OTHER FORMS OF TRAFFICKING
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- Child with infant, begging
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- 4 year old camel jockey in Dubai
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- Child soldiers in Burma
“I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted”
~ Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist, Lecturer, Author and Slave, 1817-1895)
A smaller fraction of trafficking includes forced marriages, child soldiers, as well as child begging and peddling operations. Rarer still, are those instances of organ removal, and ritual killings. There are additional instances of human trafficking such as the camel jockeys in Saudi Arabia. For the victims of these abuses, there is no solace in their relative rarity.
Child soldiers are most prevalent in Africa, where HIV has wiped out an entire generation of people in some areas, leaving a wide gap between young and old. There are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers worldwide and that number grows every year. They are mostly boys, taken from their homes unwillingly, given a gun and told they are a man. They are given uniforms, alcohol and cigarettes, all signs of maturity, and told they need to fight for their country. They tend to serve in illegal militias, but just as easily can be found in a dictator’s employ. Whether they are compensated or serve willingly is irrelevant, 10 year olds have no business fighting and dying in the trenches. Girls also fall victim to these militias, being inducted to cook, clean, carry, and be used for sex. They may be put to arms as well. Falling Whistles is an organization dedicated to rehabilitation and advocacy for child victims of the world’s largest and most deadly war in the Republic of Congo. Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers puts out a comprehensive global report that is updated periodically. It gives a good overview of the practice as well as detailed analysis by country. The report is available on the Files section of our Meetup website.
Child begging may sound innocuous, but many of these children are subject to extreme abuse including willful mutilation to make them more easily pitied, and thus better potential earners. They may be disfigured by having an eye gouged out, a limb amputated, or being otherwise visibly scarred. Most children are bought or kidnapped by these minor crime lords, forced to beg or pick pockets on the streets under threat of beatings and worse. Their keeper takes all their earnings of course. In some parts of the world these operations actually masquerade as charities such as orphanages for whom the victims are ostensibly collecting contributions.
Peddling rackets are closely related to begging rings. Even here in New York City there have been cases where street peddlers were working to pay off alleged debts to their traffickers. One ring here in the city was prosecuted for bringing deaf Mexican children into the country illegally for the purpose of setting them to work in the subway system selling cheap trinkets.
Forced marriages, child brides, and ‘mail-0rder brides‘ are all different from the arranged marriages which have been customary in some cultures for generations. Forced marriages are arranged, but without the consent of all parties. Issues of consent may be murky due to coercion by social or financial pressures. The woman may be traded, given or sold to her prospective husband. In some countries it is not uncommon for a pre-pubescent girl to be betrothed to a much older man.
‘Mail-order bride’ is a term used to describe the practice of women who make themselves available for proposals of marriage, usually to men in developed countries. In 2007 a federal U.S. District Court specifically found, in relation to the regulation of this practice, that: “the rates of domestic violence against immigrant women are much higher than those of the U.S. population.” Often these women may be escaping dire social or economic conditions, may not speak the language of the country to which they are emigrating, and certainly may be unfamiliar with the cultural landscape. As their immigration status is dependent on their marital status, they may find themselves quite at the mercy of husbands who have paid a broker and feel a sense of ownership.
Victims of all these types of marriage are at greater risk of domestic violence, rape, abuse, neglect, and forced domestic servitude.
Organ removal, while not widespread, is quite real. Those targeted are usually killed or left for dead. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers every year. A black market thrives as demand outstrips the supply of organs legally available for transplant. This activity is listed in the United Nations definition of human trafficking.
Ritual killings are very different from other enterprises. People who are killed for religious or ritualistic practices fall into this category. Most often they are kidnapped before they are killed, and for that reason this form of murder may constitute human trafficking.
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