Slavery And Human Trafficking

Slavery is one of the issues that was, is and has been a major concern in the world. The nature of contemporary slavery is unknown, but estimates show that there are millions of victims of slavery across the globe. Slavery covers a wide variety of human rights violations such as sexual mutilation of men, women and children, child prostitution, sale of orphans, child pornography and many others. On the other hand, human trafficking is an area of concern that involves recruiting, transporting, buying or selling a person by means of force or fraud for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. Human trafficking deprives the victims of their human rights, and is one of the causes for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases

Majority of human trafficking are worldwide which involves the transportation of victims from Africa, South and Eastern Asia, Central and South America, Russia and other developing countries to developed countries in Asia, the Middle East, North America and central and southeastern countries of the European continent. It is the Asia-Pacific region where a majority of the world’s forced laborers come from followed by Africa. The Asia-Pacific region contributes 56% or 11.7 million victims, while Africa accounts 18% or 3.7 million victims of human trafficking. The meltdown of the global economy in the recent times has given rise to an increase in contemporary slavery. About 26 percent of modern slaves are children below the age of 18 years, out of which girls are the victims of child prostitution and

Identifying the victims and rescuing them is the main key to preventing human trafficking, which in turn reduces costs to the healthcare system. Human trafficking is a form of organized crime. It involves a hierarchical system, which is similar to that of other criminal organizations. The traffickers represent every social, racial and ethnic group. Some traffickers are involved with local gangs, while others are members are part of nationally recognized gangs and organizations. Some traffickers are independent and do not have any affiliation with other gangs or organizations. Traffickers exist irrespective of gender. There are several women in human trafficking activities along with men. Several young girls living on the streets, engage in prostitution. Some of them are involved in nationwide organized criminal activities where the organizers of crime force these young girls into human trafficking. It is problematic to enforce anti-trafficking laws because in most of these cases, the victims do not tell the identity of the traffickers with the fear of being