According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), human trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring or receiving a person through the use of force, coercion and other means for the purpose of exploiting them. The UNODC also stated that every year thousands of women, men and children fall into the hands of traffickers in their own countries and abroad. Every country in the world, the UNODC reported, is affected by human trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims.

The United States Department of State reported that Jamaica is a source of transit and destination country for adults and children subjected to trafficking and forced labour. The most common form of trafficking reported in Jamaica is sex trafficking, which occurs at nightclubs, bars, massage parlours, and private homes. The report continued that the population most vulnerable to trafficking are young women and children from poor communities who are least educated and have disorganised families. Owners and operators of massage parlours lure young women into their establishments under the pretence that they are being employed as massage therapists; however, they are exposed to selling sexual favours to men as their main duties.

According to research conducted by Leith Dunn and Sybil Ricketts on the scope of human trafficking in Jamaica, the pattern of trafficking they reportedly observed is consistent with global trends, and most activities they found related to trafficking for sexual exploitation, with females and children being the main victims. Their research was carried out in Negril in Westmoreland, Montego Bay in St James, and Kingston and St Andrew.

Dunn and Ricketts argued that radical changes in the global trade environment as well as telecommunications and computer technologies have all created major challenges as well as opportunities for the Jamaican people. Exposure to global and other Western cultures and lifestyles, they pointed out, have raised economic exploitations and changed values and behaviours that are more accommodating of activities related to human trafficking.

The Global Initiatives to Fight Human Trafficking estimated that 2.5 million people are in forced labour, including sexual exploitation at any given time as a result of trafficking. Two hundred and fifty thousand or 10 per cent, they reported, are in Latin America and the Caribbean. The majority of suspects involved in trafficking, they reported, are nationals within countries where the trafficking process occurs. Global profit from trafficking amounts to over US$31 billion. From this amount, US$1.3 billion or 4.1 per cent is generated in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cable television, which is a source of easy access to pornographic videos, helped to develop and diversify sexual pleasures and appetites and increased the demand for foreign sex partners, exotic dancers, and a mushrooming of sexual massage industries, Dunn and Ricketts found. Newspaper advertisement offering massage services have alerted young girls to this industry, they also believed.

Trafficking in Persons, they also pointed out, occurs within and outside national borders and is driven by demand and supply as well as social, economic and political inequalities at the global, regional and national levels. Poverty, organised crime, weak social and economic structure, and the perception that one’s quality of life can be improved through migration are some of the factors that are fuelling this thriving activity, they concluded.

Some of the major factors of human trafficking in Jamaica have arisen from the breakdown of personal and family values and attitudes. Family is the first major agent of socialisation and a support system to acquire good life principles. Whenever this support is lacking, it can be reasonably argued that children and other members of the family will deviate becoming delinquent and developing the tendency to accept counter influences. The breakdown of other agents of socialisation create a major gap in the society which causes deviant behaviours.

Economic hardship and the inability to find sustainable employment is also another factor which causes some individuals to get involved in human trafficking and unlawful sexual practices. People have to earn to live, acquire an education, raise families, and take care of themselves. Once there are insufficient economic opportunities, people will find other ways of earning an income. They are therefore lured into prostitution, organised crime, or other illicit trades.

Some women and young girls are being sourced from depressed communities and coerced or fed false and deceptive promises that they are being employed into reputable economic establishments. However, they later find out that they are exploited into sexual practices against their will. The exposure through the Internet has created awareness in some of these helpless females who watch and read about the extravagant lifestyle that can be achieved from these unhealthy practices.

Human trafficking is a multidimensional threat which, if allowed to continue, deprives people of their human rights, promotes social breakdown, and inhibits development by a country’s human capital. Families, therefore, will be left distraught and young women will find themselves drawn into a web of activities which scar their characters and prospects of leading a respectable and happy life. Moreover, the cost to person, society and governments for health care and the effect on productivity can be astronomical.

It is hoped that with forward linkages, and associations created with law enforcement, there will be greater collaboration of resources and intelligence to map and gather intelligence on organised criminal networks to better operationalise strategies to combat this crime. Law enforcement should, through intelligence gathering, be focusing on the characters in the organised criminal network to dismantle, disrupt and arrest the primaries. Also, the focus through social agencies and civil society groups should be to educate potential victims via the media.

The Government of Jamaica, however, needs to find the financial resources to launch public education media campaigns on the effects of human trafficking, create training and educational opportunities, and to carry out more sustained covert law enforcement operations driven by intelligence to arrest those involved in this crime.

The Government has already enacted legislation and is also complying with international conventions on issues of human trafficking. The security forces are is actively involved in pursuing the problem to arrest and prosecute perpetrators of this organised crime. The effort, however, is found to be insufficient by the international agencies because it is not complying fully with the protocol.

What seems to be missing is a concerted public message about the risks and dangers of human trafficking with intent to inform and change behaviour. The Government must therefore forge greater partnerships with the private sector, non-government organisations, international donor agencies and the citizenry to create economic opportunities and external economic linkages to channel labour in productive enterprises. They can also engender good values and attitudes programmes to change and reinforce lifelong learning principles so that people and the victims of human trafficking can acquire and display good personal and societal norms.

An overarching strategic approach should encompass a four P’s approach:

1. Prevention: Commission several awareness and training activities to provide information; media, schools, workshops, public forums, and social networks should be employed to fill gaps in knowledge.

2. Protection: Develop a human trafficking manual to include indicators to identify likely threats. Also, the protection of victims has to be considered on humanitarian grounds with care and empathy towards them so that the issue of social exclusion does not arise, reducing the barriers to re-integration into the society in relation to acceptance.

3. Partnerships: Develop and strengthen partnerships with all groups and stakeholders to assist in creating working groups to better deal successfully with the problem.

4. Prosecution: Conduct ongoing surveillance to detect offenders to this crime. And bolster laws to act as a deterrent.

Christopher Bryan has read for master’s degrees in government and national security and strategic studies. Send comments to the Observer orchristopher.bryan@cwc.com.