A life less loathed

As a confident 17-year-old living in Eastern Europe, Elena dismissed the idea of trafficking as something that happened to other people, to those who belonged to the street, those without shelter to punctuate the days spent alone and without family. It was a terrible fortune courted by prostitutes and street children and something that the middle-classes only witnessed through a kaleidoscopic media.

But three years ago, whilst attending a cousin’s party, Elena was approached by a man who shouted and punched her and told her he would take her away. Threatening to kill her family if she did not comply, he forced her down to the police station, forging her mother’s signature so that she could get an identity card. Those under 18 could not travel without a parent’s consent.

Carrying only the clothes she wore, Elena was bundled into a van and driven away, deprived of even the smallest comfort of a goodbye to her family. As far her mother knew, she had just disappeared – mundanely and quite suddenly.

Every year, an estimated 12.3 million people are trafficked, affecting every continent, country and economy. Of that incredible number, the majority are between 18 and 24-years old and 43 per cent of them are trafficked for the sole purpose of commercialised sexual exploitation. Perhaps the most disturbing tragedy of this whole affair is that in 46 per cent of all trafficking cases, the kidnapper is known to the victim: a friend, a brother, a father.

A total of 957 children, including more than 400 from Afghanistan and 200 from Africa, were picked up by local authorities in the eight months between April 2009 and the end of the year in Britain alone and the problem is worsening.

Overall trafficking has increasing by 90 per cent in Britain over the past three years and that has lead to heart breaking results for parents of stolen children like Indira Sawatra.

Indira came to Britain from Bangladesh after her seven-year-old daughter disappeared, having subsequently followed a shadowy trail of laundered accounts, government moles and information from the Metropolitan police.

“I have sacrificed everything to follow Kareyla [her daughter] to this place,” she said, “I have left two children and a husband behind me and there is little money for me to live off now. It is running out but that stop me...Nothing will stop me until I find her.”

Kareyla was kidnapped two years ago and the Metropolitan police admit that they have accomplished little. Like so many before her, Kareyla has vanished into statistics and left behind a mother who cannot bring herself to grieve for a number on a list or a memory that she fears will one day become a ghost.

Chris Beddoe, chief executive of ECPAT UK, which campaigns against child prostitution, pornography and trafficking across Britain, however, has claimed in the past that the UK government’s approach to trafficking is not comprehensive enough.

“These figures bear out what we see happening across the UK where reports of child trafficking are increasing significantly. Given so many of these child victims go missing so quickly after they are taken into local authority care, it seems clear that we are witnessing a pattern of criminal activity among traffickers. Yet no one goes out looking for these children when they disappear. If the government is really committed to keeping them safe they would implement a system of guardianship so someone would be responsible for each and every child...Instead, we have a system that values pursuit over prevention...one that focuses on catching the traffickers once they’ve cropped up on the radar...Not enough is being done to prevent people falling victim to trafficking.”

The European Commission has ranked the UK government’s success rate in apprehending traffickers as amongst the lowest in Western Europe – just above France. Why is it then, in one of the world’s foremost industrialised nations, are we failing to take a firm grip on the issue of trafficking?

Dr Tanya Coleer, a serving member of the European Human Rights Commission, said,

“Great Britain has a long and distinguished history of opposing slavery, not just in her own borders but across the globe...Admittedly, whilst free access across European borders is a valuable right of every EU citizen, it does come with its own problems. Free passage means traffickers can often move undetected or with little surveillance.”

On the international stage, human trafficking has been brought to the forefront by the devastating earthquake in Haiti. As the bodies of the dead began to congest the labyrinthine ruins of Port-au-Prince and the uncertainty of the survivors mutated into incredulity and frustration, it was clearly only a matter of time before the vultures descended.

Unicef, the UN body that works to protect and improve the lives of children the world over, has warned people over adopting Haitian orphans for fear that they may be encouraging child trafficking in light of a number of disappearances from hospitals.

Jean Luc Legrand, a spokesman for Unicef told reporters that approximately 15 children had gone missing from hospitals, presumably trafficked.

“Unicef has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti which existed before, and unfortunately many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption ‘market’...We cannot confirm the figures but have referred the reports to the Haitian government, who are investigating. We have stepped up our efforts to ensure all children under five are in a safe place and properly fed.”

In a perverse sense of logic, it would seem that the cruellest choice, to leave these children in their shattered homeland, is the safest one.

Hannah Reinhardt, the deputy head of the EU mission in Haiti, said, “This is why child protection is utmost in our concerns at the moment, particularly because we know that child trafficking was already a problem in Haiti before the quake.” She stated that tracing immediate families was the “primary important thing that we do” at this phase in a disaster, alongside aid distribution. The EU mission is largely ¬co¬-coordinating all family tracing work in Haiti at the request of the UN, in conjunction with other organisations like Save the Children.

The Haitian earthquake has highlighted that trafficking is a multifaceted corrosive force, one that readily preys on the naive altruism of the self-righteous.

Human trafficking in the 21st century is the universal shame of our global society and an unwelcome anchor to a social corruption practised by past, and socially inferior, generations. If it is truly to be tackled with sincerity, then governments across the world must engender respect for the dignity and rights of our fellow human in every citizen.

Elena was fortunate. She escaped her captors and is now living as a British citizen with a partner and long-term career prospects. But her success is not a reflection of the truth – over 12 million people still languish under the illicit, and tyrannical, control of traffickers and it won’t stop until people accept, particularly in the developed world, that a semi-detached house in suburbia is no guarantee of protection.

In the age of mass consumption, we are all commodities.