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5/15/2017

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Driving Question: What ethical forces contribute to the perpetuation of human trafficking around the world?

Language of the discipline:

Exploitation - the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.
Exploit- make full use of and derive benefit from a (resource)
Human Trafficking- the action or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sex exploitation.
Commercial Sex- engaging in sexual practices to earn money or other economical benefits.
Psychological Manipulation- a type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.
Perpetuation- the continuation or preservation of a situation, idea, etc.
Ethical Forces- Moral principles that force a person to shift their behavior and the conducting of an activity.

Force- Attracts, holds, repels.

The ethical forces that create potential victims to be attracted to the industry of human trafficking would be the economic necessity created by the country.
In many cases, the region’s poverty is a huge reason why human trafficking is occurring. Poverty attracts the human trafficking industry. The traffickers in the region become traffickers in the first place because they are trying to find a way to get more money and power.
In many cases, parents sell their daughters into trafficking because they are unable to afford a living. In other cases, daughters willingly sell themselves into trafficking in order to receive money for their family.
Promises of a better life and lies are told to attract victims into human trafficking. They are lured to go with the trafficker that promises them wonderful things and expect the amazing life that was offered to them, but receive the exact opposite.
What holds victims in the human trafficking industry is the threats that are told to them by the traffickers so victims won’t try to escape.
Traffickers warn victims that if they try to escape they will kill them or harm their family. This way they make sure to have power and control over them.
The harsh treatments that are received as a trafficked victim, on the other hand is what repels victims and what causes victims to be in survival mode.
“Exploiter women go to the villages and tell families that their children are going to have a higher quality of life if they leave with them…” (Pablo Gabilondo, 2014)
Whenever an individual is lured into human trafficking they are psychologically manipulated and are promised a better life.
“Nevertheless, out of desperation, some are prepared to take up the offers driven by the need to provide a better life for their families.” (Valentina Pancieri, 2017.)
In order to give a better life to their families, for example a life without starvation and poverty, women are willing to receive the offers of faulty jobs. They are forced to offer themselves into these jobs for their family. This is when they start to get manipulated by the traffickers and conditions become harsher for the woman.
“The devastating reality is that many of these young marriages are just a pretext to obtain poor, uneducated girls who will then be sold and trafficked into slavery.” (Lydia Castwell, 2014)
Here, force attracts poor girl who are uneducated into being trafficked. The young marriages are just a way to give justification to these girls getting married so they can be trafficked, in the end.

Force- Influences or changes

Human trafficking influences the psychological state of the victim. A survivor of human trafficking would definitely suffer on a mental state.
Victims of human trafficking may suffer PTSD and it stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which causes anxiety and flashbacks that are triggered by a traumatic event that happened in the person’s life.
The traumatic event would be the conditions that the survivor had to endure while being held captive.
Being a victim of human trafficking definitely will change a person. The person will not be the same, something was taken away from them while held captive, whether it was their security, privacy, freedom, humanity. The victim will act differently, be more timid towards strangers and have bigger trust issues.
“ In rural Nigeria, widespread emigration aspirations are often fuelled by the high levels of joblessness, corruption, poor infrastructure and family struggles to make ends meet.” (Valentina Pancieri, 2017.)
In order for their families not to suffer from starvation or poverty, women in Nigeria take jobs as cashiers or hair dressers and take up offers that are given to them.
“Fueling the trade [of child trafficking] is the country’s poverty: Cuba’s average salary is just $20 per month.” (Pablo Gabilondo, 2014)
The economy and political stability of the country or region also impact its future with human trafficking.
“In many cases the child victims [of human trafficking] come from broken homes.” (Pablo Gabilondo, 2014)
How a child is treated at home could impact the fate of the individual with human trafficking
“McClain recalled shopping in a fabric store a few years ago in India and noticing children looking up at her through the gaps between the wooden floorboards.” (Jessica Prois, 2013)
People who stand by and witness human trafficking influence the industry by allowing this to happen. At the time McClain did not know what she was witnessing, there for education on human trafficking also influences human trafficking.
The lack of education of an individual is also an ethical force that contributes to the continuation of the human trafficking industry. Many citizens or foreigners of the country are not fully aware with human trafficking, however human trafficking needs to be acknowledged and people need to know what is going on, how this happens, and what could be done to prevent human trafficking.
“... particularly in parts of the region where attitudes towards child sex trafficking is more tolerant. ‘Some people think that if the girl is 15 years old, she knows what she’s doing,’ says Arya, of the Chilean group Raices. ‘So it’s not their problem she’s suffering.”
It is unethical for a region to be tolerant towards this demeaning topic. It is terrible how if a 15 year old is seen walking down the street, it is assumed that she knows what she is doing when in reality she could be a victim or potential victim of human trafficking.

