Ancient Evil, Modern Face:
The Fight Against Human Trafficking
By Terry Coonan and Robin Thompson
Among the evils that will compel the attention of the international community in the twenty-first century, human trafficking
will rank as one of the most ubiquitous. Human trafficking,
a new term for the ancient scourge of slavery, poses one of the
most formidable challenges to global hopes for equality and
human rights in the new millennium. Efforts have been under
way for almost two decades to turn the tide against modern
enslavers. Such efforts, however, have been uneven and have
revealed startling gaps in the ranks of those who oppose this
illicit trade. In order to curtail human trafficking, both the
United States and the international community must redouble
their current efforts, and in so doing, should take further
advantage of the established infrastructure of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) worldwide. Even more fundamentally,
the law enforcement paradigm that to date has characterized
international efforts to counter trafficking must evolve into a
model better grounded in human rights considerations.
A Growing Problem. Porous borders and the free-market
demand for cheap labor sustain a shadow slave industry
that annually yields an estimated $9 billion in profits. The
global human trafficking industry operates on a simple
Crime Goes Global
premise: as poverty has increased worldwide,
desperate immigrants seek economic
opportunities beyond their
national borders. As legal immigration
has likewise been restricted in recent
decades, the world’s poor—with an
increasingly feminine face—are left with
no recourse but to depend on smugglers
and human traffickers to negotiate borders
and locate work far from home.
Such dependence leads to the virtual
enslavement of an estimated 600,000
to 800,000 immigrants annually, who
are trafficked worldwide across international
borders.1
Trafficking is a clandestine industry,
and the illegal status of many of its victims
forces them into silence. While many
trafficking schemes are “mom-and-pop”
operations, trafficking is rapidly becoming
the preferred business for international
criminal syndicates. Mafias thrive
in countries where law enforcement is
weak or in regions where transnational
law enforcement cooperation is lacking.
Human trafficking is now second only to
drug trafficking in the portfolio of international
organized crime. Moreover, the
exploitation of trafficking victims in
brothels, sweatshops, and fields around
the world knows no geographic limitations.
This problem is not confined to
the developing world, and it is, in fact,
the labor intensive needs of developed
nations that fuel the trafficking industry.
The United States is no exception; an
estimated 15,000 to 18,000 persons are
trafficked into the United States every
year for forced labor.2
NGOs Sound the Alarm.
Following the demise of communism in
1989, international borders that once
separated the East and the West became
much easier to cross. Prime beneficiaries
of this geopolitical change were
human smugglers, who exploited the
newfound mobility of the world’s poor
who were desperate to leave countries
where economic opportunities were
increasingly scarce. The allure of jobs in
the developed world—and the necessity
of crossing borders to secure such work—
led to a proliferation of human trafficking
in the 1990s. NGOs around the
world, particularly human rights and
immigrant advocacy groups, rallied to
oppose this growing exploitation.
Groups such as the Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women, the International
Human Rights Law Group, the Global
Alliance Against Traffic in Women and
ECPAT International (End Child
Prostitution, Child Pornography, and
Trafficking of Children for Sexual
Purposes) played a prominent role. Of
prime concern to them was the com
mercial sexual exploitation of women
and children that the international trafficking
industry both engendered and
perpetuated. However, this loose
alliance of NGOs had meager resources
in comparison to the deep-pocketed
multinational criminal syndicates they
sought to combat.