The Traffic of Human Beings Phenomenon

The traffic of human beings is a global phenomenon that refers to all ages and sexes, but a large part of the persons implicated in the traffic with human beings is women and children. That is why the specific aspects of the person's gender and children's vulnerability should be considered.

The victims are trafficked through numerous means of coercion or methods of hoaxing for countless abusive and exploitation scopes. It has been observed that the majority of the victims traded from Eastern to Central and Western Europe and also to North America and Asia, are women trafficked for forced prostitution. Although due to the surreptitious character of this crime, any available statistic or data does not denote the real state of the things.

The traffic in purposes other than prostitution, such as forced marriages and forced labour etc, does not attract enough attention of the law organs; therefore the capacity of the victims to get help is limited.

The politics and the laws of many countries have the tendency to reduce the possibility of taking some complex measures on the matter of the problem of traffic with intent of forced prostitution. Although, in the last decade, within the framework of international debates and especially in the contents of UN documents, has appeared a certainty that the purposes for which the human beings are trafficked and the modalities in which it is done are different and permanently changing, the base elements of this type of traffic remain the same. Thus, a common accord which regards the definition of traffic, including both the one with women and with men with whatever abusive and enforced purpose, was arrived at.

The first international definition of the human beings' traffic was elaborated within the UN Convention against trans-national organized crime; the prevention, suppression and sanction of traffic with persons (especially women and children) protocol was adopted by the General Assembly in November 2000.

This document will offer a standard description of the characteristics of the traffic with human beings followed by general conclusions for prevention and control of this crime. Also, this will present, as was said before, the statutory definition of the traffic with human beings established at the UN Convention against trans-national organized crime. The state provisions regulated by this Protocol will be highlighted as will follow.

As it concerns these provisions and general conclusions, I will revise and comment the Law Project regarding the commanding of the Penal Code of Republic of Moldova concerning the illegal traffic with human beings.

CHARACTERISTICS

OF THE TRAFFIC WITH HUMAN BEINGS

The key elements that persist in the process of traffic with humans are the compulsion, swindling, or dependence due to money debt, which are used to force the victim to work in abusive exploitation conditions, similar to slavery.

The victim is hindered to use its own will and capacity to control its own body, which constitutes a serious violation of fundamental human rights. Also the methods used in the traffic with humans and the aims of this act constantly change.

Persons are traded for lots of abusive and exploitative reasons, like force prostitution, sexual exploitation, involuntary labour (slavery), usage as first-act army forces and even removal of organs for further sale on the western "human organ black market".

In the process of the traffic a person, or more often, a whole chain of people, is involved, beginning with the one that "recruits", ending up with the last person who buys or receives the victim. Often, complex cases of frontier illicit crossings in a multitude of traversal points with implication of the traffickers of different nationalities are encountered.

Recent international definitions are axed upon a large part of the fact that traffic is never consensual, and as a result are different from the other - either legal or illegal - forms of migration. Naturally the process of traffic is initiated by the decision of the victim to migrate. Putting in application, by the traffickers, of means of deception and coercion can be done at any stage of migration, being done either in the country of origin (labour force recruiting, false publicity, transportation offer), or country of transit (confiscation of documents, threatening, violence) or country of destination (dependence by debt, violent behaviour etc.).

There are three typical groups of circumstances which end with the situation in which the person is trafficked as purpose of sexual commerce and other forms of enforced labour. The first group is made up by persons who have been intimidated and completely misled, the latter not knowing or realising what is their destination and the work that follows to be carried out by them. The second group are the people that have been partly told the truth, and later these are forced to do something for which they haven't given their consent. And I would like to remind here that the liberty of the victims is constrained to such a level by threats, violence and taking away of identity documents or by many other methods. The third group is those who were announced before about labour conditions, and without any viable financial alternative, let themselves be led by the trader, who exploits their economical and juridical vulnerability.

Only the persons who are well informed about the conditions of work and who hold full control over their finances and liberty in motion, even if they are travelling and working illegally, are not considered victims of the traffic with human beings.

The positions of the victims can change between these categories, and in reliance with the degree of dependence and vulnerability these persons are liable to be subject to different forms of brutality, including sexual violence.

Traffic does not necessarily imply traversal of frontiers. In a big majority of countries an internal traffic with persons is encountered. The victims of the traffic are separated from social networks, thus isolated from a cultural, linguistic or physical point of view and are deprived of their capacity to control the situation. Together with those victims who were abused after crossing the border to another country, there is a similar number of victims abused inside the country of origin.

Even though there are numerous interdictions against traffic, the international networks commercialising with women and children continue to prosper. The success of these trade webs can be attributed to a number of factors, like the orientation of the global economy, the decline of the socio-economical statute of the woman in former socialistic countries, the high request and the