Background
Research Question
What significant steps must be taken to improve the process of identification in Azerbaijan and adapt to the best practices in the international sphere, which will minimize the negative impacts on the victims of human trafficking?
Problem Overview
Human trafficking has been a global, international problem that has affected more than 20 million people around the world. Looking through the statistics, it is obvious that the issue has been a concern for people and that the need for a solution increases every second. It is considered an immoral crime since one of the main purposes of human trafficking is to deprive the victims of their honor and dignity. As such, the topic of human trafficking is a relevant issue.
In world history, the first reference to human trafficking was slavery. Unsurprisingly, many scholars consider human trafficking a modern practice of slavery. The slavery society appeared at the beginning of human civilization; nevertheless, it culminated in the 18th century. The definition of slavery was given in the “Slavery Convention” of 1926 as follows: “Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.”
It is understood from that definition that slavery deprives basic human rights and freedoms and undermines the victim’s honor, morality, and dignity. Victims of both human trafficking and slavery demonstrate parallel symptoms and similar repercussions. While the victims display obvious physical signs, in addition to that, they go through psychological, mental, and emotional torture and misery. Beyond doubt, the crime’s ramifications overwhelm and transform the victims’ lifestyles continuously. In this regard, the topic of human trafficking is a timely concern for both the states and the victims.
Research Topics
When writing the paper, we will mostly look at how the gender of a victim affects a criminal’s mind. It is an undeniable and proven fact that the majority of victims of human trafficking are women and children due to their being more vulnerable and exposed. According to the statement by Ms. Sima Bahous, UN Women Executive Director, at least 65% of victims of trafficking consist of women and young girls, and 90 percent of those victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation.
The victim identification process is the most vital problem in human trafficking crimes. Identification of victims must be done thoroughly, attentively, and with absolute care and thought in view of the fact that in the crime of trafficking in persons, the concept of “re-victimization” harms and hurts the victim frequently. Therefore, the research paper will contain the problems of identification and re-victimization processes and, furthermore, offer solutions for those complications.
Research Purpose and Stages
The purpose of this research is to investigate the reasons, goals, subjects, factors, and results of human trafficking. The research will go through seven stages: introduction, types and methods, root causes, individuals in human trafficking, challenges of identification, human trafficking in Azerbaijan, and conclusion. Eventually, the paper aims to answer several questions:
- How can we increase public awareness and implement new systems to prevent trafficking in persons?
- How does the identification process impact victims’ state of mind?
The research, therefore, will compare the definition of human trafficking included in the Criminal Code (CC) of the Republic of Azerbaijan with that found in international humanitarian law. Hence, the study will focus on the problems with how human trafficking is conceived of under Azerbaijani legislation.
Government laxity on human trafficking and poor policing form the overview of the problem that this research paper aims to solve. Azerbaijan’s government is not adequately cautious on anti-trafficking measures. Thus, this study contends that major efforts are necessary to eradicate human trafficking because the effects of human trafficking on victims are a big societal issue.
The government of Azerbaijan has had a positive impact on human trafficking policies. For instance, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its anti-trafficking efforts, the government’s overall efforts increased throughout the fiscal quarter, resulting in Azerbaijan’s promotion to Tier 2. The government increased its efforts to protect victims, including the number of victims it attempted to assist and the amount of money granted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ anti-trafficking center (MIA).
However, the government fell short in a number of critical areas. The Azerbaijan government did not perform sufficient investigations, prosecutions, or proactive identification efforts, particularly in the case of Azerbaijani survivors of internal trafficking and prisoners of forced labor. Although the MIA gave cash for improvements to one NGO-run shelter and for another NGO-run shelter to acquire property for a new station, the government granted less financing to NGOs overall.
Methodology
This paper explores a qualitative research method investigation that will conclude from both primary and secondary sources of data in accordance with a research philosophy. The research philosophy is crucial to the evaluation of data. It is a view regarding the method in which such knowledge on phenomena should be gathered, processed, and used in the actual world. Without a conceptual foundation, problems can arise during the study and interpretation of facts. As a result, legal documents and databases will serve as the main and secondary sources, respectively. INTERPOL databases will be used to conduct this analysis.
This research study will also make use of quantitative research methodology. Determining the links between variables and their effects is a central goal of quantitative research. In this scenario, interviews with those with vested interests in the Court and criminal law will be used to delve into the survey data. Human trafficking social experiments in Azerbaijan’s criminal justice system will also be examined to shed light on the challenges of making accurate identifications and crafting effective policies to combat the many forms of this crime. Data gathered will then be analyzed thematically, and those established through qualitative research will be analyzed using SPSS version 26, which will use a 95% confidence interval to analyze the data.
Literature Review
Despite the diversity of trafficking, one constant is the exploitation of victims’ vulnerabilities. In certain regions of the world, people are being sold into slavery so that they might be used as slave laborers. Human trafficking is a global problem, and most of the victims are from impoverished nations. They are tricked and coerced into being trafficked and kept in slavery under difficult circumstances. Domestic servitude, manual labor, farming, mining, fishing, building, and other similar occupations are all forms of modern-day slavery.
When referring to “severe forms of trafficking in persons,” the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) uses the following definitions:
- Trafficking in human beings for the intent of indentured servitude, labor exploitation, debt slavery, or enslavement;
- Sex trafficking is when a commercial sexual encounter is induced by force, fraud, or duress, or sex trafficking involves a person under the age of 18 who is recruited, harbored, transported, provided, or otherwise obtained for labor or services.
