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Introduction
Thesis Statement: Kantian ethics, as a utilitarian view, holds that man is the end of the act to be benefitted from instead of the means to achieve the goal.
One of the most denigrating crimes known to man, the trade in people is a crime that impacts the global community. Traffickers trick men, women, and children from almost every country and then “sell” them to traders looking to exploit their situation. Though the most prevalent form of human trafficking is for the illicit sex trade, others are sold into slavery, and even at times into syndicates that harvest their organs. This illicit trade has been regarded as a highly profitable “revenue stream” for organized crime groups. In the 2005 report of the International Labor Organization (ILO), there is an estimated two million people, at any given point, who are being victimized by or have fallen victim to human traffickers. Contemporary research, however, on general slave labor trends would point to a bigger problem, one bigger in scope and magnitude.
In the context of the Continent, the trade in human beings is one of the biggest and profitable enterprises, with organized criminal groups realizing nearly $ 3 billion a year that preys on the grinding poverty in many countries in the world. In human trafficking, humans are considered as people; rather, these are commodities and goods to be traded and derived revenue from, products that can give revenues. In Europe, many of those punished for this activity are men, though women tend to be overrepresented in comparison to other criminal activities, as criminal elements use women to entrap their victims as women easily gain their trust (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2016).
In the definition given by the United Nations Convention on Transnational Crime, human trafficking is regarded as “trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, harboring or receipt of persons either by threat or use of abduction, force, fraud, or coercion, or by giving or receiving unlawful payments or benefits to achieve the consent of the person having the control over another person for the purpose of exploitation.” With the world getting “smaller” and progressively moving towards the realization of a ‘global village,’ the displacement of populations, either voluntary or under duress, is rapidly becoming a frequent occurrence. This ‘global compression’ is largely attributed to the process of globalization. It is due to this process that the trade in humans has become immensely profitable and rapidly expanding industry. It must be noted that human trafficking and servitude are not mere results of the process of globalization; these practices are components of the process that engaged the integration of dispersed market functions.
An inordinately high demand for inexpensive labor driven by the need to raise corporate profits from multinational companies in industrialized nations has resulted in the exploitation of marginalized workers desperate to cling on to the promise of a better life even at the price of working in inhuman, slave like conditions. Women and children are the most exposed to this practice, and thus are the most targeted for human trafficking; these will be directed towards the sex trade industry (Brewer, pp. 47-48).
Human trafficking in a general sense is a procedure where the “services” of people, whether for sexual exploitation or for slavery, is acquired by force from the person. Nonetheless, though majority of reports of human trafficking involve the commercial sex industry, many of these activities do not engage sex. Withal, with the amount of media and government attention that has been exerted on this area, the sex industry facet of human trafficking has remained as the most known issue in the controversy. Until recently, many scholars believed that the most prevalent issue in human trafficking involved forcing women and children into the sex trade (de Wildt, 2015, pp. 87-89).
In the world, twenty percent of all trafficked individuals are children; however, in some regions in Africa and in the Greater Mekong, the numbers of children being trafficked is estimated to be higher. Children are exploited and forced into begging, child pornography, or even into the commercial sex industry. Children are also valued as workers given their small hands are better at removing knots and tangles in fishing nets, sewing or harvesting cocoa. There are also reports that children have been forced to serve as “child warriors” in war areas. On the other hand, women make up two thirds of all the people that are trafficked in the world. Many of these women are deceived with promises of jobs and high wages, opportunities to lift themselves and their families from grinding poverty. Instead, the women are sexually assaulted, narcotized, imprisoned, brutalized or threatened with harm or even death.
Aside from these cruelties, many of the women are imposed with debts none of them actually incurred, their travel documents confiscated and/or are harassed. Men and boys cans also be victimized by human traffickers for “markets” for slavery, forced panhandling activities, illicit sexual work, and even as soldiers in war areas. Nonetheless, reports of men and boys victimized by human traffickers show a lower number than women and girls being trafficked. This is probably also due to the fact for many years, counter-human trafficking laws in the international community have mainly centered on trafficking of women and children into the global illegal sex industry (UNODC, 2016).
