Human trafficking refers to the recruitment, transportation, harboring, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or other services such as paid sexual engagements, through the use of force, coercion, or fraud, for the purpose of subjection to involuntary peonage, servitude, slavery or debt bondage (Wilson & Dalton, 2008). The definition of human trafficking also takes into consideration sex trafficking, a phenomenon in which young girls and women are transported and recruited into commercial sex networks either through coercion, fraud, force or after being induced. In most cases, the girls are below the age of eighteen years, the legal age to engage in consensual sexual engagement. Slavery, an act which has been identified as a gross violation of human rights has been condemned globally and it is currently considered the worst atrocity ever to befall humans in the past. Yet, the incidence of global human trafficking, an act viewed as a modern version of slavery still persists, and continues to expand with countries struggling to control it (Todres, 2009). The issue of human trafficking has been tackled from the legal and social justice perspectives in most scholarly pieces. It has not been granted sufficient attention from an ethical perspective. According to Rijal et al. (2016), despite the growing global concern against sex trafficking, a form of human trafficking, thousands of individuals, mostly girls and women, are trafficked annually, especially from low-income countries. Apart from sex trafficking, the trafficked individuals are used in forced labor and to commit different types of crimes. Therefore, from a utilitarian perspective, human trafficking should be stopped since it brings more suffering to the trafficked individuals and their families while the only people benefiting are the agents trafficking them and the business merchants relying of cheap labor from the trafficked persons.
Human Trafficking through the Utilitarian Ethical Lens
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory. It focuses on the consequences of an act to establish whether it should be supported or not. In the book Utilitarian: For and Against, Smart and Williams (1973) argues that utilitarianism is eudaimonistic since it focuses on the desirable features of a given set of actions to qualify them. Furthermore, utilitarianism seeks to maximize peoples’ happiness since it is a utility-based ethical model. Any set of actions viewed through the utilitarian lens should have a clear set of consequences of results so that they can be evaluated and establish whether they meet the ‘utility’ criteria that would be used to make people happy. Back to the issue of human trafficking, it is clear that it has been identified as a social injustice to the individuals being trafficked since most of them are coerced, lied, or even taken by force only to be sold in different states of countries.
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Human trafficking can only be equated to slavery. The two have a similar mode of operation that dehumanizes the poor or the vulnerable and views them as commodities to make the rich happy. According to Parmentier (2010), human trafficking as a phenomenon cannot be separated from various changes that have occurred in the society in the recent years. First, the issue of globalization has open up the world and predisposed poor societies to vices such as human trafficking. Human trafficking thrives since the rich take advantage of the poor and vulnerable populations and either bank on their ignorance or poverty to traffic them. Parmentier (2010) argues that by 2010, 1 to 2 million persons were being trafficked across the world. However, he notes that the figures may be incorrect since most of the human trafficking cases were neither documented nor reported. Human trafficking is outlawed in most jurisdictions. Therefore, the people operating the crime network do so with high precision to ensure that they are neither identified nor reported to the law. Gallagher (2010) argues that human trafficking thrives since the law trying to combat the crime is both moribund and inefficient. The vice evolves so fast with the developments in globalization and technology while the law evolves at a very slow pace that cannot match. As a result, slavery has evolved into human trafficking as many governments watch as their population is decimated due to the massive levels of human trafficking. In 2000, the United States Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (Gallagher, 2010). The law was supposed to push the affected state departments to reveal the exact figures and extent of human trafficking. This shows that although human trafficking has been thriving, it was only granted enough attention in the recent two decades since the world had not unanimously accepted that it was a serious concern that needed to be addressed. Wilson & Dalton (2008) also note that countries like the United States have failed to combat human trafficking since the law in place is not exhaustive. Despite passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, little success has been achieved over the years. The nature and extent of human trafficking remains less covered as a subject. In most cases, the data provided only serves as a projection since most of the actions are well hidden.
To clearly apply the utilitarian model into the issue of human trafficking, it is important exploring the different forms and types of human trafficking. There are six types of human trafficking. They include labor trafficking, sex trafficking, organ trafficking, child marriages, child soldiers and debt bondage. In most cases of forced labor, the companies or agents recruiting the persons take advantage of their vulnerability. For example, refugees are more prone to forced labor as they struggle to find their way out of war-torn countries. From a utilitarian perspective, forced labor is wrong. The persons are dehumanized and threatened when they try to present their grievances. Furthermore, majority of the individuals lack legal documents to live in a new country. If refugees from a war-torn country like Syria are smuggled into the United States, they have no way back to their native countries. Their employers take advantage of that phenomenon to pay them poorly and also force them to continue working. Feingold (2005) argues that a detailed 2005 study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) revealed that an estimated 9.5 million victims of forced labor in Asia, where less than 10% were being trafficked for sexual purposes. Therefore, in some countries, human trafficking is mainly used to get cheap labor. There if no happiness to the individuals trafficked to work as modern day slaves. They are forced to work in poor conditions since their employers are only concerned about their output. The employers also know that they can get more ‘slaves’ if the ones trafficked die due to the dilapidating conditions they are forced to live with.
