Kydyrbekova Aizada 1

04.12.2017

Human trafficking - crime against humanity

The rapidly increasing numbers of crimes are turning our world into an unsafe place to
live. The realm of criminal world capturing all over the world thus countries fate stay
bounded1. Human trafficking is considered to be one of the prevailing areas among
criminal actions. It is the primary factor which violates Human Rights and put down
human morale and dignity. Before digging deeper into this topic it is important to
understand the definition of human trafficking because mostly this term
interchangeably used with the term smuggling. International law defines human
trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of
persons, through force, fraud, coercion, abduction, deception, or abuse of power for the
purpose of exploitation. While human smuggling occurs by procurement of the persons
illegal entry into a country in order to gain financial or other material benefit2. Human
trafficking happens for various exploitative purposes such as, child soldiers, forced
begging, forced marriage, sexual exploitation, selling children, removal of organs and
forced labor. As long as, this topic appears to be significantly broad, the following
paragraphs will be devoted specifically to the problem of sex trafficking.

The Federal Law of U.S. defines the term sex trafficking as recruitment, harboring,
transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the
purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force,
fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not
attained 18 years of age3.

Sex trafficking is the prevailed type of crime which is happening across the world.
Mostly the women and young girls are victims of sex trafficking. According to 2012
International Labor Office (ILO) estimates, almost 21 million persons globally,
including 11.4 million women and girls, were trafficked4. Men and boys also constitute
the small percentage of incidents by being fraud as a tool for the sex industry. Every
instance of sex trafficking is different and has different reasons behind. The society
perceives the female sex trafficking as prostitution but these are two divergent
understandings. In the first case women are unknowingly trapped by a swindler, while
in the second, they choose that way by their own will and without any coercion.

The former step of this crime starts from bright promises. Initially, the trafficker
promises jobs as waitresses or domestic servants and better life opportunities in foreign

1 UNODC: International Statistics on Crime and Justice, 2010, No 64

2 Human Rights Watch: Smuggling and Trafficking Human Beings, July 7, 2015
3 National Human trafficking Hotline: Federal Law: Sex trafficking, (22 USC 7102.)
4
. International Labour Organization: ILO Global Estimate of Forced Labour, 2012, p.
13.
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countries. Only after carrying a victim outside of their country, traffickers take victims'
passports and subject them to the sex slavery. Recently, the Kyrgyz mass media
Azzattyk+ published article where 20 year old girl was trafficked by her distant relatives
to Turkey5. They promised her a well-paid job where she would get 1000$ per month.
Hence, it was a lie. Right after they arrived to Turkey, relatives took away her passport.
It turned out that she had to provide intimate services for men in the hotel. Finally, she
was freed by her sister who was living in Russia at that time. This is only one example of
such cases but usually they left unreported or underreported. There are several reasons
for this.

Victims face social pressure which is double struggle for them. Once, women get
engaged in this dirty market they get broken both physically and morally. In this state of
condition they are unwilling to share their stories with their community. Mostly people
negatively perceive such things and reversely start to blame the victim itself. The fear of
being ashamed dominates their intention to struggle against this issue.

Majority of people still remain unaware of the issue of sex trafficking. This dirty
industry of market is the desperate thing which ruins peoples life and take away their
happiness. Every person on this planet deserves to live their life as they wish and,
definitely, it is unhuman to wreck this chance. Every person has to think of this problem
even they do not take real actions because one day, they are in danger of being a victim
by themselves.

5
Radio Azattyk: Relatives forced me to engage in prostitution in Turkey, May 2, 2017
 Kydyrbekova Aizada 3

References

1. UNODC: International Statistics on Crime and Justice,2010, No 64

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0BzmUkt7sRp8NeGkzSFpzSDdKWW8v

2. National Human trafficking Hotline: Federal Law: Sex trafficking, (22 USC 7102.)

https://humantraffickinghotline.org/what-human-trafficking/federal-law

3. Human Rights Watch: Smuggling and Trafficking Human Beings, July 7, 2015

https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/07/smuggling-and-trafficking-human-beings

4. International Labour Organization: ILO Global Estimate of Forced Labour, 2012, p.

13.

https://ecourse.auca.kg/pluginfile.php/134922/mod_resource/content/1/The%20Gen
der%20Dimension%20of%20Human%20Trafficking%20EP.pdf

https://sharedhope.org/the-problem/what-is-sex-trafficking/

5. Radio Azattyk: Relatives forced me to engage in prostitution in Turkey, May 2, 2017

https://rus.azattyk.org/a/28463756.html