Last Updated on September 27, 2021 by themigrationnews
In the book Human Trafficking and Security in Southern Africa: The South African and Mozambican Experience, Richard Obinna Iroanya deals with the widespread issue of human trafficking. The author considers the problem of human trafficking as a threat to national security as well as a threat to the security of human rights. In addition to this, the given problem is not outlined in isolation from other socio-economic and political problems. It instead follows the multi-disciplinary approach to articulate the interconnections between different socio-economic problems such as economic inequality, poverty, gender issue, the high unemployment rate among youth, and human trafficking. However, the author mainly focuses on the security issues related to human trafficking in order to fill the existing gap in much available literature about human trafficking and its security threats. The author thus incorporates the security issues in this study of human trafficking, applying his expertise in security and strategic studies.
Moreover, he has done extensive work on the same issue in terms of publication of various research papers before publishing the given book, which shows that the given piece is an outcome of his long-term and in-depth study on human trafficking from all the existing dimensions. The book is well-organized in seven chapters, and the sequence of chapters follows the deductive approach. The first half of the book deals with the general phenomenon of human trafficking globally, while the second half deals with the study of specific cases of human trafficking in South Africa and Mozambique.
Difference between Human Smuggling, Kidnapping, and Human Trafficking
The first chapter provides an extensive introduction of relative facts about the global existence of human trafficking. The author clarifies in the beginning that the terms “human smuggling”, “kidnapping,” and “human trafficking” are not synonymous. The four criteria used to differentiate these terms are consent, exploitation, transnationality, and source of profit. Based on these criteria, the problem of human trafficking has its unique characteristics. The trafficked victims do not have consent to being trafficked, the cross-border movement, which is the necessary condition for transnationalism, may or may not be fulfilled, and the victims are exploited during their whole working period which becomes the basis for higher and continuous extraction of profit under the case of human trafficking. Therefore, voluntary migration and human trafficking are the opposite forms of human mobility in the contemporary world. In contrast, kidnapping and human smuggling lie in between these two extreme cases as far as the degree of exploitation of the victim is concerned. The author also emphasizes the lack of availability of rigorous data sources to deal with human trafficking, which becomes a significant reason for the policy’s failure to combat human trafficking.
Multiple Dimensions of Human Trafficking
The second chapter of the book deals with the conceptualization of human trafficking. After an extensive literature review, the author points out six different approaches associated with the conceptualization of the subject. These six approaches include considering human trafficking as slavery, an organized crime, a global migration challenge, a human rights violation problem, prostitution, and a negative aspect of globalization (p. 29). The author also discusses the concept of transnational organized crime, causes of human trafficking, the concept of security, and the criteria for identifying security threats in detail. Transnational organized crimes include drug trafficking, illegal weapons trafficking, illegal trafficking in natural resources, cybercrime, and human trafficking. As far as the concept of security is concerned, the author follows the contemporary approach of security to link it with human trafficking. The given approach considers security in its broader sense, which includes political, economic, social, and environmental issues and is not primarily restricted to military threats (p. 48). After defining the concept of human trafficking, the study deals with the question of when a problem can be considered a threat to security. Under the sub-heading of ‘The criteria for Identifying Security Threats,’ the author states that if a given social condition or situation leads to extreme violence, unacceptable conflict or state instability, or has a clear potential to do so, it could be possibly viewed as a national security threat (p. 56).
Human Trafficking: A World-wide Phenomenon
The third chapter of the book, named ‘Overview of Human Trafficking as a Global Phenomenon,’ deals with the cases of human trafficking existing in different regions of the world. The analysis of that chapter provides an understanding of the commonalities and differences in extent, nature, and causes of human trafficking in different regions of the world. The commonalities among different regions exist in the flow of human trafficking from poor and less developed regions to prosperous regions. Women and children are victimized to a more considerable extent than the men population in all the regions, and the historical patterns of migration have a strong influence on the current pattern of human trafficking globally. The main differences exist due to the different routes and changes in routes on account of law enforcement improvements either in the source country, transit country, or destination country. The differences also prevail based on the extent of intra-regional trafficking, inter-regional trafficking, and domestic trafficking in different countries of different regions. The author also explains different forms of exploitation of victims, which vary from sexual exploitation to human organ trafficking and forced marriages of women. One of the significant points which are highlighted by the author in the concluding remark of this chapter is that it is fallacious to uniquely identify a country or region as a source only or destination only country or region, since they can be used as a source, transit, and destination places simultaneously, due to the different exploitable opportunities identified by the traffickers.
