End Human Trafficking Now

Trafficking organizations can vary from single individuals to complex networks. Much concern has focused on large-scale organized criminal gangs, but many trafficking networks are informal, local, and lack a criminal mastermind. Legal recruitment agencies or individuals and small- and medium-scale networks may be just as dangerous to potential victims as organized crime. Trafficking is a complex phenomenon and different people play many roles in facilitating it. For example:

    • Investors – who fund trafficking and oversee entire operation

    • Recruiters – who find people to traffic; they may be members of the same community as trafficked persons

    • Transporters – who facilitate the departure and transnational movement of trafficked persons

    • Corrupt public officials – who assist in obtaining unlawful travel documents, or accept bribes to enable migrants to enter/exit
      illegally

    • Informers – who investigate immigration and transit procedures, asylum systems, and border crossings

    • Supporting personnel and specialists – who provide other services such as accommodation

    • Debt-collectors – who collects the fees

    • Money movers – who launder the proceeds of trafficking

Source: OSCE, UN.GIFT 2010

The list proposed by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Trafficking is characterized by different recruitment methods which vary from country to country and have changed over time. As some victims are kidnapped, others are duped by fraudulent job offers. Recruitment through job advertisements and job agencies is often used but may be less common in some countries where awareness-raising strategies addressed this recruitment technique. Instead, recruitment strategies such as the “lover boy method”, female recruiter (often victims or former victims), recruitment by male/female couples, and/or acquaintances, amongst others, are employed. Victims of trafficking come to realize much too late the high-paying job will never materialize.