resembles the historical slave transport. There is serious loss of life and little return of capital to communities of origin (Shelley 2003).
Violations of human rights are greatest in those crime groups where the women are not controlled by the traffickers from recruitment
Violations of human rights are greatest in those crime groups where the women are not controlled by the traffickers from recruitment