Victims of Human Trafficking Information Note

Şubat 8, 2017 No Comments »

FACTS SHEET on VICTIMS of HUMAN TRAFFICKING
What is Human Trafficking?
It means deforcement of women, men and children forthe aim of the abuse and exploitation of them by the limitation of their freedom. In the world, most of the victims are women. And these women are the victim of sexual exploitation. Human traffickers firstly deceive the people in disadvantaged groups, then threat them and abuse them by using subhuman ways.
Nowadays, human trafficking crime is seen mostly in three types;
o Sex Trafficking: Sexual abuse of any types, prostitution by force, pornography, laboring as a sex slave by force.
o Labor Trafficking: Forced laboring, begging, laboring with low or none wage, laboring in very poor conditions, domestic slavery, use someone for a crime, use them as a child soldier.
o Organ and Tissue Trafficking: Taking of the organs and tissues without get one’s approval or by using deception. Human trafficking can be confused with human/ migrant smuggling generally but they are totally different terms. Human trafficking is a crime against individual, whereas human smuggling enables someone to move from one country to another and it is a crime against the state.
Human trafficking is a global problem that is seen in each country. The majority of poor and desperate people’s human rights are violated and integrity of their dignity is disrupted by deceiving them with the hope of a better life and providing cross-border migration. Human trafficking victims’ brought country for the aim of exploitation is called destination country. Origin country of the victims, their residence place is called source country and the passed country between source and destination country is called transit country. Human trafficking is an organized crime and earn about 32 billion dollar per year to the organized crime groups.
Human trafficking is not just a problem for the individuals but also affect victims’families, close environment and their own community directly. According to the United Nations’ report, each year at least 4 million women, children and men become human trafficking and human smuggling victim around the world. Therefore, it becomes a broad issue that affects community development, security, labor system and social gender inequality and for the solution, comprehensive approach and cooperation on issues like national, regional and international prevention, protection, prosecution, monitoring and corporation are needed. There are various causes of human trafficking for source and destination countries. Unemployment, poverty, low education level, inequality of opportunity, low living conditions, wars, ethnic conflicts and gender-related discrimination in the source country are the causes of human trafficking. In addition, sociocultural features such as pressure on women and little girls, forced marriages or selling of the women by their families, commending the poor children to the wealthier relatives and friends are also the main causes of the human trafficking. On the other side, restricted migration policies, deficiencies in border checks, demand on sex services and low-cost labor and facilitation of communication with the technological developments in the destination country cause human trafficking.
Common features of human trafficking victims that identified up to the present:
Women, children and/or men, maiden women or divorced women with children, unemployed individuals/families that have economical poverty and generally from rural areas, people with low educational level, children and women that lost own families, individuals who exposed to family violence, people with problematic families, people with psychologically disturbed parents, individuals that have limited access to education and medical services, people that have tendency to evaluate new opportunities to live a better life and unrecorded sex workers.

VIOLENCE EXAMPLES TOWARD HUMAN TRAFFICKING VICTIMS
o Some of the victims hide their victimization because of pressure and fear of get harm from traffickers or hoping to get their hoarded weight and introduce themselves as a volunteer.
o Traffickersthreat victim by showing shattered woman photos and force for exploitation;

Also, traffickers buy clothes to victims for wearing while working and take victims to the hairdresser and have their hair dyed or cut. Victims are indebted with these expenses.
o Traffickers starve victims just because customers like skinny women and cause them to lose weight by giving very little food just ones in a day.
o Victims are forced to work in prostitution sector and have intercourse with average 8-10 different persons in a day (most of the time client has intercourse with victim for many times, so victim is forced to have sex 15 times a day averagely).
o Victims ask for help from clients to get around the traffickers whereas they are punished in various ways by the traffickers and expose to violence because of the clients’informing on them to the traffickers. By the time they feel hopeless as a result of their desperation.
…and encountered with many similar examples of suppression and scaring methods. Human trafficking victims are very defenseless. They are exposed to maltreatment by the traffickers; they are sold many times and have problems about passports and visas. So, they may be frighten about the things they may come across and treated badly in physical, sexual, and emotional manner when it is reached to victim. Also, they may get sexual transmitted infections, may be retaliated about themselves and their family and may be dismayed. Their trust to the police and other authorities can be destroyed and despite these maltreatments, they become dependent to their exploiters.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS of HUMAN TRAFFICKING VICTIMS
It is not expected to show normal behaviors after be exposed to abuse and threat. With the experiences of the studies on this issue, important problems of victims are identified. These are;
o Lost of basic trust, being shocked, astonishment, fear
o Unhappiness, pain, crying, feeling of worthlessness and guilt, difficulty on concentration, unwillingness,
o Self harm behaviors and suicide attempts,
o Intolerance, having a hot temper, affective ambivalence,
o Not knowing/forgetting where he/she is or who he/she is, amnesia,
o Disassociation from reality, hallucinations (visual/audial), talking meaningless,
o Thinking on trauma constantly, reexperiencing the trauma related events with flashbacks or nightmares,
o Avoiding from trauma related individuals, events, expressions and questions,

o Make insignificant the trauma, isolating from trauma and trauma related negative emotions,

o Mistrust, desperation, losing of control,
o Losing of basic trust of fairness of the world, ambiguity about future, anxiety and negative expectations about future,
o Physically; pains (head, back, abdomen, muscle…etc.), dizziness, nausea, vomiting, sweating, palpitation

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, sleep and nutrition disturbance, intestinal problems(diarrhea, constipation…), urinary complaints, disturbance on menstruation period, low resistant to diseases, drug/alcohol abuse, overeating, numbness, pins and needles.
In summary;
Human trafficking victims are deceived, feared, hold captive, exploited by using violence, their dignity is disrupted and have serious traumas. They cannot make a complaint because they get scared. As a result of these reasons, there is an inability to reach victims, and when it is reached, victims cannot express themselves because they get fragile and be under pressure and threat.
We can do something for them all together. Let’s recognize them and call:
o 157 Foreigners Communication Center
o 155 Police Officer
o 156 Gendarme

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