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Trafficking, Smuggling, and Human Rights

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Jacqueline Bhabha, Migration Information Source, March 2005.

In recent years, the smuggling of human beings across international borders has grown rapidly. A small-scale cross border activity affecting a handful of countries has become a multimillion-dollar activity that is global in scope.

Information about human smuggling — the numbers of people smuggled, the conditions that they endure in transit and their treatment on arrival — is patchy at best. It is currently estimated that some 800,000 people are smuggled across borders every year.

These figures mask the complex and various experiences of the men, women, and children caught up in such processes. Those who are smuggled include political refugees, those fleeing conflict and violence of various kinds, and economic migrants in search of a better life.

This is by nature a secretive, illicit activity, and one that is increasingly controlled by transnational organized crime syndicates. What little we do hear, however, gives ample cause for human rights concerns — numerous press articles describe cases of migrants drowning in unsafe vessels or suffocating to death in overcrowded truck compartments and ships, or being victimized for revealing information about smuggling gangs.

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