Sunday, May 11, 2014

A New Look at Human Trafficking: Book Reviews

A New Look at Human Trafficking: Book Reviews

Kara, Siddharth. 2009. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press

Shelley, Louise. 2010. Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press
Kara and Shelley both emphasize the need to approach and understand human trafficking as a business if truly effective countermeasures are going to be designed. Both authors focus primarily on the sex trafficking aspect of the phenomena, but Shelley does expand into the other modes of exploitation human traffickers rely on, such as forced labor or begging. If we look at human trafficking as a business, the authors argue that in order to combat it we must change the calculus of the rational actors involved whose primary motivation is profit. Costs must be increased on perpetrators and potential profits reduced to make trafficking in people less lucrative.

Kara argues that globalization has made it easier to find and transport victims for traffickers. As the world becomes more interconnected, traffickers can find potential targets across the globe, and once ensnared can move victims hidden within the legitimate migration flows. Globalization has also brought poverty to many regions of the world, where local businesses are pushed out by global competition. This increases the ‘supply’ of victims, boosting profits, as people unable to find work at home fall for tempting false offers put out by traffickers. Moreover, a greater supply also has the effect of lowering prices, which in turn increases the number of customers. This situation allows traffickers to exploit large numbers of people to meet this high demand, and when coupled with the low risk of being caught, makes the business highly lucrative.  

Shelley puts forth a similar model that focuses on the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors within human trafficking. Push factors in source countries primarily stem from a lack of opportunity, as desperate locals look abroad for any opportunity and unwittingly become trapped by a trafficking ring. Additional push factors include both weak law enforcement and trafficking laws in source and destination countries, and corrupt officials and business owners that assist traffickers in return for a portion of the profits, all of which make the trade possible on a global scale. Facilitators are across society, from border guards, police officers, immigration officials, night-club owners, taxi drivers, bankers, lawyers, real-estate agents, all play a critical role in the capture, transportation, and exploitation of victims. Pull factors center on rising demand, mostly in developed countries, that make the trade so profitable. Individuals who compose demand come from an even broader swathe of society.

                The authors both recommend targeting the cost-benefit economic basis of the trafficking industry to have a significant effect on the industry. Engaging in trafficking must be made exceptionally costly to discourage potential traffickers from becoming involved. This would not only reduce the number of traffickers, but would also push up the cost for customers as supply decreases, which should decrease demand. Both authors also emphasize the need to target the financial resources of traffickers. Large amounts of money must be exchanged and laundered internationally, and by targeting these flows, costs would increase and profits would decrease for traffickers, making it harder to conduct business. This should be combined with stricter punishments for traffickers and the individuals and businesses who help them.
               
                Recognizing the limited resources available to anti-trafficking efforts in many parts of the globe, Kara argues for the creation of an international task force that would specialize in countering slavery. Such a task force should be composed of professionals from a broad array of fields, enabling a more comprehensive and effective effort. Local monitoring should also be supported, ‘neighborhood watches’, to watch for suspicious activity and enable more efficient law enforcement operations. On the enforcement side, raids on suspected establishments should increase, and a more efficient judicial process that hands out punishments quicker is needed. Finally, salaries should be increased for officials involved in anti-trafficking efforts to discourage bribery, and victim protection programs must be set up to protect them and their families. However, while such measures would certainly be welcome and likely highly effective, where the resources would come from, and how effective such an international effort would be when dealing with states highly protective of their sovereignty, is not entirely clear.

                Shelley provides less specific measures, but addresses a key weakness in Kara’s anti-trafficking argument. She specifies that any anti-trafficking program must be contextually designed for the region of the world it is targeting. Shelly’s five case studies show significant differences in how human trafficking is conducted across regions. There is no clear cut model that can be applied to trafficking globally. For example, many source countries are also destination countries, therefore any anti-trafficking effort in such an area must be prepared to comprehensively address the economic conditions that fuel the supply of victims, the traffickers themselves and the corrupt facilitators who bring victims in and out of the country, the customers who ultimately provide the profits, and the victims themselves, who are practically destroyed mentally and physically.

