Ways of Reducing Human Trafficking of Children
Human trafficking has always been a significant issue to the society. It entails the forceful capture of human and trading them for money. However, most traffickers often target the younger women (children), since they have incredible potential for fitting in the sexual industry, the most lucrative trafficking industry. Moreover, such young groups have the required energy to fit in the labor industry, forced labor. Thailand, United States and India sum up the number of the most significant countries that contain a number of trafficking networks as well as market (Logan, 2009). Men and women are shipped from and to these countries to engage in certain forced acts. Sources confirm that the trafficked individuals are often subjected into physical assault, forced labor and sexual assault without any remuneration. Therefore, in the effort to find appropriate solutions to this unending menace, this document will provide an extensive discussion of the various possible ways of curbing human trafficking, particularly on children.
A number of ways can help stop or reduce the rampancy of human trafficking, particularly children. However, these possible ways often have certain issues that complicate their ability of reaching the desired goal. One of the significant ways of stopping trafficking is by tightening borders (Feingold, 2005). This is whereby borders of a country are placed in an extremely tight security, to ensure a significant limitation of movement across the border. However, despite this strategy seeming workable, there have been instances whereby the tightening of borders appears infeasible. For instance, in the case southeast Europe, tightening of borders never reduced the cases of trafficking; instead, there was a tremendous increase of the crime. Moreover, in another similar instance, the government formed a law (Burmese law) that restricted women aged below 26 from accessing borders. However, this law faces significant problems that complicate its ability to reach the intended goal. Many women argue that this law elevates the cost of movement thus encouraging bribery cases. This makes women rely on enforcers, making them vulnerable to exploitation in return of border access or passage. Unfortunately, this may extend to trafficking as some enforcers may link the women to traffickers.
Some individuals have argued that one of the ways to minimize trafficking is by legalizing prostitution. They think that legalizing prostitution will provide a legal avenue for sex trade activities thus limiting the illegal perspective. Eventually, many traffickers will resort to the legal approach of trading in the sex industry rather than continuously practicing trafficking. However, some of them argue that this strategy can only be effective depending on its application. Certain scholars think that legalizing prostitution will create more problems rather than being a solution. They argue that legalizing prostitution creates a strong demand for human trafficking activities with a keen attention to commercial sex slavery. This is exemplified by Netherlands whereby trafficking activities have increased tremendously after the legalization of commercial sex activities.
On the other hand, imposing strict measure to fight prostitution also does not significantly assist in curbing trafficking. According to a research conducted by the Swedish police, there was a significant indication that trafficking increases, when strict measures against prostitution are imposed. This study was a reflection of the country’s (Sweden) situation whereby trafficking activities elevated, after several anti-prostitution campaigns by activists. The argument behind this situation was that strict measures exposes women to extremely dangerous customers or make them incredibly prone to unsafe sex.
There have been arguments that prosecutions can help stop trafficking of children (Wilson, 2008). The reason to support this argument is that prosecutions will send a message to other potential offenders thus making them reconsider committing the unlawful act. However, this may not likely be the case since there is no adequate evidence that points out the significance of using prosecutions to reduce or stop trafficking. This argument was exemplified in United States whereby a significant number of suspected traffickers were prosecuted, quite a number jailed for their ill acts. However, this never changed the trafficking levels in the country, in a significant capacity. In other word, the effects of prosecutions in stopping trafficking were considered quite insignificant.
The United States (US) law that was designed to prohibit human trafficking was the same law that granted US the capacity to punish other countries for not fighting against the evil act (Stolz, 2005). US state government placed an order to the state department to conduct periodical research and rank each state in terms of their efforts against human trafficking. States that seem to be lagging and doing nothing about human trafficking were to receive sanctions. However, this approach was bound not to apply in certain countries such as Nigeria and China. This is because sanctions on these countries could act as a limitation to dialogue thus discouraging corporation among the states and US in various aspects. Moreover, this strategy can lead to a diverted attention, encouraging countries to deal with issues that are not of serious national concern. For instance, in the situation of Bangladesh, the country was commended for its overwhelming effort against trafficking, yet the country lags extremely behind in the fight against poverty. Therefore, offering incentives rather than sanctions to such countries would encourage other nations to follow suit.
It is argued that returning trafficking victims to their homes can help reduce trafficking activities. However, this argument faced several critiques as it failed to stop the ill act. Sending the victims back to their homes simply places them back to their initial condition vulnerable to sexual offenders or traffickers. Some of the trafficking victims may not have their homes or perhaps their motherland may not have adequate legal system that may assist his situation. This leaves a victim (children) in a very dangerous position of being exploited by sexual offenders. This is a common scenario in developing countries, whereby most children lack birth certificate posing problems in considering them as citizens of the country.
Certain thoughts have declared poverty as the main contributor of trafficking activities in many countries. Therefore, they argue that curbing poverty may significantly help in reducing the instances of poverty in a significant capacity. However, other arguments have disputed this position by noting proving other reasons for being the core causes of trafficking (Gallagher & Holmes, 2008). One of the reasons is the problems within the national borders, which makes a country vulnerable to trafficking. Other significant factors that also encourage trafficking activities, include the social and political instability, which influences the views of cities as well as other urban centers. Moreover, the enticement of urban centers is the reason as to why most traffickers in African nations targets children from medium-size towns.
In my opinion, I believe that trafficking of children is an extremely immoral, illegal and evil act that should not be tolerated at any possible cost. Therefore, we should not sit and relax to wait this ill act or trade to continue messing up the society. Every individual and organ should put extra effort to ensure that this menace is reduced to insignificant levels or utterly stopped. Therefore, despite the possible measures being ineffective, in eradicating trafficking activities, there is no room for sitting back and leaving this awful trading activity to consume our society. The measure that poses both significant and insignificant effect in the fight against trafficking of children should be employed.
Although legalization of prostitution, prosecuting traffickers, sending home victims of trafficking and curbing poverty is not the perfect strategies for combating trafficking of children, their little effect on curbing trafficking can help in reducing the menace, especially when each of these strategies is effectively executed. Moreover, the government and other organs such as the human anti-trafficking communities should design effective strategies that may help in curbing this significant societal problem. The strategies must undergo thorough scrutiny to ensure that they can produce the desired results. Additionally, the execution of the chosen strategies should be excellent at every societal level thus discouraging trafficking of any degree.
In summary, a number of ways can help curb the problem of human trafficking of children; some of these methods include tightening borders, legalizing prostitution, prosecuting traffickers, imposing sanctions and reducing poverty level. However, these methods face significant shortcomings, which shortfalls their ability to meet the desired goal of eliminating the problem of human (children) trafficking. However, in my view, the shortcomings should not deter us from eliminating this menace. The government, citizens and other organs should work together and come up with excellent strategies that may help curb this inhuman problem. Moreover, the chosen strategies should be effectively be implemented to realize the desired goal.
References
Feingold, D. (2005). Human trafficking. Foreign policy, 150(36), 26-30.
Gallagher, A. & Holmes, P. (2008). Developing an Effective Criminal Justice Response to Human Trafficking: Lessons from the Front Line. International criminal justice review, 18(3), 318-343.
Logan, T. (2009). Understanding human violence in the United States. Trauma, violence & abuse, 10(1), 3-30.
Stolz, B. (2005). Educating policymakers and setting the criminal justice policymaking agenda: Interest groups and the ‘Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act of 2000.’Criminal justice. 5(4), 407-430.
Wilson, J. (2008). Human trafficking in the heartland. Journal of contemporary criminal justice, 24(3), 296-313.