One of the significant problems for criminal judicial systems is the proper time that judges can engage filtering mechanisms to evince possible cases of human trafficking. In cases such as Liteky v. United States and United States v Wilkerson, possible instances wherein the judge may deduce possible human trafficking is involved, or one of the parties in a trial, can be a victim of human trafficking, the judge can ask that an assessment of the person be made if the probability has basis. Generally, certain laws and rulings have a higher probability to engage human trafficking elements, and screening mechanisms can help in establishing the possibility if the party in court is a victim of human trafficking.
Cases such as prostitution, narcotics and illegal selling are cases wherein the accused can be a victim of human trafficking. However, there is no standard policy wherein judges can extend the policies to mandate the use of these mechanisms to determine possible involvement of human traffickers or trafficking in their cases. Various jurisdictions will tend to interpret the need to engage these mechanisms, and the scope that these mechanisms can embrace, in different ways.
For example, cases involving minors who are victims of human trafficking wherein the initial pleas will be heard in one jurisdiction and then transferred to another jurisdiction for sentencing raises the ethical concern whether the judge hearing the plea must discuss the part of the case for disposition and eventual sentencing. In instances where the judge hearing the case determines that a witness may actually be the perpetrator or an agent of the trafficker, there are questions as what judges can ethically do in terms of the judicial process. Waller, Lee, and Marks (pp. 106-108) avers that the best possible policy in this situation is for both judges not to directly communicate with each other; nonetheless, either judge can render opinions and notes on the particular case that can guide or help the judge in either case to come to an equitable resolution on the cases.
Human trafficking and ethics
German philosopher Emmanuel Kant anchored his ethical argument on what Kant calls as the “supreme principle of morality,” the ‘Categorical Imperative.’ To Kant, though there are differing ways to proffer this principle, the one that applies to this study is the “principle of humanity.” Here, people are to be regarded as “ends” and not as “means.” In the operation of Kantian ethics, ‘persons’ can be defined as “beings with the capacity to make moral judgments and adjust to these judgments accordingly. To elucidate the point, persons can make judgments, possesses free will, and the capacity for reason. Newborns or toddlers cannot be considered as persons; animals will never be. In Kant’s “Principle of Humanity,” people are the only entities that should be accorded dignity and should be considered as the “end.” Animals only have a “use value” and can be regarded as resources.
For example, animals can be used to test drugs for human consumption without any consent; humans who will be used as test subjects can only be gotten only after getting their informed consent. If the person is used without granting dignity or getting the consent of the person, then it is treating the person as a “means” or resource rather than as an end or the beneficiary of the testing of the product. Another interesting point of this Kantian principle is that deception is wrong; a person who influences another to agree to a transaction under flawed circumstances treats the person as a “means” rather than as an “end.” The person exploits the other in such a way that if the victim knew the intentions of the manipulator, then the victim would have automatically rejected the offer (New Mexico State University, 2016).
In the context of Kantian ethics of utilitarianism, or in any field of ethics, the question of whether an action is right becomes the primary determinant in determining whether the action generates the greatest good. Decision making mechanisms also factor in such areas such as “ethical egoism (committing an action to create the “greatest good for the person) and utilitarianism (generating the “greatest good for the greatest number); both positions can be used in the area of decriminalizing actions such as prostitution where a substantial number of human trafficking victims fall into. Nonetheless, utilitarianism would be the better position taken as this would be the optimal position as this would ‘benefit’ the victim, the patron and the community as well (Durham, 2015, p. 9).
Nonetheless, as in the utilitarian approach of Kantian ethics, derived from Immanuel Kant, all of these posits agree that maximizing the use of the resources, in many situations, would be wrong. “Act utilitarianism (AU) finds its strongest challenge from the “natural rights” postulate holds that AU is wrong since in maximizing the utility of the resource, in this case the person, the rights of the person would be violated, akin to the first statement regarding lab tests and the consent of the person mentioned earlier (New Mexico State University, 2016).
Given this context, human trafficking breaches basic human liberties and guarantees that represents one of the most abhorrent “trade practices” in the global community. As the practice is not only seen in the developing world but also in one of the most developed economies in the world, the United States, it is an indicator that the trade in human beings must be a problem that must be eradicated rather than one that can be contained or regulated. Kant, writing in the latter part of the 1700s, contended that history has an objective that is connected to human liberty and independence and in this light, moral probity.
