Profitability in the Western Balkans: COVID-19 and Social Media’s Impact on Human Trafficking

by Abagail Cacovic

To say that human trafficking tends to make a lot of horrible people a lot of money is an understatement.[1] Quite often, human trafficking is compared to slavery.[2] This might sound like a stretch, but the comparison comes not only from the exploitation of specific groups of people but also the economic practice of slavery being profitable for those traffickers with immense power over their victims.[3] The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that human trafficking and forced labor produce approximately $150 billion dollars annually.[4] This makes human trafficking the second most profitable illegal activity in the world – second to the drug trade.[5]

The complexity of the economics behind human trafficking includes the value of resources used to prevent it, treatment and support for all victims involved, and apprehending and prosecuting the traffickers.[6] The economic loss that victims face is largely because human trafficking by design redirects the profit and value of migration from the victims to their traffickers.[7] Human trafficking tends to be a high reward, low risk criminal activity for those involved.[8] This is a major reason why human trafficking is very profitable.[9] Traffickers know that human trafficking is not heavily prosecuted by authorities and therefore face minimal fear of any legal consequences while making maximum profits.[10] Although the drug trade is the most profitable illegal industry, there is a stark contrast with the illegal industry of human trafficking.[11] The difference is that if you sell drugs, those exact drugs can only be sold one time to one customer; in human trafficking, a human can be sold over and over again to various different people.[12]

The economic principle of supply and demand also allows for the illegal industry of human trafficking to thrive.[13] The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) points to the fact that “human trafficking is the only industry in which the supply and demand are the same thing: human beings.[14] People demanding the sale of people.”[15] There is great demand for cheap labor, which forces those at the bottom of the supply chain to exploit workers for such forced labor.[16] Furthermore, there is an increasing global demand for commercial sex.[17] This demand for commercial sex often leads to young girls and boys being trafficked and “incentivizes commercial sex venues including strip clubs, pornography and prostitution to recruit and exploit children” leading to economic prosperity for human traffickers.[18]

      Ultimately, human traffickers will target the most vulnerable of groups.[19] This is due to systemic inequalities making those individuals most susceptible to exploitation.[20] The economic situations of many victims are poor due to high poverty levels, little to no educational opportunities, and no job opportunities in their home countries.[21] Currently, economics play a huge role in supporting the illegal human trafficking industry, but it is possible that one day economics can play a huge role in curbing this very same industry.[22]

  In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way people lived, and while human trafficking did not slow down, it did change.[23] The recruitment and advertising of this kind of trafficking moved to the internet.[24] Social media played a large role in this online shift.[25] Applications and websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have contributed to human trafficking by collecting and stealing information of potential victims.[26] Many social media sites have location settings that can be used to track, monitor, or impersonate a victim by a trafficker.[27]

COVID-19 has amplified human trafficking especially by the sexual exploitation of children online through various gaming websites and social media.[28] Due to the pandemic, families have experienced, and will continue to experience, reduced incomes from lack of work, which most likely will lead to an increase in child labor.[29] UNICEF and the ILO published a report stating that “the pandemic may cause millions of children worldwide to fall into child labor, slavery, trafficking, and prostitution.”[30] The Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) in a June 2022 report stated it was “informed that sexual exploitation mostly took place in private accommodation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.”[31]

Map of the Western Balkan Region. Image courtesy of Olahus, a Wikipedia editor who created this original image.

        In contrast to the detrimental effects social media has had on human trafficking, it has also been used to help spread awareness of human trafficking.[32] In July 2022, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) launched a “two-week social media campaign in the Western Balkans to coincide with [the] World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, [on] July 30.[33] The campaign aims to target awareness about the prevalent types of trafficking in the Balkan region: “sexual exploitation, forced labor, forced begging, and forced marriage.”[34] The IOM realized that the types of trafficking in this region are often hard to spot.[35] The IOM recently started to integrate technology into its methodology for spreading awareness.[36] The IOM for Bosnia and Herzegovina, “officially launched a new mobile application to improve the assessment, more proactive identification of victims of trafficking and better assistance and support to (potential) victims.”[37] The application is even more effective as it is being tailored to the most common forms of trafficking in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[38]

[1] See generally An Introduction to Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Impact and Action, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime https://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/An_Introduction_to_Human_Trafficking_-_Background_Paper.pdf (last visited Sept. 7, 2023).

[2] Hannah Gould, What Fuels Human Trafficking?, UNICEF (Jan. 13. 2017) https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/what-fuels-human-trafficking/31692.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] An Introduction to Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Impact and Action, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime https://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/An_Introduction_to_Human_Trafficking_-_Background_Paper.pdf (last visited Nov. 5, 2022).

[7] Id. at 10.

[8] Gould, supra note 99.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Id.

[20] Id.

[21] Id.

[22] Id.

[23] Fjori Sinoruka, Balkan Countries Struggling to Curb Human Trafficking, BalkanInsight (July 20, 2022) https://balkaninsight.com/2022/07/20/balkan-countries-struggling-to-curb-human-trafficking-us-report/.

[24] Id.

[25] Id.

[26] Karolina Siekierka, The Role of Social Media in Human Trafficking, Institute of New Europe (July 30, 2021) https://ine.org.pl/en/the-role-of-social-media-in-human-trafficking/.

[27] Id.

[28] Protecting Children from Trafficking and Exploitation in the Western Balkans, Council of Europe Portal https://www.coe.int/en/web/anti-human-trafficking/acting-together-in-the-face-of-crisis-protecting-children-from-trafficking-and-exploitation-in-the-western-balkans (last visited Nov. 4, 2022).

[29] Id.

[30] Id.

[31] Azem Kurtic, Human Trafficking Victims in Bosnia ‘Need Better Protection’, BalkanInsight https://balkaninsight.com/2022/06/28/human-trafficking-victims-in-bosnia-need-better-protection-report/

[32] Raising Awareness of Human Trafficking in the Western Balkans Through Social Media, IOM UN Migration (July 29, 2022) https://rovienna.iom.int/news/raising-awareness-human-trafficking-western-balkans-through-social-media.

[33] Id.

[34] Id.

[35] Id.

[36] Id.

[37] Id.

[38] Id.