Abstract
In the year 2000, shortly after the revelation of crimes of human trafficking involving US private military contractor DynCorp in Bosnia, the US Government (USG) publicly committed to combat human trafficking both nationally and internationally, introducing new anti-trafficking laws and regulations. Despite this commitment, new reports of human trafficking surfaced, mainly involving USG contractor KBR and their subcontractors who were in charge of coordinating logistics during Operation Iraqi Freedom in the early 2000s. The reports revealed patterns of human trafficking and forced labor of Third Country Nationals (TCNs) working on US military bases in Iraq. This case study research is dedicated to shed light on these crimes by firstly analyzing to what extent the USG contractor KBR and their subcontractors are involved in human trafficking and forced labor of TCNs in Iraq. Secondly, it will be examined why these contractors are still able to engage in these crimes with impunity, and, lastly, the theory of state-corporate crime will be applied to explain why these crimes are being perpetrated by KBR and their subcontractors.
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Notes
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USG contractors in Afghanistan have also reportedly engaged in practices of human trafficking and forced labor. However, this thesis will only focus on KBR in Iraq as the cases involving this company seem to reflect the gravest abuses and are very well reported and substantiated.
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Cole, C., Vermeltfoort, R. (2018). Introduction. In: U.S. Government Contractors and Human Trafficking. SpringerBriefs in Criminology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70827-0_1
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