Abstract
Human smuggling and trafficking are among the biggest issues of the post-Cold War era and justifiably continue to hold a place at the centre stage of public policy internationally. Increased awareness of their magnitude, alongside the recognition that they present major areas of activity for transnational organised crime has led to a vigorous response from the international community, state authorities and civil society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. While irregular migration and exploitation in slavery-like conditions are not, of course, new issues, their sheer extent, in combination with their contemporary association with organised crime in the minds of policy makers have led to a comprehensive new international prohibition regime built around the 2000 United Convention against Organised Crime (Nadelmann 1990; Andreas and Nadelmann 2006; Papanicolaou 2011). The Convention introduced two major international instruments, namely, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, and the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air. These protocols address explicitly the renewed connection of clandestine and forced population flows and the development of transnational illegal enterprises associated with the former. They have provided specific and authoritative definitions of human trafficking and smuggling which have since served as templates for regional instruments such as the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and national legislations across the globe.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Article 3 of the trafficking Protocol, trafficking in human beings is the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation” (United Nations 2000a: 2). While, Article 3 of the Protocol against human smuggling states that “smuggling of migrants shall mean the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident” (United Nations 2000b: 2).
- 2.
Torch is the most popular search engine in the so-called “Dark Web”.
- 3.
At this point, it should be noted that we present all excerpts gleaned from our forum research in exactly the same state as they were posted in the threads we were examining, and accordingly, we have not edited the spelling or grammar. However, we have highlighted any present spelling or grammatical errors, and have made additions to clarify and/or provide a brief explanation to any forum-specific acronyms or terms.
- 4.
During this activity, researchers interacted directly with smugglers by using social media chats, web forums, as well as telephone services provided by mobile applications (i.e., Viber and WhatsApp).
- 5.
In the UK this term is used for one who purchases sex.
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Antonopoulos, G.A. et al. (2020). Introduction. In: Technology in Human Smuggling and Trafficking. SpringerBriefs in Criminology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42768-9_1
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