Force- And inertia are co-dependent

“Family pressure is often the deciding factor in their leaving home.” (Valentina Pancieri, 2017)
Family pressures such as the family having a financial crisis or not being able to provide a meal for their family.
“...parents have knowingly sold their daughters to child traffickers, says Reyes.” (Pablo Gabilondo, 2014)
Instead of getting a job, parents try to earn money by selling their children.
“So to support my three-year-old daughter I started to look for work overseas. That was when I saw an ad in a newspaper for work in the hospitality industry for work overseas.” (Shandra Woworuntu: My life as a sex-trafficking victim)
Shandra Woworuntu had lost her job at an international bank in Indonesia as an analyst and trader because of the Asian financial crisis. The year after this happened, her country (Indonesia) had a political riot and she ended up losing her job. In order to be able to feed her three-year-old daughter and provide a good life for her, she needed a job which was attracted her to the newspaper ad and led her to the US, there she was attracted into trafficking.
The ethical force of family pressures, plays a key role in the perpetuation of human trafficking. When an individual sees their family in desperate need, they are not going to allow their family to suffer, they are going to try to help them as much as they possibly can. Sometimes, when trying to help, the individual gets lured in human trafficking.

Force- May be countered with equal or greater force

There are many laws in countries to protect their people from the human trafficking industry. However, traffickers chose to break the laws and ignore the consequences and traffick innocent people.
“The combination of mandatory criminal law provisions and optional victim assistance provisions does not establish a victim-centered approach but instead constitutes a criminal law framework that addresses aspects of victims’ or survivors’ needs.”(Jonathan Torres, UCLA Response)
The consequence that the trafficker receives when caught, depends on the laws that are set in that specific region and the cooperation of the victim with government authorities.
Cindy Mclain is a modern -day abolitionist who is fighting against human trafficking. She co-chairs the Arizona Task Force on Human Trafficking which is an anti-human trafficking force that combats human trafficking. (Jessica Prois, 2013)
“Bradley Myles, the CEO of the Polaris Project, said more states need to pass ‘safe harbor’ laws so that children under age of 18 who have been sexually trafficked are not then prosecuted for prostitution.” (Jessica Prois, 2013)
In some countries, victims of human trafficking are prosecuted for prostitution when they are children and have been sexually exploited.

Student-Led Research Results (Interview)

For our Student-Led Research, we partnered up with another team who is also researching human trafficking. Jackie Kong from ISanctuary, an organization that helps to spread the word about human trafficking and empowers human trafficking survivors, was who was interviewed. Here are her answers to the following questions:

1.) Is human trafficking being kept physically, or does it also relate to emotional or mental captivity as well?
“Human Trafficking can be being physically, but most people being human trafficking are not chained up like we imagine it to be. Pimps psychologically manipulate their victims through emotional and mental needs. There is an article that a pimp wrote called "How to be a pimp" in which he uses Maslow's Hierarchy of needs to show how to manipulate a woman. There are also different types of pimps, the most widely known one is a Romeo Pimp in which he pretends to be a girls boyfriend, will provide her a cell phone, nice clothes, food, shelter and most importantly safety and love.”
“Pimps know how to prey on the vulnerable. Sometimes, traffickers and the women/men they traffic become like a family structure. The pimp is "Daddy" and all the women are ‘sisters.’ ”

2.)What systems would you say are the most prominent in contributing to Human trafficking today?
“Trafficking is the most widely known form of human trafficking. Media has a huge part in this - movies, TV shows, music all normalize these ideas. Media also normalizes a cheating culture - which plays into the [idea of buying women.] I believe our culture's tendency for immediacy and instant pleasure also plays a huge part in trafficking. Gangs are another system that plays into the role of trafficking as gang members are realizing that weapons and drugs are dispensable, but women are not."

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