European Union Continues Fight Against Human Trafficking

While slavery in its traditional form may have been largely eliminated, the last 25 years of seen the rise of human trafficking, a modern form of slavery. International law defines this troubling new phenomenon as acts involving the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons for the principal purpose of being exploited, acts which have been materialized through the use of force or threats and/ or other forms of coercion or deception. The European Union has addressed contemporary manifestations of human trafficking for a number of reasons. First, a large number of global trafficking victims end up in member states, where they are exploited for farming, construction, and sex work in conditions amounting to forced labor and sexual servitude. Second, European countries banned the slave trade beginning in the early 19th century but principally in the period after the 1880s. A strong opposition to slavery and a belief in the equality of all are part of the political identity of influential EU member states. Third, trafficking victims are often wrongly portrayed as unwanted economic migrants or second class citizens, a situation requiring corrective action. Especially in regions with large unemployment figures, describing trafficking victims solely in terms of being after the jobs of the local population and “stealing” scarce labor opportunities would have catastrophic consequences. Such an approach obscures the fact that the human rights of trafficking victims have not only been violated but also negated.