Thailand is globally recognized as a premier tourist destination, boasting numerous thriving industries and significant economic expansion. But not only legal activities are behind the success growth of the country in economic terms.
One of the darkest growing businesses in Thailand is known as the human trafficking industry. According to data from the research firm Havocscope, this industry provides approximately $6.4 billion annually.
- The Government of Thailand has made significant efforts to combat trafficking, including increasing the number of investigations, prosecutions, and convictions, but still falls short of fully meeting the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
- Inconsistent and ineffective victim identification practices, especially in cases of forced labor, have left many trafficking victims unidentified and without adequate care, while corruption and official complicity continue to impede anti-trafficking efforts.
- The government needs to proactively investigate and prosecute officials allegedly complicit in trafficking, improve victim identification and protection efforts, and address gaps in victim services, interpretation, and shelter policies to enhance its anti-trafficking efforts.
Thailand is a country of origin, destination, and transit for this dark illegal business. According to the Global Slavery Index (2018), there are more than 600,000 victims of human trafficking in Thailand.
Human trafficking is a significant issue in Thailand. According to the United States Department of State, “Thailand is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking”. Thailand’s relative prosperity attracts migrants from neighboring countries who flee conditions of poverty and, in the case of Burma, military repression.
What are the main factors behind the growth of this industry?
Thailand’s black market for human trafficking can usually be divided into two main categories that are sexual exploitation and forced labor. There are different factors behind the growth of the dark business of sex trafficking in Thailand, some of them are:
Immigrants from neighboring countries
Thailand is known to be a strong country in the SEA region, usually, migrants come from neighboring countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam seeking a better life with the promise of a better future, sexual traffickers take advantage of this vulnerable group by tricking them into fake opportunities them eventually forcing them to engage in sex activities.
Four key sectors of the Thai economy (fishing, construction, commercial agriculture, and domestic work) rely heavily on undocumented Burmese migrants and other ethnic minority groups from Myanmar, including children, as cheap labourers. Many of these immigrants are particularly vulnerable to labor exploitation due to the lack of legal protection, and are subjected to conditions of forced labor in these sectors
Tourism and sex trade
Sex trafficking, which involves the recruitment, transportation, and exploitation of individuals for the purpose of forced prostitution, is illegal in Thailand. The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, B.E. 2551 (2008) criminalizes all forms of human trafficking, including sex trafficking, and provides severe penalties for offenders.
But in some tourist cities like Phuket and Pattaya, there is a huge black market of human trafficking being driven by sexual tourism including activities like massage parlors, go-go bars, or sex-focussed karaoke bars. Child sex tourism has a strong share of this black market, which usually entails a group of tourists that are traveling to engage in sexual activities with minors.
Lack of enforcement of anti-sex trafficking laws
Thailand has a weak approach regarding the enforcement of laws to control and help tackle the human and sex trafficking black markets, the laws in the country are ambiguous and loosely enforced. Sometimes corruption plays a key role, where the authorities in charge of enforcing the laws are being paid by the criminals behind the sex trafficking.
In 2021, the “US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report demoted Thailand from Tier 2 to the Tier 2 Watchlist”; Thailand had been categorised as “Tier 2” since 20191. The government initiated significantly fewer trafficking investigations, prosecuted fewer suspects, and convicted fewer traffickers than in 2019. Despite widespread reports that forced labor was prevalent among migrant workers in many industries in Thailand, the government identified a low number of labor trafficking victims compared to the scope of the problem.
Rural conditions in Northern Thailand
Some families in poor villages in some regions of northern Thailand lack economic resources and they choose to sell their sons or daughters to sex traffickers in exchange for money.
Thailand has shown increased efforts, such as establishing a trafficking victim identification center, developing guidelines for labor officials, and finalizing a national referral mechanism. However, it has not fully met the minimum standards in several areas. The number of trafficking prosecutions and convictions decreased, and there were significant gaps in providing services to victims.
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons – United States Department of State
In fiscal year 2022, the Department of Employment (DOE) conducted 132 inspections of employment agencies that recruited Thai workers for overseas employment but did not find any unlawful practices. The DOE charged 173 individuals in 123 cases of recruiting workers without a license and labor fraud. The MOL and the RTP collaborated to investigate unauthorized online advertisements for jobs for Thai workers overseas that involved trafficking, fraudulent employment, migrant smuggling, and commercial sex.
The international route of sex trafficking from Africa to SEA
One of the most complex situations towards the black market of sex trafficking in the region is the international route of sex trafficking that involves East Africa and SEA..
Thousands of women in East Africa are tricked with the offer of a fake good paid job scam such as sales specialist.
Usually, these job opportunities tend to be appealing for recent young women who have finished college and are unemployed.
East Africa has a high unemployment rate with lower salaries than SEA, averaging 634 USD per month, nearly 80% of recently graduated professionals are unemployed in the country.
The modus operandi behind the black market of sex trafficking in the route works with sex trafficking gangs and recruitment agencies.
The sex trafficking gangs would pay the recruitment agencies a fee for each application they receive. One example could be the Magara’s network, the recruiting agency would get S$2442 to US$2791 from each victim that applied for a fake position.
