Sources of Human Trafficking: Tracing Back to the Source

It is too easy for anti-trafficking advocates to attribute blame to host countries after victims of trafficking step forward and reveal the crime that has been committed against them. Of course, it is clear that facilitators of this crime do operate in countries that continue to request labor, and too often they are held unaccountable for their crimes due to the fact that they are citizens of those countries and protected by biased laws. However, attention should also be drawn to what we refer to as "source" countries and the recruitment agencies that are responsible for hiring migrant and domestic workers under false and coercive contracts and directly contribute to a cycle that has resulted in the modern-day enslavement of 27 million men, women and children throughout the world.

Tracing the problem back to its source:
The financial cut that these agencies make parallels with the number of heads they can process and provide to needy companies (phony or not) thousands of miles away, limiting any accountability and their direct involvement almost by default, and results in a certain dollar/rupee/dinar prize. Individuals from countries sprawling across South and Southeast Asia often come from poor, rural communities, are uneducated, and seek out the myths of prosperity and foreseeable remittances for their families that are highlighted by despicable staff members working in local recruitment agencies. As a result of their limited eduction and the justifiable, but undeserved trust they place in their fellow countrymen, migrant and domestic workers are easily manipulated into contracts that offer few details of the type of employment to which they are assigned.

Information pertaining to accommodations, rights to travel, vacation periods, salaries and the rights (or lack of) they are guaranteed under local law can be falsified or may even be unavailable and deferred to the host country's employer or sponsor to divulge upon arrival in-country. Sometimes these contracts are not even available in the worker's own language, and more often than not, the worker is not even able to read. Recruitment agencies are the source for victims of sex trafficking, and the trafficking of underage children, given their ability to either falsify official documents like passports or birth certificates, or promise employment for women or children in legitimate companies that do not really exist - forcing them into the sex industry.

Efforts to regulate the activities of recruitment agencies are being exerted by countries like India, but they lack the funding and means to provide adequate protections to the thousands of workers looking to create a livelihood overseas each year. Similarly, initiatives like orientations for newly arrived workers and workshops providing information on their legal rights and local labor law are being led by some of the Gulf countries. These orientations are essential to providing much needed information to vulnerable and naive workers expecting new opportunities, rather than the nightmare that many actually face.