While approaching human trafficking as a business does help us better understand the motivations of the actors involved, it is crucial to not limit the anti-trafficking response to strictly institutionalist measures that focuses primarily on increasing costs to participants. Such approaches have been used to target drug trafficking across the globe with varying results. In fact, such crackdowns can have a converse effect by making the commodity scarcer, pushing up prices, and thus increasing the possible profits exponentially. As long as large amounts of money are to be made in any form of trafficking, there will be willing perpetrators. Understandably, it is difficult to target the benefits side of the rational calculus with law enforcement and legislation, which cannot exert control over a freely traded good. However, both authors remind us that there are enablers in legitimate positions who are crucial to both human and drug trafficking. Perhaps more needs to be done to increase the costs on corrupt government officials who facilitate the trade. A key aspect that both authors also touch on is the societal acceptance of victim blaming, particularly of women within the sex trade. Female victims are seen as willing participants looking to make easy money by selling their body, which is very rarely the case in reality. By changing societal perspective on this issue, greater pressure and disapprobation would be brought down upon corrupt officials who participate in the trade and on law enforcement, which often ignores or makes minimal efforts to punish traffickers. Finally, the economic source of the problem is also emphasized within the literature. Traffickers are able to lure victims into vulnerable situations where they can be enslaved because the victims are in dire straits in the first place, unable to find work in poorly performing economies. As with so many issues across the globe, economic growth will be key to truly addressing the problem.



