Human Trafficking
-What impact does human trafficking have on the world?
Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat. It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, it is a global health risk, and it fuels the growth of organized crime. It is kind of modern day slavery and is the third largest criminal industry in the world after arms and drug dealing. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them. The common denominator of trafficking scenarios is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to control people; that control is tied to inducing someone into commercial sex acts, or labour or services. Men around the world profit in pleasure and in price from the exploitation of women and children. Poverty and global disparities in the rule of law are conditions in which human trafficking, like HIV/AIDS and other killers of the poor, thrives. Trafficking of children often involves exploitation of the parents' extreme poverty. The latter may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income or they may be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children. Nearly 80 percent of trafficked persons are women and girls and up to 50 percent are children. It is estimated that upwards of 17,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year; an additional 200,000 American children are considered "at risk" for trafficking in the sex industry. Russia is a significant destination and transit country for persons trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation from regional and neighboring countries into Russia, and on to the Gulf States, Europe, Asia, and North America. Malaysia is a destination country for a significant number of men women, and children who are trafficked from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, and the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan for sexual and labor exploitation. Trafficking represents lost opportunities domestically, including an irretrievable loss of human resources and future productivity. According to the 2008 Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report trafficking also results in a huge loss of remittances to developing countries, because trafficked persons often have to pay off the ‘debt’ they incur for being trafficked. Additionally, the costs of coercion and exploitation cannot be measured but it is clear that the worst forms of child labor and by extension trafficking, for instance, represents a loss in productive capacity of a generation of individuals who would have otherwise gained from increased education and improved health. Human trafficking has a devastating impact on individual victims, who often suffer physical and emotional abuse, rape, threats against self and family, passport theft, and even death. But the impact of human trafficking goes beyond individual victims; it undermines the health, safety and security of all nations it touches.

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