HUMAN trafficking is a universal problem affecting some countries more than others but sparing none.
Victims are recruited and circulated within their own countries, if not exported to foreign lands, on sugar-coated promises of milk and honey. Very often, offers of greener pastures are just empty talks.
Trafficked adults and children end up as under-paid and over-worked indentured servants while female victims, including young girls, are frequently forced into white slavery.
This abominable practice of enslaving people is the fastest growing international transgression and the second biggest income source for organised crime after drugs trafficking.
According to UNICEF, 1.2 million children are trafficked every year and at least 12.3 million people are victims of forced labour worldwide. Of these, 2.4 million are a direct result of human trafficking.
In a recent estimate, the International Labour Organisation put the figures of people trafficked across international borders annually at between 600,000 and 800,000, of whom about 80 per cent were women and girls and up to 50 per cent were minors.
These statistics may be an under-estimation as it’s difficult to put a finger on the actual scale of human trafficking worldwide due to its clandestine nature and illegal status. But the above figures are the most credible and frequently quoted.
Arguably, most of the victims come from the poorest countries or the most deprived strata of society. These destitute people are fair game for traffickers who exploit their gullibility spawned by a desperate craving for something or anything that is better — even slightly — than their present miserable existence.
Indeed, traffickers are reportedly switching their cargo from drugs to human beings for high profits at lower risk and their illicit agenda includes prostitution, begging, illegal adoption as well as forced labour and marriage.
The ‘supply’ is acquired largely through abduction, sales of children by parents, runaways and orphans plucked from the streets or purchased through dubious institutions.
In Malaysia, human trafficking has not reached epidemic proportion. While the authorities are keeping a close watch on the situation, remedial measures taken thus far have yet to gain traction.
The US maintains Malaysia on the watch list but has removed the Philippines and Singapore. Countries on the watch list that are found dragging their feet in combating trafficking will no longer receive American aid or have it cut substantially.
According to the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, countries are placed on the watch list when they have “a significant or increasing number of people who are victims of severe forms of trafficking or when they have failed to provide evidence of greater efforts being made to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year.”
Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein had said he did not expect Malaysia to be taken off the watch list just yet, pointing out: “The US can keep watching us, and if after this, we are still on the list, then maybe they are not doing their job.”
It is, of course, in Malaysia’s long-term economic interests to get off the watch list. Already, there have been reports of foreign parents backing out after agreeing to send their children to our colleges and universities because we are on the watch list.
The recent withdrawal by 200 Mongolian students is a case in point. Their parents pulled them out after learning Malaysia is under watch for human trafficking. This is just one bad example — and the resultant loss of millions in foreign exchange won’t do the economy any good.
To deal with the problem with greater effect, the government has adopted broader counter measures such as the amnesty programme (for illegal immigrants), the controversial asylum-seekers swap with Australia and a cross-agency biometric system to register foreigners in Malaysia. However, as all these are just taking off, it will take sometime for them to produce results.
The Home Minister has assured Malaysia will continue to address issues of illegal human cross-border movements, and as part of this endeavour, a visit to China has been scheduled in October to discuss co-operation on curbing human trafficking and related problems.
Human trafficking is a crime against humanity. Every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers in their own countries as well as abroad.
Malaysia must remain vigilant and law enforcement agencies in the country such the police and the immigration department need to work together to check the insidious spread of this social evil. They can start by improving our standing on the watch list.