Idea Transcript
A Global Study of Human Trafficking Legislation: Causes and Effects Kaja B. Niewiarowska International Relations Honors Thesis New York University Spring 2015
There are over 21 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. Human trafficking is by no means a new problem; however, public awareness has only been raised in the past few decades, and most major reports and studies have focused on evaluating the number of victims without acknowledging that a vast majority of human trafficking goes on undetected and unreported. The most useful tool in combating human trafficking is adequate human trafficking legislation, yet there have been few comprehensive studies that focus on why states choose to implement or augment their human trafficking legislation. This study seeks to answer these questions by researching the factors that affect a state’s level of legislation, as well as the effects such legislation has. Results suggest that democracies are overwhelmingly likely to have the most efficient legislation. While a high level of wealth also increases a democracy’s likelihood of having adequate legislation, it has an opposite effect in autocracies: the wealthiest autocratic states are the most likely to have no legislation. Additionally, an analysis of country type suggests that refugee stock, be it by country of origin or by asylum, has a significant impact on identifying trafficking routes. A detailed look into the human trafficking situation in the United Arab Emirates shows that improved legislation has led to an increase in convictions – a positive change in the global fight against human trafficking.
Part I: Introduction “Mabel L., a 35-year-old Filipina worker, travelled to the UAE in 2012 on a visa for office cleaning. Her agency in the Philippines had promised she would work in offices. However, when she arrived, the agency in the UAE said she would be working in a home. ‘I said I want to work, but not as a nanny. They said, “Just try.”’ Her employer kept her passport and told her that if she went outside the police would arrest her for having no ID. Her employer forced her to work for up to 20 hours a day, with no rest and no day off. Her employer locked her inside the house, often delayed paying her wages for three months at a time, and verbally abused her, including with death threats. He also physically abused her: ‘He slapped me, beat me, and kicked me. I couldn’t walk. He beat me on my left hip,’ she said.”1
This woman is one of over 21 million men and women the world over who have fallen victim to human trafficking. Over the past few decades, significant progress has been made with regards to treating human trafficking as a unique crime, rather than dismissing its victims as immigration offenders. As a result, nongovernment organizations, international organizations, and human rights experts have all entered into cooperation with governments to advocate various approaches to eliminate human trafficking. This paper aims to focus on the various political, economic, and social motivations states have to legislate against human trafficking, as well as what effects such legislation has. By identifying factors most important to the successful implementation of human trafficking legislation, this study aims to not only detect targeted human trafficking legislative strategies on a country per country basis, but also to identify which countries are most at 1 Source: Human Rights Watch
risk for impunity in human trafficking cases, both of which will aid in the successful implementation of human trafficking legislation on a global scale. Lastly, a brief case study of the United Arab Emirates will examine the positive effects of implementing more effective legislation: a rise in human trafficking convictions is a crucial first step in the elimination of human trafficking.
Human trafficking is a universal problem, and one that is by no means easy to combat. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, between 2010 and 2012, victims with 154 different citizenships were identified in 124 countries around the globe. A majority of headlines focus on women and children falling victim to sex trafficking, yet an overwhelming amount of people are also trafficked for domestic or construction work. In fact, the ILO estimates that of the 21 million victims of forced labor worldwide, only 4.5 million of them are victims of sexual exploitation. The ILO further estimates that 11.4 million victims are female, and 9.5 million of them are male, illustrating that human trafficking is can victimize men as nearly as equally as it can women. Since human trafficking is inextricably linked to immigration, oftentimes of questionable legal status, its victims often choose to turn to the safety provided by trafficking networks rather than face deportation. The fear of being returned to their traffickers after having failed to escape is often enough to discourage victims from attempting to do so at all. Similarly, in countries where adultery is criminalized, victims of sexual exploitation often neglect to turn to the authorities in fear of personal retribution.
Evidently, the key to successfully combating human trafficking is legislation that is both capable of identifying and convicting traffickers, and is also quick to protect victims. Due to its clandestine nature, human trafficking has proven to be a difficult issue on which to compile accurate and complete Table 2: Ordered Probit Regression of Political Factors vs. Tier Ranking
Socio-Economic Factors: The following socio-economic factors are tested against tier ranking: GDP per capita, Income Inequality, Unemployment, Poverty Rate, Literacy Rate, Empowerment Index, and Worker’s Rights. Table 3 details the results below.
In the above analysis, GDP, Empowerment Index, and Workers’ Rights are all significant at the 0.1% level. Negative coefficients all suggest that as these three factors increase in value, a country is more likely to receive a lower (better) tier ranking, which supports the appropriate hypotheses. Poverty is also significant at the 1% level. A positive coefficient proves the hypothesis that the more people a country has living below the poverty line, the more likely it is to receive a higher (worse) tier ranking. Unemployment, Income Inequality and Literacy Rate both fail to be significant, and thus appear to have no effect on a country’s tier ranking.
Effects of Socio-Economic Factors on Tier Ranking (1) Tier
(2) Tier
(3) Tier
(4) Tier
(5) Tier
(6) Tier
(7) Tier
-0.218*** (-11.13)
-0.0215 (-0.29)
-0.181*** (-8.66)
-0.186*** (-8.93)
0.0114 (0.19)
-0.216*** (-11.03)
0.00767 (0.12)
Population
-0.0556** (-2.91)
-0.0692 (-1.50)
-0.129*** (-5.91)
-0.0872*** (-4.20)
0.0379 (0.94)
-0.0481* (-2.46)
0.0740 (1.94)
Year
0.0260** (2.91)
-0.00169 (-0.07)
0.0129 (1.23)
0.0160 (1.52)
-0.0206 (-0.96)
0.0260** (2.90)
-0.0236 (-1.27)
Democracy
-1.663*** (-16.44)
-1.545*** (-6.23)
-0.347* (-2.05)
-1.196*** (-10.10)
-0.870*** (-3.54)
-1.680*** (-16.46)
-1.207*** (-5.48)
GDP per capita
Literacy Rate
-0.00253 (-0.49)
Empowerment Rights Index
-0.140*** (-9.56)
Workers' Rights
-0.484*** (-8.00)
GINI Index
-0.00193 (-0.30)
Unemployment Rate
0.00910 (1.74)
Poverty Rate
Observations
0.0115** (2.82)
1532
261
1383
1384
384
t statistics in parentheses ="* p