Human trafficking practices, likened to “modern day slavery” by Dr. Melissa Withers, an Associate Professor of global health at the University of South California’s Online Master of Public Health program, are bolstered by the rising involvement of social media in everyday lives. Withers argues social media helps to promote human trafficking across the globe.
Ideally designed to create awareness and enable activism by providing victims with a platform to share their tales of woe, social media has fallen down a rabbit hole by providing traffickers to gain control of and groom their victims through online platforms via social media. According to the US National Human Trafficking Hotline, almost 1,000 cases of potential sex trafficking victims were documented between 2015 and 2018 alone. Most of these cases came through networking platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Craigslist, Chat rooms, and other online dating sites.
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Traffickers “Build Trust” with Victims
Similarly, a survey highlighted that approximately seventy percent of American children aged 13 to 17 (roughly over 1,000 of them) used social media multiple times a day posing a greater threat of being approached by predators and traffickers who pose as someone trustworthy. Withers argues that this is because it is less risky to recruit victims online than to do so in person. Apart from manipulating victims sexually, traffickers often lure innocent people with empty promises of deceptive or fraudulent job offers. Often, they recruit people through illegitimate offers for better-paying positions using bogus pages and profiles on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and others.
In some cases, traffickers can also contact victims directly by posing to be travel agents and or recruiting officers for multinational businesses including modeling and/or entertainment agencies, and usually spend time interacting with the victims to “build trust” before an “official job offer” is made. One such research has found that migrant workers who were trafficked into the US were approached through Facebook as it is perceived to be “more valid and trustworthy”.
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Trafficking a Threat to Communal Stability
Although many such platforms have rigid guidelines set in place to curb misinformation, they need to further tighten the noose. As Dr. Melissa Withers argues, one needs to practice “vigilance and skepticism” while interacting with strangers online.
Meanwhile, Karolina Siekierka, a NATO Youth Delegate of Poland reiterates that human trafficking does not merely pose a threat to an individual but rather an entire community. She argues that at the time being, most human trafficking practices are carried out via social media which allows traffickers to collect and/or steal the personal information of their victims by tracking, observing, and even impersonating others. This not only poses a threat to the life, health, and safety of individuals but also to the overall stability of an international system. More often than not, traffickers engage in their illicit and threatening activities in the form of organized crime allowing for bribery, corruption, and the guise of “economic security” for the victims.
For a more detailed review of social media and human trafficking, visit The Social Media Victims Law Center [https://socialmediavictims.org/sexual-violence/human-trafficking/]
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Human Trafficking in Pakistan
A well-known issue in Pakistan, particularly when it comes to forced marriages of women and girls taken out of the country and eventually forced into sex labor according to lawyer, academic and political analyst, Yasmeen Aftab Ali.
Ali argues the existence of elaborate trafficking networks between Pakistan and China that engage in fraudulent marriages between Pakistani women and Chinese nationals. The underlying causes of human trafficking in Pakistan she argues, may be attributed to “a lack of promising future prospects, rising unemployment rates, and unequal opportunities for work” thus creating an unstable environment where the youth is more susceptible to manipulation and/or coercion under the guise of “greener pastures”.
Most recently, around 298 Pakistanis were confirmed dead after their boat capsized off the coast of Greece. Other nationals including Syrians, Afghans, Egyptians, and even Palestinians were onboard.
So far, authorities have managed to arrest dozens for ties to the tragedy at sea.
A undated handout photo provided by the Hellenic Coast Guard shows migrants onboard a boat during a rescue operation, before their boat capsized on the open sea, off Greece, June 14, 2023. Hellenic Coast Guard/Handout via REUTERS
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