Labor Trafficking on the Rise in Eastern Europe

by Amanda Kloer · 2009-05-28 13:53:00 UTC
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For years, the face of an anonymous Eastern European woman, brought to the U.S. and enslaved in a brothel, has been one of the must public and publicized faces of human trafficking.  For the first time, however, trafficking into forced labor industries is overtaking trafficking into prostitution for both men and women in Eastern Europe. In fact, the International Labor Organization recently acknowledged that the levels for that region are similar.

There has been a long-standing problem of sexual exploitation in the region, but we are finding increasing indications that there is forced labour in Eastern Europe outside the sex industry, and that organised crime is also involved in the deployment of workers.

I would hypothesize two possible causes for this increased parity of identified cases of trafficking into labor industries and commercial sex industries.  The first is that the prevention campaigns which have been instituted in Easter Europe and Eurasia for the past decade, and which were almost exclusively focused on preventing young women from falling victim to sex trafficking, have worked.  Fewer young women are able to be coerced or deceived into prostitution, and therefore the number of victims in prostitution has decreased, making it even with the low number of victims in labor industries.

The second possible cause is that we've gotten much better at finding and identifying slaves, and have a better understanding about how to find slaves in all industries.  Possibly trafficking into labor industries has also increased, but I would estimate that it has always been high, if hidden.

It's likely that this increased parity is a combination of these issues, indicating a need for better prevention programs for individuals at risk for all forms of trafficking and a continued focus on victim indentification in all industries.

Image from ucountcampaign.org

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic
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