Abstract
Campaigns to suppress human trafficking began in the nineteenth century with Josephine Butler’s effort to stop “white slavery” and the traffic in women and girls for prostitution. Today’s campaign was launched in the 1990s by the UN and heavily supported by the US Department of State. The target of the campaign has broadened to include males and victims of labor exploitation. This campaign is an example of an attempt to establish a global prohibition regime. Such regimes have successfully prohibited certain international crimes but they are notably ineffective at suppressing activities with the characteristics that mark human trafficking. Thus the modest numbers of convictions for trafficking are not surprising. Suppressing the trafficking for prostitution is the most problematic aspect of the campaign. Many states permit prostitution and refuse to try to abolish it. The existence of legal prostitution is believed by some to encourage trafficking for prostitution. Others disagree. The matter is hotly debated. The success of the anti-human trafficking campaign is likely to continue to be modest for the foreseeable future.
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Notes
- 1.
Associated Press (1999b).
- 2.
Should the trafficker need to do so, his effective “ownership” can be legitimized by having the victim sign a labor contract, something the courts will uphold. “For laws against slavery to work, there must be clear violations that can be prosecuted”; Bales (1999: 32).
- 3.
Nadelmann (1990).
- 4.
- 5.
Nadelmann (1990: 480).
- 6.
Against the background of the Fourth World Conference for Women in 1995 which called upon governments to suppress trafficking in persons for purposes of prostitution and all forms of trafficking (Siron and Baeveghem 1999: 8), the Clinton Administration with its first female Attorney General, its female Secretary of State and its influential First Lady (McDonald 2004: 163) introduced a resolution on trafficking of women and children at the April 1998 session of the UN Commission for Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
The proposed resolution called for the development of a protocol on trafficking in women and children under the proposed UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The resolution was subsequently adopted, and the USA and Argentina introduced a draft protocol at the first negotiation session of the Convention in January 1999. The resulting Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN Protocol) is the first comprehensive international anti-trafficking agreement with substantial law enforcement provisions and victim protections (Hyland 2001).
- 7.
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, Div. A of Pub. L. No. 106–386, § 108, as amended.
- 8.
United Nations (2017).
- 9.
The Journal of Human Trafficking.
- 10.
Article 3 of the UN Protocol.
For the purposes of this Protocol:
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1.
“Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of 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;
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2.
The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used;
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3.
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article;
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4.
“Child” shall mean any person under eighteen years of age.
-
1.
- 11.
US State Department (2016). The numbers represent cases of sexual exploitation. Those in the parentheses represent forced labor cases. “Victims identified” is not explained.
- 12.
United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (2009).
- 13.
US State Department (2016: 19).
- 14.
International Labour Organization (2012).
- 15.
Nadelmann (1990).
- 16.
Nadelmann (1990: 486).
- 17.
- 18.
Although it is within the jurisdiction of certain government agencies, the abuse of workers within certain occupations is often not “seen” due to the policies or preferences of the agencies. For example, a North Carolina legislative investigation into the treatment of migrant workers found that violence played “an inherent and deliberate role—that of coercing workers into working and living in conditions that are hard to imagine. In some instances, there seems to be an accepting indifference of the local law enforcement agencies” (North Carolina Legislative Research Committee 1983: 32). See also Blake (1984).
Domestic servitude cases are also typically hidden from view. Carol Pier, a research fellow at Human Rights Watch investigating abuses of domestic workers in the United States, explains why. These workers are not protected by labor laws because living in a private home makes it more difficult to take advantage of being protected by laws that are generally intended for workers in the public sphere. Federal and state labor officials state that it is difficult to target domestic worker exploitation because, unlike the situation in garment factories, there is no readily identifiable employer (Human Rights Watch 2001a, b).
- 19.
A major obstacle in the fight against human trafficking is that the crime is invisible even to the authorities. The US Department of Homeland Security has devoted an entire section of its training manual for police to identifying possible trafficking victims (Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers 2017). It also has a campaign to raise awareness. It says, “Human trafficking is a hidden crime, and the first step to combating it is to identify victims so they can be rescued and help bring their perpetrators to justice.”
