Shawn Abrahamson

Composition 2: Draft 2
Professor Kaminski
May 22, 2014

A Challenge to Overcome in Thailand

According to the U.S. Department of States Trafficking in Persons Report 2011,
Maria came to the United States with some 50 other Filipino nationals who were
promised housing, transportation, and lucrative jobs at country clubs and hotels under the
H2B guest worker program. Like the others, Maria dutifully paid the substantial
recruitment fees to come to the United States. But when she arrived, she found that there
was no employment secured for her. She did not work for weeks, but the recruiters seized
her passport and prohibited her from leaving their house. She and other workers slept
side-by-side on the floors of the kitchen, garage, and dining room. They were fed
primarily chicken feet and innards. When the workers complained, the recruiters
threatened to call the police or immigration services to arrest and deport them.
This is one example of the many consecutive lifestyles of a woman that is brought
into the atrocious system of human trafficking. Universal human trafficking is the second
biggest and fastest-growing organized crime in the world falling behind drug trafficking.
More specifically, Thailand is the largest source in its country and Mekong Sub-region,
which consists of Thailand, Burma, Laos, the Yunnan province of China, Cambodia and
Vietnam, that remains a destination for the sending, receiving, and transit of human
trafficking. Sex trafficking, being one of the many types of human trafficking that
eventually leads into prostitution, has been a problem for decades due to many
vulnerability factors; statelessness, poverty, lack of education, awareness and
employment, or dysfunctional families. It has accrued over time due to the uncertainty of
the human trafficking definition itself.

Women, children, and sometimes, even males are being exploited in ways that are
inhumane and human rights are violated, which has become the new modern-day slavery,
a crime to humanity. Slavery was abolished in 1823when we think of slavery we think
of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. 27 million people are trafficked each year and 80% of
those are females. There are many root causes to the epidemic including poverty,
economy, and lack of government insulation. Due to the poverty, it has become a cultural
acceptable thing for Thailand to have trafficking because of many possibilities. One, the
girls have been abused so much that they have given up on their freedom. Two, these
perpetrators take away the international womens citizenship or cards and threaten to turn
them in to get deported. Or even the children that are trafficked, -----reports 25% of
children are trafficked, have no other option. And last but not least, it has a higher pay
than the lower-waged jobs so women resort to prostitution to support themselves and
their family. But, is it all worth it? The high risk to diseases such as HIV and AIDS or
end up being abused (look up to what happens to prostitutes) and these women are forced
to do things no human should ever have to do. They are beaten, coerced, and forced.
*Insert something like a real life example of a women being beaten*


It has been way over due for these monstrous acts to be put to an end. Thailand does little
to regulate their laws,

For many years, laws and acts have been passed to try and solve the epidemic of
trafficking.
The first act was the result of UN pressure, which was the Prostitution Suppression
Act of 1960, where customers were protected since they had the right to buy sexual
satisfaction as part of a long-standing Thai tradition. There was no penalty for customers
and only a minor penalty for the prostitute.