Human trafficking for forced prostitution is another manifestation of this evil industry. By engaging in this kind of trafficking, criminal organizations may benefit from a wide range of illegal operations with little to no danger to themselves. The victims are coerced into engaging in a wide variety of unlawful actions that are used to earn revenue. Theft, drug production, the sale of fake products, and even intimidating begging all fall under this category. Punishment is typically harsh for victims who fail to meet their quotas.
Sex trafficking, often known as trafficking in women, is a subset of human trafficking in which victims are exploited sexually. Every part of the globe is impacted by this pervasive kind of trafficking, either as a place of origin, transit, or destination. Women and children, especially those from poor nations or marginalized communities in industrialized countries, are enticed to leave their homes in search of what they believe to be a better life by the prospect of respectable work. Victims are typically given forged passports and transported to their target country by a well-oiled network, where they are subjected to sexual exploitation, torture, and continual fear.
When people are sold or bought for their organs, this is known as organ trafficking. Unfortunately, criminals have taken advantage of the fact that transplant waiting lists are so lengthy in many countries. Because of the potential for surgeries to be performed in secret without any medical follow-up, victims’ health and lives are in danger. The need for organ transplants is expected to rise as a result of an aging population and rising diabetes rates in many affluent nations, making this a profitable crime.
Human trafficking and the forced labor that often follows it have several origins across the world. Human trafficking, as Interpol explains, is fueled by the desire for low-wage, unskilled labor all around the globe. Around $44.3 billion in yearly earnings are made via the use of forced labor across the world. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing black market business and the second-largest criminal enterprise in the world.
The pool of potential victims who may be used for trafficking purposes is influenced by a variety of variables. The U.S. Department of State lists the following as factors contributing to these problems:
- Poverty.
- The allure of supposedly better living conditions in other countries.
- Governance corruption.
- Political unrest.
- Military conflict and organized crime.
- Brutality against women and children and gender inequality.
Traffickers may be foreigners or Azerbaijani citizens, as well as family members, acquaintances, colleagues, or even strangers. They might operate alone or as part of a criminal operation. The concealed nature of the crime is the greatest and arguably most evident difficulty for those working in the field when trying to recognize victims of human trafficking.
Numerous victims are brought in from other countries, and their unlawful immigration is sometimes used as a means of control by traffickers. Victims in this situation are often kept under surveillance since they are unable to advocate for themselves because they are either unfamiliar with the local legal system, the language spoken in Azerbaijan, or both. Law enforcement and assistance agencies recognize that a lack of awareness about human trafficking compounds the issue, in addition to the crime’s covert character. Hence, even if victims were more obvious, the general public still would not identify them.
Field observations reveal that the vast majority of individuals do not accept the idea that human trafficking occurs in modern society or, more specifically, in their own neighborhoods. Although some efforts have been made to spread awareness, questions over who exactly qualifies as a victim persist even in those places.
Both sex and labor trafficking are illegal under Article 144-1 of the penal code. The 2005 Law on the Fight Against Trafficking in Persons involved penalties spanning from 5 to 10 years in incarceration for crimes involving adult victims. Moreover, the law required penalties of 8-12 years in prison for offenses involving child victims. These punishments were strong enough and, in the case of sex trafficking, comparable to those for other serious crimes such as rape. The “2018 decree on the humanization of punishment,” which entails courts providing other alternatives to incarceration, seems to be responsible for judges handing suspended sentences to traffickers.
There is a division of the MIA called the Anti-Trafficking Department (ATD) that looks into trafficking allegations. Internal sex trafficking charges are frequently downgraded because authorities either overlook psychological coercion as a control mechanism or need a transnational component for trafficking. For instance, in the case of Zoletic and Others v. Azerbaijan, most inquiries were deemed to be reactive by GRETA and other foreign agencies, and they lacked evidence to back up victim testimonies. Furthermore, Law enforcement officials acknowledged that proactive investigations were hampered by the need for a victim’s complaint to kick off the probe.
In light of the fact that the worldwide benchmark for sentencing for trafficking in adults is up to 25 years in jail and up to life in prison for trafficking in minors, the judges handed down a much lighter sentence of one year in prison to the offenders. The Court also concluded that the arguments against migrant workers’ accusations of forced labor and human trafficking across international borders were not investigated adequately by domestic authorities.
References
Bahous, Sima. “Statement: Crises Drive an Increase in Human Trafficking – Here’s How We Stop It.” UN Women, 2022. Web.
Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Web.
Dean, Laura A. “1: Contrasting policy approaches to human trafficking in Eurasia”. In Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2020). Web.
Dirienzo, Cassandra E. “Human trafficking: what the new IOM dataset reveals.” Journal of Human Trafficking 8, no. 3 (2022): 294-308. Web.
“Forced Labor, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.” International Labor Organization, 2021. Web.
General Assembly Resolution 55/25. “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.” OHCHR, 2023. Web.
Government of Azerbaijan. “Application of the principle of non-punishment in the context of trafficking in human beings,” OHCHR. Web.
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“Lesotho – United States Department of State.” U.S. Department of State, 2022. Web.
McCarthy, Lauren A. “Life after Trafficking in Azerbaijan: Reintegration Experiences of Survivors.” Anti-Trafficking Review 1, no. 10 (2018): 105–22. Web.
“Types of Human Trafficking.” INTERPOL. 2023. Web.
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U.S. Department of State. “2022 Trafficking in Persons Report.” 2022. Web.
“What Is Human Trafficking?” Human Trafficking. U.S. Department of Justice, 2022. Web.
Zoletic and Others v. Azerbaijan. “European Court of Human Rights.” HUDOC, 2022. Web.