The need for special training is evident when one considers that dozens of trafficking victims can walk around in public seemingly acting on their free will and yet not be recognized as trafficking victims by anyone, including the police. For example, there is the case of the 100 deaf and mute Mexicans who were illegally brought into the United States and forced to sell trinkets and turn over the proceeds to the woman heading the operation. To keep them in line, she would shoot them with a stun gun and chain them to beds. The deaf and mute Mexicans worked out in public on the streets of New York and elsewhere. They were not identified as victims of trafficking until one of them was befriended by a customer at Newark Airport. When the worker communicated what was going on, the customer drove him to the police in Queens and within minutes the police had arrested the traffickers (Anon 1997).
- 20.
Many victims have strong incentives to not report their situation to the authorities. They fear being deported; do not trust the police; cannot speak the language; or fear dishonoring their families or communities (Wachholz and Miedema 2000).
- 21.
An Alaska Airlines flight attendant noticed a teenage girl of about 14 years of age with greasy blonde hair sitting in the window seat next to a notably well-dressed older man. The stark contrast between them struck the attendant as odd. When the attendant tried to talk to the girl, the man became defensive. So the attendant left a note in one of the bathrooms and the girl wrote on it, “I need help.” The attendant notified the pilot and the man was arrested when the plane landed (Harper 2017).
- 22.
The phrase, “white slavery,” originally had two meanings. In the 1830s it was used both by reformers railing against vice and factory reformers who condemned industrial capitalism (Bristow 1983: 35 ff; Cogden 1854; Anon 1884; Banks 1891). Eventually, the phrase became the moniker of the early anti-human-trafficking movement. According to Mrs. Butler, Victor Hugo was responsible for that. In 1870 he wrote to her to encourage her campaign. He wrote: “The slavery of black women is abolished in America; but the slavery of white women continues in Europe” (New York Commission for the Investigation of the White Slave Traffic 1976: 196).
The popularity of the phrase, “white slavery,” increased following the publication of a book that had been written by Pastor Thomas Borel of Geneva , who spent much of his ministry trying to save juveniles from prostitution. It was translated into English by Joseph Edmondson with the title The White Slavery of Europe (1876). The term “white slave” was used in treaties among countries and in various federal and state laws. It referred to the procuring and the transferring of women and girls for prostitution (Bullough and Bullough 1987: 265).
- 23.
In the interest of protecting the health of his soldiers, Napoleon is credited with initiating state regulation of prostitution in Paris in 1802. By the end of the century, 23 states had established the regulation system. Twenty of those states abolished their systems by 1956, several much earlier (Limoncelli 2010: T2.1).
- 24.
Limoncelli (2010).
- 25.
Hamilton (1978).
- 26.
Bristow (1977: 82–83).
- 27.
At the conference, reformers revealed how carloads of young women were being transported across Europe for the purpose of prostitution; Rosen (1982: 116).
- 28.
Bullough and Bullough (1987: 263).
- 29.
Rosin and Mufson (2000).
- 30.
Miko (2004).
- 31.
Gozdziak and Collett (2005: 103).
- 32.
Gozdziak and Collett (2005: 103).
- 33.
Miko (2004).
- 34.
Hyland (2001).
- 35.
- 36.
Bristow (1977: 171).
- 37.
Nadelmann (1990: 515).
- 38.
- 39.
Hughes (2013).
- 40.
International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (1949: 6). The Convention required that signatory states ratify the Agreement of 1904 as well as the Convention of 1910; raised the age of protection from 20 to 21; extended the protection against prostitution to minor boys; and required that states submit annual reports of their activities in this field.
- 41.
International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (1949: 19).
- 42.
International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (1949).
- 43.
International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (1949: 10).
- 44.
International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (1949: 10).
- 45.
Siron and Baeveghem (1999: 7).
- 46.
Bantekas and Nash (2003: 6).
- 47.
Reed (2014).
- 48.
Anon (2008).
- 49.
Anon (2009).
- 50.
US Department of State (2004).
- 51.
Prostitution in Greece is legal at the age of 18. Prostitutes must register and carry a medical card that is updated every two weeks. It was estimated that fewer than 1000 prostitutes were ethnic Greeks, and approximately 20,000 were of foreign origin—most in the country illegally (U.S. Department of State 2004)
- 52.
Siron and Baeveghem (1999).
- 53.
Hughes (2013).
- 54.
http://chartsbin.com/view/snb (2000), Meltzer (2014).
- 55.
Nadelmann (1990).
- 56.
US Department of State (2007: 27).
- 57.
- 58.
Hedlin (2016).
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McDonald, W.F. (2018). The Global Prohibition Regime Against Trafficking in Persons: Understanding the Limited Results. In: The Criminal Victimization of Immigrants. Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9_7
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