DOHA: Qatar Foundation for Combating Human Trafficking (Al Qatf) and Qatar Islamic Cultural Center (Fanar) organised a awareness lecture on human trafficking focusing on its causes and affects, recently.
Human trafficking is now a billion dollar business, ranking third after arms and drugs. With many countries not taking decisive action on issue, the business of new-form slavery is expected to grow significantly.
Hussein Mohammad from Al-Qatf, helped define human trafficking as the 'transfer and harnessing of an individual.' "These individuals primarily women, work free of charge mainly by force, authority or abduction resulting in them losing their basic human rights. Statistics show an estimated 80 percent of the victims are women," he said.
The reasons that drive people to be a part in the trade range from poverty and lack of education to natural disasters and wars. These factors make the grounds attractive to human trafficking, as victims are often promised good occupations in safer environments.
"Poverty often forces parents to give up their children when they promised to be adopted into richer families in the hope of giving them a better life. However, in most cases, these children are abused and recruited to work for little food and money. This especially happens after natural disasters and wars, where missing children who end up in orphanages for adoption, fall into traffickers hands," said Mohammad citing an example of Darfur where authorities managed to stop children from being taken by a humanitarian organisation under the false guise of adoption. The fake humanitarian organisation had placed bandages on the children and painted them red in order to pretend they were victims of war.
The brutal business leads to loss of victim's human rights, health, education, physical well-being, right to live in dignity and to enjoy their hard-earned money.
Victims are frightened to go to the police often because of fear of not knowing what will happen to them or if they will be believed.
Al-Qatf provides shelter and protection, settlement of the legal status of victims by providing health and psychosocial support, and report on these cases to the concerned authorities to take action.
© The Peninsula 2010
