Currently, the regions of the world with the most severe trafficking problems are Southeast Asia (the

Mekong region including Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar/Burma), South Asia (the Indian subcontinent, including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), the former Soviet Republics (including the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic). But every country in the world is involved in the web of human trafficking. Most of the victims come from poorer countries, which serve primarily as source countries or countries of origin. Richer nations, such as the US, Australia, or Japan, are primarily destination countries, where victims are taken to. Many countries serve as transit countries, where victims are held temporarily en route to destination countries. For example, many women from the former Soviet republics are trafficked to the US through Mexico. Israel is another transit country for people sold into Europe. The FBI estimates that as many as 18,000 are trafficked into the US each year, to work in brothels, strip clubs, nail salons and massage parlors, or as domestic servants, nannies, and farm laborers. People can also be trafficked within their home countries, often from rural areas to large cities. Trafficking can be transnational, meaning across country borders, or internal, meaning within one country. For examples, children who are commercially sexually exploited in the US are defined by the US government as trafficking victims, even though they have not been taken across borders. In the break-up of the Soviet Union, several countries that were once protected by the Kremlin fell into political and economic uncertainty. These countries could no longer provide sufficient employment opportunities for their citizens, causing many to seek jobs abroad. Many young men were recruited into criminal organizations that survived by exploiting other comrades. These factors fueled the already growing practice of human trafficking in Eastern Europe, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.There are three reasons that help explain why trafficking in persons is so common in this region: Lack of economic opportunities, Organized crime, and the Orphanage system. Generally, Eastern European countries serve as source countries for women and children to be trafficked into neighboring European countries or into the United States. These populations provide a supply for three demands: sex, labor, and organs. Sex: Human traffickers acting in Eastern Europe often recruit young women seeking employment abroad. The story is common: women willingly give their passports and other documents to men and women posing as employment agents who promise to find them work abroad. These women are transported to a foreign country and then sent to brothels or other holding places to work off their travel debt. They are forced into prostitution by threats against their lives, or the lives of their family and friends at home. Often, the women do not speak the local language and do not seek help from authorities out of fear that they will be treated as criminals. Although it is difficult to find reliable statistics about trafficking in Eastern Europe, consider that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) estimates that 50,000 young Russian women are trafficked abroad each year by organized criminal groups for forced prostitution. In addition to job-seeking women, younger groups are also the target of sexual exploitation. Street children and orphans are two high-risk groups for trafficking, since there is almost no accountability for their well-being. These children are kept in state institutions and receive very basic educational skills, and no vocational skills. When they are emancipated usually at age seventeen, they become a highly-targeted group for trafficking. Even during their childhood in state-run orphanages, traffickers will bribe the employees to take several children with them. Labor: Although it is more rare, trafficking for labor exploitation is still a concern for several Eastern European countries. The Roma population, often referred to as gypsies are perfect targets for traffickers because of their low social status in most countries. Children are used to beg, dance, play musical instruments, or even attack wealthy individuals in an attempt to make money for the groups ringleader. (If youve ever traveled in Eastern or Western Europe, you probably noticed a poorly-dressed woman holding a small child begging for your spare change.) Human traffickers force people to be slaves in a wide variety of industries and circumstances.

The most prevalent on a worldwide level are agriculture, mining and forced prostitution. Victims may be women and children who have been abducted, sold or tricked into commercial sex; or women, children and men in forced labor, in industries such as domestic servitude, agriculture, construction, restaurant, mining or manufacturing, and are held by force with no remuneration or opportunity to leave. Some people are enslaved through debt bondage, where the slaveholder forces a victimor entire familiesto work without pay to pay off a bogus, illegal debt. Other victims are captured and used by marauders in armed conflicts. Determining whether a person has been trafficked or smuggled is often a complicated process that is based o the determination of three factors: the use or threat of force, fraud or coercion.People are recruited in several different ways such as through fake employment agencies, acquaintances, newspaper ads, front businesses, word of mouth or abduction. Traffickers may be neighbors, friends, returnees, agricultural operators, owners of small businesses, diplomats and even families. Increasingly, however, the traffickers are organized crime syndicates, often in collaboration with corrupt law enforcement entities, government officials or employers, who may use several intermediaries from the first point of contact to the final destination of the victim. If the victim is transported, they use both legal and illegal means of transport and various techniques to keep their victim enslaved. They may keep them under lock and key or in isolation from the public and from their family members or support networks, confiscate their passports or identification documents, use the threat of violence against the enslaved person or their families, threaten them with shame, fear of imprisonment or deportation, and control their money. Human trafficking has grown in part as a result of the advances in internet and communication technology, which make information fast, anonymous, and easily accessible to predators and traffickers worldwide. According to Moiss Nam, author of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy the modern-day slave auction is electronic, where in local pimps can examine and purchase via e-mail women and girls from wholesalers in other countries and where retail customers can order up the prostitute of their choice. Sex tourism, one of the worlds largest industries, also feeds off of electronic communications and human trafficking. It has become integrated into the economy of many countries such as the Philippines and Thailand. These examples underscore that trafficking and slavery truly represent the commodification of human beings, or the use of human beings as goods to be bought, sold, used, shipped, and traded for money. I believe that in order to do more to prevent human trafficking, it is needed to raise awareness of potential victims on the risks of falling pray to traffickers, and of public officials to detect cases of trafficking and deal with them. To encourages sanctions against persons who knowingly employ or buy services from trafficking victims. To establish bodies in Member Statess to monitor implementation of these actions. EU Member States need to act on the three fronts of prosecuting criminals responsible for trafficking human beings, protecting the victims and preventing the offences. Governments can also develop systems of co-operation between different nations' law enforcement agencies and with non-governement organizations. An important step to preventing human trafficking and prosecuting the traffickers is to recognize the complexity of the crime which cannot be tackled in a vacuum. Anti-trafficking strategies have to be embedded in every policy area, from improving female education in source countries so that girls are less vulnerable to trafficking, to increasing police pay in destination countries so that officers are less susceptible to bribery. We cannot allow ourselves to marginalize the issue of trafficking, viewing it as something that can be ended with a few extra taskforces or dedicated units. We need everyone to be aware of how it affects them, and what they can do to stop it.