Labor trafficking is classified into forced labor and bonded labor. Bonded labor, also called debt bondage is probably the least known form of labor trafficking. This is a method of enslaving people and forcing them to work as laborers to repay their loans or any money they owe. The value of the work they are subjected to is always higher than the original amount of money they owed. Although bonded labor rarely gets the attention it should, it is a vice that should be addressed when focusing on other elements of human trafficking. Forced labor is the most common and widely documented form of labor trafficking. In this category, child labor has been highlighted as the most pervasive since it leads to long-lasting effects on the children throughout their lives. The children are also denied the chance to progress with their normal developmental milestones. They are denied the right to education and proper upbringing as they are subjected to labor at very low prices. The chances of exploitation are also high when the children are hired to take up jobs that should be taken by adults. Therefore, applying a utilitarian lens to the issue of labor trafficking, there are several ideas which can be drawn. First, the trafficked individuals, whether adults or children are forced into labor trafficking by their problems. In some countries, the extent of poverty exposes individuals to labor trafficking. The consequences are more than the benefits and so labor trafficking do not pass through the utilitarian test. The children are denied a decent childhood. They are forced to take up jobs that should be taken by adults. They are also abused physically and emotionally. Since they can hardly defend themselves, the children are also at a higher chance of being forced into sexual engagements such as rape without reporting. If they report, they are further threatened or subjected to more suffering. Child labor thrives in a form of lawlessness and so the perpetrators are rarely concerned about the law that protects the children. While other children are pursuing their goals in school, the child laborers are working hard to earn a living and so the cycle of poverty continues.
Using a utility-based model, the health consequences of labor trafficking can also be used to urge governments to stop the human trafficking issue. The health impacts of labor trafficking are also far-reaching. The victims are kept in isolation to ensure that they do not receive any kind of help. They are also blackmailed by the traffickers. In most cases, the victims lack official and legal documents to live in their new country. They are therefore threatened with being reported to the government agencies like the police to ensure that they comply. Traffickers identify their targets mainly from low-income countries. Poverty is the worst type of social injustice that can befall a person. In extreme poverty, individuals are ready to take any risk that promises them a better future. The people living in abject poverty are easily lured with promises of a better and prosperous future to sign with the trafficking agencies. Once they sign, and are smuggled into a new country, they realize that the promises were all lies. They are forced to engage in different types of work. For instance, girls are lured into labor trafficking and later they find themselves serving as commercial sex workers. Various methods of forced labor expose the victims to physical abuse where they get scars, fractures, and respiratory problems that persist throughout their lives.
The psychological effects of labor trafficking are equally far-reaching. The persons are subjected to torture since they are helpless. They are also blackmailed and subjected to shame and humiliation. The females subjected to labor trafficking are also subjected to rape and other types of dehumanization. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is also common among persons who have gone through forced labor at one point of their lives. The Stockholm Syndrome has been identified as a major problem among human trafficking victims. According to Alexander & Klein (2009), “although post-traumatic stress disorder and the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ reaction both reflect the severity of the forced labor or kidnapping experience, PTSD is more related to the level of physical violence displayed towards the victim, whereas the Stockholm Syndrome reaction is correlated with the level of humiliation and deprivation. In the Stockholm Syndrome, a victim is so attached to the source of his/her suffering to a point of believing that there is no other way out. Even if such a person was granted an opportunity to explore other opportunities in life, they may end up going back to the person who inflicted pain and suffering upon them. Labor trafficking benefits the agents and businessmen relying on the cheap labor to run their businesses. It should be castigated by all means to ensure that human rights are protected regardless of the country one lives. All these problems simply show that there is no way that human trafficking can be qualified using a utilitarian ethical perspective. In some extreme cases, the trafficked individuals die and never find their way back home. Their relatives live in agony or in lucky cases they get the bodies of their deceased relative for burial.
