2.5. Components of trafficking and forced labour
According to International Labour Organization (2011), define trafficking in persons that consists of three essential components; recruitment by force or deception; Transportation within a country or across borders legally or illegally, and Exploitation traffickers financially benefit through the use or sale of the victim.
2.5.1. Recruitment
Research Conducted by Play Therapy Africa Ltd (2011), state on how people enter the process of trafficking through recruitment by other people as follow:
“According to them, most are lured into the process by a false promise of an opportunity, deceived by misinformation or lies, or pushed by need or desperation. In some cases, victims are aware that they are to be employed in a given activity but do not know the conditions in which they were working. In other situations, victims were coerced, in extreme cases abducted. The recruitment also made by families, relatives, friends, neighbors, brokers, or recruitment agencies”.
2.5.2. Transportation
According to (International Labour Organization, 2011) stated, once the victims are recruited, they are transported from one town or area, or country to another, and this involve someone or a group of people to facilitate and arrange the movement, provide for false travel documents and shelter along the way. In addition to this (ILO, 2011) argue that, there corrupt border guards, immigration or law enforcement personnel and officials are also involved. Transport providers may or may not know the nature of their cargo
2.5.3. Exploitation
Research Conducted by Play Therapy Africa Ltd (2011), state exploitation in the following way:
“The main purpose of recruiting and transporting victims in this case, is to exploit them by engaging them, for instance, into prostitution, domestic servitude, forced labour, and, in some instances for body organs removal. In most cases, the main purpose is thus to profit from the exploitation of labour. The notion of exploitation of labour allows a link to establish between the Palermo Protocol and the ILO Convention No. 29 on Forced Labour. Article two, paragraph 1 of the latter Convention defines ‘forced or compulsory labour’ as ‘all work or service’, which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which they said person has not offered himself voluntarily”.
They furthermore they added that, most employers feel they own the migrant workers because they paid for the recruitment and any other related fees, just as if they own any other property they have paid for. The lack of social and legal protection in the destination countries gives traffickers and employers power over trafficked victims. This power exercised through physical, emotional and sexual abuse and threat (International Labour Organization, 2011).
Figure 3: trafficking in Persons
Source: Human trafficking and smuggling of migrants in the context of mixed migration flows (IGAD RCP, 2015)
2.6. “Push” and “Pull” factor
According to Gurnam Singh and Harbilas Singh (2013), the “push” and “pull” are reinforcing factors that contribute to trafficking in persons. Moreover, they explained it in following way:
“As to them push factors are those hostile social, economic, political conditions in the countries of origin which encourage or force the people to migrate for the greener pastures.’They also argue that extreme poverty, unemployment, lack of education, political corruption and political instability and civil war or conflict situations in countries of origin’. ‘Poverty and unemployment put a person to enter into situation of exploitation without fully knowing about it, as they do not have many alternatives’. Moreover, powerlessness and marginal position of poor and unemployed people in society provide traffickers an opportunity to exploit them. The visible gaps in the standards of living of people also lead to their victimization as they start regarding migration as only way to become rich”.
Difference between wages in home country and abroad is quiet huge and aggravate the danger (Wheaton, Schauer and Galli, 2010:123). The “pull” factors are also responsible for flourishing the trafficking in human beings. It refers to such elements that exist in the destination countries and attract the people to migrate there. (Galli, 2010:123) argue that, a globalized free-market economy that has increased the demand for cheap labour, goods and services furthermore; third world countries are quite cheap, less demanding and harder working. Thus, because of hyper-capitalism, human beings have also become the commodities. This mutual beneficiary pattern of demand and supply has also given birth to transnational criminal networks that are earning from the migration of people and making them victims of trafficking (The Levin Institute, 2011: 13-14).
