Free Human Trafficking In Thailand Essay Sample

Human trafficking, especially the trafficking of migrants and refugees, has escalated to endemic proportions internationally. Approximately two million people are trafficked annually, coerced into prostitution, sexual subjugation, bonded sweatshop labor, domestic servitude, and other conditions akin to slavery. The etiology of an estimated one-third of global human trafficking takes place in Southeast Asia, and extant literature suggests that the average age of individuals forced into human trafficking continues to fall. A highly lucrative enterprise that accrues an estimated five to seven billion dollars annually to the United States, human trafficking ranks as the third largest source of organized crime around the world behind firearms and narcotics (Banerjee, as cited in Beeks, 190). Thailand has recently witnessed high numbers of trafficked children and women from rural villages into cities and towns such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai as well as from neighboring countries such as Cambodia Burma and Laos (191). In 2011, the U.S. Department of States Global Trafficking in Persons Report put Thailand on the “Tier 2 Watch List,” stressing the continual challenges posed by human trafficking in Thailand for coerced labor or prostitution. In 2014, the U.S. further downgraded Thailand to Tier Three, a move that the secretary of Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sihasak Phuangketheow publicly lamented. Since 2008, the U.S. State Department has admonished Thailand’s government for not taking enough action to address human trafficking. Thailand has been a source, point of transit, and destination for various forms of trafficking that targets subaltern communities and denizens of neighboring countries (Brown). Thailand’s lucrative deep-sea fishing industry (DSFI) has made Thailand one of the world’s primary exporters of sea products, contributing over four billion dollars a year to Thailand’s economy (“Human Trafficking,”). What fuels this lucrative industry, however, is a ghastly specter of human rights violations vis-à-vis human trafficking. Initiatives in Thailand reveals that globalization has emerged as a burgeoning force that directly affects migration patterns and shifting demographics, threatening the safety of women and children that non-government government organizations in collusion with public authorities must address.
An amalgam of factors has created a vacuum in Thailand for employment traffickers to prey on members of marginalized peoples who are desperate to find any kind of work to survive. According to the U.S. State Department, a large portion of female victims of human trafficking in Thailand were forced into Thailand’s lucrative commercial sex industry. Although the precise number of exploited women and children vis-à-vis prostitution in Thailand is not known, non-profit groups and researchers estimate that the figure exceeds ten thousand. Female victims are forced to work in local sex trafficking venues that operate to cater to local demands as well as in tourist locales that cater to foreign desires (Brown). In addition, a labor shortage in a very physically demanding fishing industry as well as various pressures placed on subaltern populations has opened up opportunities for corrupt traffickers and employment brokers to victimize individuals desperate for work. The trafficking of primarily migrant boys and men from Laos, Burma, and Cambodia as well as from within Thailand itself into the DSFI has emerged as a major issue for the Thai government as well as for the neighboring polities, civil society organizations, and the global community at large. Language barriers, economic pressures, and the dearth of data regarding the risks of human trafficking renders migrant populations high-risk for trafficking and labor exploitation (“Human Trafficking”). Human Rights Watch—a global organization that aims to defend the human rights of people internationally by scrupulously investigating human rights abuses, exposes and diffuses information and facts, and pressure governments and people with power to preserve justice and respect human rights—approximates that more than 250,000 itinerants from Burma are coerced to work in land-based, littoral and sea-based sectors of the DSFI (“Human Rights Watch”). The majority of these workers are gravely exploited on the job or trafficked without their knowledge, and many more migrants continue to be at risk for suffering the same fate.
In 2012, international broadcast and print media reports regarding the plight of DSFI human trafficking victims has proliferated due to the high volume of anecdotal evidence regarding the horrors of human trafficking experiences in the DSFI and sex trade. Such reports have grabbed the attention of the United States as well as other western countries that frequently import products from Thailand. Such pressure from the international community will pressure the Thai government to implement further initiatives to effectively dismantle DSFI human trafficking and assume leadership in combating gross human rights abuses that transgress its national borders. Unfortunately, the floods in 2011 combined with trade competition from other Southeastern countries have hampered the Thai economy. Nonetheless, it is evident that the Thai government must partner with the global community as well as with civil organization societies in order to take assertive and effective action (“Human Trafficking”). Because Thailand has been downgraded to Tier Three on the ranking scale, the withdrawal of non-humanitarian assistance from the U.S. looms on the horizon, although most humanitarian advocates believe the U.S. will not impose any harsh sanctions in order to preserve its own national security as well as economic ties. The Thai government eschews their downgrade, pointing to the rising number of convictions in 2013 in relation to the previous years as well as police inspections in workplaces that law enforcement suspected of their active involvement in coerced labor or commercial sex trade (Brown). Nonetheless, the United States and the international community play a critical role in eradicating abysmal human violations and must act in collusion with the Thai government to eradicate such heinous practices that subject vulnerable people to slavery conditions through labor or sex for monetary gain.

Works Cited

Beeks, Karen. Trafficking and the Global Sex Industry. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. Print.
Brown, Sophie. "Tackling Thailand's Human Trafficking Problem - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 21 June 2014. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/20/world/asia/thailand-trafficking-report/>.
"Human Rights Watch | Defending Human Rights Worldwide." Human Rights Watch | Defending Human Rights Worldwide. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://www.hrw.org/>.
“Human Trafficking | Thailand." HumanTrafficking.org | Thailand. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/thailand