Sex trafficking can also be subjected to the utilitarian ethical lens. Although the history of prostitution is as old as the history of documented human civilization, the new forms taken by sex trafficking calls for immediate action to stop it. The consequences of sex trafficking are worse as compared to other types of human trafficking. In sex trafficking, the victims are exposed to venereal diseases such as human papilloma virus which causes cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS, Gonorrhea, syphilis among many others. The chances of getting unwanted pregnancies are also high. Since the girls are solely used as objects in sex trade, they are often abused physically by their sexual partners. There are many cases in which the women are either killed or badly injured when they seek compensation after sexual encounter. The fact that they are not informed that they would end up being prostitutes also makes the whole arrangement illegal and unacceptable. The girls are deceived into signing the contract forms with the hope of getting better paying jobs as nannies in different countries. The situation changes when they find their way into the new country. Since they have no other way to make a living, they are forced into the sex trade where the agencies managing them take the bigger share of the income from the business leaving them with enough money to ensure they do not starve to death. Sex trafficking denies young girls the chance to explore their potential in life. While girls of their age are in school pursuing their dreams, they are in a foreign state or country engaging in sex trade with different men. The cycle of poverty cannot be broken if sex trafficking is not stopped. Sex should be consensual. The consensual age is provided in the constitution. However, in sex trafficking, young girls find themselves in the mix even before attaining the legal consensual age. Victims of sex trafficking suffer serious mental problems. For instance, when some contract syphilis and it is not controlled, they may end up having complicated syphilis which can manifest with serious mental disorders. The cases of depression, anxiety and other mental problems are also common among the victims of sex trafficking. The fact that there is no hope further complicates the issue. PTSD is common among victims of sex trafficking due to the suffering they have to persevere throughout their journey to the new countries and the experiences they have to go through in their daily lives. The victims also live in fear since they are often blackmailed and threatened if they want to leave the syndicate.
The economics of human trafficking also fail the test of utilitarian ethics. According to Wheaton et al. (2010), because freedom of choice and economic gain are at the heart of production, human trafficking impedes both national and international economic growth, no country wants to be associated with economic growth linked to human trafficking. Furthermore, most countries have adopted labor laws that govern the minimum wage that workers should get when working in the companies whether in the private or public sector. Human trafficking violates all the labor laws put in place and even hires children to work as laborers. According to Wheaton et al. (2010), an economic market is a place that connects buyers and sellers. In a labor market, the workers should not be coerced to make decisions about their hiring. In human trafficking, the laborers are not allowed to make decisions regarding their employment. They are simply bundled up from their poverty-stricken countries and taken to their employers where they are forced to work at the employers’ terms. The forced laborers are also denied the chance to enter into labor unions that should serve to protect their interests whenever the employer infringes on their rights. Zimmerman & Kiss (2017) note that human trafficking is simply a form of exploitation. Due to enhanced social mobility, many people in poverty-laden countries believe that they will get better economic opportunities when they move to other countries. The Mexico-US case can be used as an example in this case. Human trafficking is so common across the US-Mexico border because the Mexicans believe they will enjoy better living standards if they find their way into the United States. Human trafficking agents take advantage of the loophole to recruit the needy individuals and ensure they are ‘sold’ to business merchants requiring cheap labor mainly in their farms where there is little to no supervision by government agencies. The economic impact is that the business merchants reap while many employees continue wallowing in poverty. Since the government has put in place stringent measures to protect its employees, hiring the trafficked persons disrupts the labor dynamics in a country. The consequences therefore outweigh the benefits and so human trafficking should be stopped if an economic approach is to be used.
Conclusion
The utilitarian ethical model uses the consequences of a given course of action or event to establish whether it should be qualified or rejected. Human trafficking fails when viewed using the utilitarian ethical lens. In this discussion, various aspects of human trafficking were explored. In labor trafficking, the victims are subjected to low paying labor where they are forced to work in deplorable conditions. They contract serious health implications where many die while others are left disabled or managing chronic morbidities. Human trafficking thrives on threats, blackmail, deceive, servitude and violation of human rights. The victims are denied the chance to make choices in life, a protection provided under the international human rights statutes. The economics of human trafficking also reveal the negative effects of the practice to the economy. Since the labor organizations have well protected laws governing the labor market, labor trafficking breaches these laws and denies the right people the chances to offer their services at the right pay. Sexual trafficking is both traumatizing and dehumanizing. The victims, mainly young girls, are deceived to be transported into various destinations hoping to change their poverty laden backgrounds. They end up serving in commercial sex with their agents reaping big while they continue wallowing in poverty. Human trafficking should, therefore, be stopped even if it calls for the international community to come with more stringent measures to crack on the perpetrators.
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