Saturday, May 10, 2014

Summary of Findings

                During my research this semester I have delved deeper into how human trafficking functions in Kazakhstan, and made several interesting findings on the primary actors in the drug trafficking and human trafficking/smuggling organizations, obtained more information on the methods these groups rely on, found official governmental support and complicity within these illegitimate markets, described the role of clan politics in perpetuating official corruption, and finally analyzed what the Kazakh government has done to address the problem.
The literature indicates that the human trade has likely brought established drug organizations into human trafficking. These organizations already have the needed financial resources built up from their profits in the drug trade, and they are able to utilize existing means of transport previously used for running drugs. Their logistical resources can be put to work moving either drugs or humans, and enable them to create more profitable economies of scale.
Nonetheless, smuggling people differs significantly from smuggling drugs. People are difficult to hide. For this reason, traffickers and smugglers try to sneak people past authorities in the open whenever possible. The Yasiel Puig case showed that with the proper paperwork, it is much easier to move an individual across borders, as they essentially become a legal immigrant.[1] However, obtaining the needed paperwork typically requires the cooperation of corrupt officials.
As crucial as the means of transport are to smuggling people, equally important are the facilitators who have legitimate occupations. In both drug and human trafficking, criminal organizations must enlist the support of collaborators in border guards, law enforcement, immigration officials, lawyers, accountants, bankers, and real estate agents who are called upon to provide the false travel documents, safe houses, profit laundering, and willful ignorance to successfully move their product, for which they are amply rewarded.
Trafficking and smuggling organizations have been extremely adaptable and clever at moving their products. To bring their product into and out of Kazakhstan, these organizations have discovered the routes of least resistance that lie along the porous Kyrgyz/Kazakh border. Lightly traveled areas are often sought to avoid detection by law enforcement, but traffickers have also relied on the established networks of fuel smuggling from Kazakhstan, which allows them to bring large vehicles through and thus more cargo. Narcotics are typically brought across the border in larger batches, stockpiled outside of large cities such as Astana, and are then broken down to supply low-level dealers.               
The membership of these illegitimate organizations has shifted over time. The original Russia-based criminal groups who dominated drug trafficking in Central Asia during Soviet times went into decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent decline of the “symbiotic relationship” these organizations had with the government. Soviet officials had provided tacit official acceptance and protection of the trafficking organizations in exchange for their acceptance of a degree of governmental control over the level and locations traffickers did business in. The privatization of the Soviet economy in the 1990s also allowed serious competition to emerge. The lack of regulation and rule of law resulted in various criminal gangs across Central Asia seeking profit from the black market and establishing protection rackets on legitimate businesses, and an increase in the number of government officials seeking to exploit their position for personal gain by collaborating with traffickers.
Official corruption ranges from tacitly ignoring narcotics trafficking to direct participation in the trade, and likely has been prevalent into the highest offices. Beyond participating in the black market, many officials have also engaged in establishing protection rackets. Many contemporary businesses in Kazakhstan must pay for a reliable ‘roof’ in order to avoid harassment, and the best guarantor has become government officials as opposed to gangsters. These official rackets are more likely in Kazakhstan than traditional extortion by independent criminal groups. However, this ‘bureaucratic extortion’ is still less common in Kazakhstan than it is in Russia.
Official corruption has been further enabled by the prevalence of clan politics in Kazakhstan. After independence, zhuz and clan distinctions have become intrinsically tied to power and goods distribution. To gain access to the lucrative posts in state bureaucracy that allow access to extortion rackets and rents from the extractive industries, elites continue to rely on their clan connections. Through these ties they distribute the spoils to their key supporters in this patron-client system in order to maintain their position. Local elites push their kin-based connections to potential supporters, and emphasize the likely benefits to be received in reward for their support. Additionally, they use scare tactics to emphasize the need for clan-based loyalty to protect fellow members from the ambitions of competing clans.
The clan-based identities have persevered despite the declared push in the Soviet Union for erasing class distinctions by the Communist Party. Individual Kazakhs still strongly identify with their historical zhuz. Under the Communist system, these identities became crucial in an era of scarcity. Individuals relied on familial networks to not only secure employment, but also to obtain basic goods and services. Contemporary elites are able to access, and manipulate this near universal possession of extensive individual genealogical knowledge that has become as easy identifier and rallying point to utilize for their own individual goals.
The prevalence of official corruption has made the effort to curb both human and drug trafficking weak and inefficient. The Kazakh government was initially slow to address the development of human trafficking during the 1990s, only the growth of problems such as the spread of HIV/AIDS that accompanied the rise finally instigated action.[2] The government has made efforts to enact effective legislation and increase law enforcement capabilities. Additional funding has been invested into training courses to aid law enforcement in identifying, investigating and prosecuting human traffickers, and efforts have been made to improve international coordination with neighboring law enforcement agencies. However, the investigation and prosecution of trafficking cases decreased from 2011 through 2012. While the legislation, funding, and training appear to illustrate a genuine intent to combat the problem, a lack of results speaks to serious issues. Trafficking-focused NGO’s have continued to complain of antiquated tactics used by law enforcement and a general lack of concern for trafficking victims.
A lack of enforcement will continually hamper any attempt to enact effective rules and regulations. Given the likely levels of profit officials involved in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking reap from the trade, it will be difficult to comprehensively address the problem. At its core, any attempt to build an efficient response to trafficking must overcome high levels of corruption across the Kazakh state.


Sources

Curtis, Glenn E. 2002. “Involvement of Russian Organized Crime Syndicates, Criminal Elements in the Russian Military, and Regional Terrorist Groups in Narcotics Trafficking in Central Asia, the Caucasus, And Chechnya.” Narcotics Trafficking in Former Soviet Union - Federal Research Division, Library of Congress Report.

 Roberts, Ken and Jochen Tholen, Takir Balykbaev and Daulet Duisenbekov. 2003. “Post-Soviet Management: Evidence from Kazakhstan.” Journal for East European Management Studies 8(3), 319-331

Schatz, Edward. 2000. “The Politics of Multiple Identities: Lineage and Ethnicity in Kazakhstan.” Europe-Asia Studies 52(3): 489-506

Schatz, Edward. 2005. “Reconceptualizing Clans: Kinship Networks and Statehood in Kazakhstan.” Nationalities Papers 33(2)

Shelley, Louise. 2012. The Relationship of Drug and Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Townsend, Jacob. 2006. “The Logistics of Opiate Trafficking in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(1), 69-91

Van Dijk, Jan. 2007. “Mafia Markers: Assessing Organized Crime and its Impact Upon Societies.” Trends in Organized Crime 10, 39-56