Threats
Though human trafficking as a threat to the United States is not that can be likened to an act of war of a rogue nation, the effect of human trafficking on such a global superpower is not from the outside; it is the corrosion of the values of the United States that will destroy the foundations of the United States. Aside from the decaying of the foundations of the United States, the trade in humans posits other challenges and threats to the United States. Human traffickers, in order to operate unhindered, will often give large amounts of “grease money” to public officials and other state agents; corruption greatly facilitates the transfer of these migrants over the border and to their “buyers.”
What is a tangible threat to the United States is the possible forging of strategic alliances between these traffickers and extremist elements hostile to the United States and the West. Human traffickers possess an extensive network of contacts for “shipping” their “merchandise” to their customers. Terrorists will look to exploit these connections to be able to penetrate the security defenses of any target country; it is reported that human traffickers and drug cartels have formed such an alliance. This possibility should not be a surprise; human traffickers exploit the easily penetrable US border with Mexico even if the native state of the trafficked person is beyond these states.
Human traffickers have collated and practiced the best methods and practices about penetrating these entry points on how to get people into the United States illegally, and this information would be of high value for extremists looking to attack the United States or any target nation. In this light, though these two parties have greatly differing objectives in pursuing their respective agendas, the probability that the two can form a highly strategic reciprocal alliance is extremely high. In fact, a 2001 report of the US government reported that criminal groups engaged in narcotics and illegal weapons trafficking can also be found to be engaged in human trafficking as well (Forest, 2006, pp. 170-173).
Conclusion
The crime of human trafficking is being countered by way of various international agreements and policies. The United Nations, in 2004, adopted the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, strengthening the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Being the sole legal mechanism that considers human trafficking as a criminal offense, the Protocol is the international community’s primary weapon for preventing and countering human trafficking, defending victims and fostering collaboration among the members of the international community on the development of policies, agreements, and programs to combat this abhorrent act. By mid-2012, there were 150 countries who were parties to the Protocol; however, though there is a significant amount of political rhetoric on commitment to the policy, the levels of commitment among the parties are uneven (UNODC, 2016).
In debates addressing or tackling human trafficking, trafficked individuals are primarily divided along the lines of the victims being forced into the industry or into slavery. The most common perception is that women and children are solely trafficked into the commercial sex industry; that trafficking is mainly premised on the violation of the body of the victim. Withal, what is known now is that women are also trafficked into slave labor markets such as being domestic and sweatshop workers; men and boys that were traditionally believed to be solely trafficked into forced labor or into war zones are also being trafficked into the commercial sex trade and can also be subjected to sexual assault or beatings (Pescinski, 2015).
The United Nations, the United States, and a number of international organizations have all recognized the risks that human trafficking can pose to their countries and the moral responsibility to eradicate the problem. By its mere construction, the trade in humans is a multilateral issue (Forest, 2006, p. 174). Nonetheless, whether the issue of human trafficking will be centered on consent or coercion, this is an integral part of the determination in establishing whether the person has an anomalous immigration pattern. In human smuggling, the relationship of the person with the bootlegger ends with the payment of the fees to the smuggler; the trafficked individual will continue to be exploited for an indeterminate amount of time. In this light, countries must seek to develop policies to protect the most vulnerable in their population to guard them from falling into the trap of these traffickers (Pescinski, 2015).
References
Brewer, D. (2016) “Globalization and human trafficking” Retrieved June 15, 2016 from <http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/researchdigest/trafficking/Globalization.pdf
Durham, L. (2015). “The moral obligation for sex workers rights” Retrieved June 15, 2016 from <http://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=sewsa
Forest, J (2006) Homeland security: protecting America’s targets. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group.
New Mexico State University (2016) “Utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, natural rights theories, and religious ethics” Retrieved June 15, 2016 from <http://web.nmsu.edu/~dscoccia/321web/321ethicstheory.pdf
Pescinski, J (2015) “A human rights approach to human trafficking” Retrieved June 15, 2016 from <http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/a-human-rights-approach-to-human-trafficking
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2016) “Human trafficking: people for sale” Retrieved June 15, 2016 from <https://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/human-trafficking.html
Weller, S., Lee, E., Marks, D., “Ethical issues for judges and court practitioners in human trafficking-involved cases” Retrieved June 15, 2016 from <http://www.htcourts.org/wp-content/uploads/Ch-6_140725_NACM_Guide_OnlineV_v03.pdf
de Wildt, R., Siegel, S (2015) Ethical concerns in research on human trafficking” Berlin: Springer
