An Investigation into the issue of human trafficking, the factors that Essay

An Investigation into the issue of human trafficking, the factors that promote it and the obstacles in preventing this evolving - Essay Example Although human trafficking has been present for a very long time, it has increased a lot in the last quarter of the 20th century due to a number of reasons, the main being the increased number of refugees due to many civil wars, increased poverty due to global crises and natural disasters, and the increased emphasis on sexuality in the media. Human trafficking is not just an issue that can be taken lightly. It does not just lead to the exploitation of human beings through the development of the sex industry and forced labor, but also results in other illicit activities. Often, the money from the illicit profits is used for the growth and expansion of drugs or illegal weapons related businesses. This kind of a business again requires some form of exploitation of children and women, and sometimes even men. So a vicious circle is formed from which people cannot escape. Rather more and more fall into these precarious work conditions. The issue of human trafficking needs to be addressed p roperly by governments that want to break people out from the vicious cycle of human trafficking. ... The paper, therefore, looks at the reasons in a lot of detail. In order to understand them, however, it is important to fully comprehend the definition and forms of human trafficking. Definition Human Trafficking, according to Jordan (2002), is the movement of humans within or across borders by the use of inappropriate means, like fraud and force, so that they can be forced into labor, slavery, and servitude. So, human trafficking is an illicit trade whereby human beings are ‘sold’ for the purpose of commercial promotion or slavery. To be more precise, however, the definition provided by the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime and adopted by the UN General Assembly on 15 November 2000, according to Bakirci (2009), is as follows. ‘[. . .] recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of dishonesty, of the misuse of power or of a situation of susceptibility or of the taking or getting of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation’ Hence trafficking, according to the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime, includes at the very least either some form of sexual exploitation or labor exploitation. It is very important to state here, as Bakirci (2009) relates that human trafficking does not necessarily require movement. Unlike human smuggling, human trafficking does not need the person to be moved from one way to the other. But, in effect, trafficking means the recruitment and harboring of individuals in the professions that have been discussed in the definition above. So, people can also be trafficked in their homelands, as