The Route of Human Trafficking from Mozambique to South Africa
The fourth and fifth chapters of the book show a strong interrelationship. The fourth chapter deals with the case study of human trafficking in South Africa, which is the major destination and a transit country in the African region. At the same time, the fifth chapter focuses on the case study of human trafficking in the Mozambican country, which is the primary source as well as a transit country in the given region. The connection between both the case studies lies in the presence of the primary route of human trafficking from Mozambique to South Africa in the African region. Thus, Mozambique plays a dual role for South Africa as a source and a transit country for human trafficking.
The study highlights that Mozambique has become the transit country in the trafficking route from Zambia, Malawi, Camerocoonia, Uganda, Kenya, Congolese, Ethiopia, and other African nations along with Russia, Eastern Europe, Thailand, China, and Taiwan towards South Africa. The Mozambican victims are also not trafficked directly from their area of origin to South Africa. They are trafficked domestically in the major recruitment center cities for South Africa and then cross the border illegally. Sex trafficking of women, including young girls, labour trafficking of young boys and children, and human organ trafficking are the underlined forms of human trafficking present in Mozambique and South Africa. The author has also narrated in detail the socio-economic and political conditions that play a role in facilitating human trafficking in both countries. Poorer economic conditions in Mozambique compared to South Africa, corruption among public officials in both countries, and poor enforcement of human trafficking laws are the featured causes of human trafficking in both countries.
Policy response to Human Trafficking: A Challenging Task
In the sixth chapter, the policy responses to the issue of human trafficking in Mozambique and South Africa are discussed. The chapter deals with the laws that directly or indirectly combat human trafficking in both countries. The laws implemented based on the Palermo Protocol 2000 deal directly with the criminalisation of human trafficking, while the laws related to the fundamental rights of women and children rectified in both countries have an indirect impact on combating human trafficking. The content of this chapter is somewhat challenging to grasp because the author extensively uses technical terms related to different laws and international conventions. Nevertheless, it is also true that the policies dealing with human trafficking cannot be represented without technical jargon related to the study of laws.
Concluding Remarks
In the last chapter, the author concludes that along with the socio-economic dimensions of human trafficking, the problem also poses a threat to the national security as well as to the security of fundamental human rights when the problem is tested based on the identification of security threat criteria defined in the second chapter. Therefore, recognizing the problem as a national security threat, strengthening international counter-trafficking cooperation, and ratifying and firmly implementing human trafficking laws are some recommendations provided by the author to combat human trafficking globally. Furthermore, improving the living conditions of groups vulnerable to trafficking, one of the significant policy measures that deal with the major economic root cause of human trafficking, is provided as a complementary measure to eradicate human trafficking under the measures recommended.
In a nutshell, the book is a detailed analysis of human trafficking in the selected South African nations and provides a deep insight into the problem of human trafficking as a global issue. The policy response stated by the author to deal with the problem gives an excessive weightage to the super-structural forces, including tightening of border security and implementation of strong laws to combat human trafficking by considering the economic base of the problem in terms of extreme poverty and economic inequality existing in different regions as a supplementary cause of the problem.
Harjinder Singh has completed M.A. in Economics from the Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Social Sciences, focusing on International Migration with a multidisciplinary approach. He has been awarded Junior Research Fellowship from University Grants Commission. His areas of interest include – Political Economy of Development, Migration and Development Studies, Globalization and Local Transformations, Agrarian Studies of the Third World, and Economic Theories. He is also fond of reading poetry and historical studies. Twitter: @harjinderecon