MONITORING HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN DISPLACED POPULATIONS

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MONITORING HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN DISPLACED POPULATIONS

ABSTRACT

When people hear the word “slavery,” it conjures images of a terrible scourge on human history. They think of a despicable act perpetrated by human beings through the course of ancient and contemporary history, but history nonetheless. The sad reality is that slavery is alive and well in modern society. Dubbed “human trafficking” in lieu of more telling designations, forced labor and sexual exploitation have pervaded the human experience in higher volumes than any other point in recorded history.

In this paper, I explore human trafficking through the lens of a timely and relevant case study – Syria, in the midst of a bloody civil war and a massive humanitarian crisis, provides a number of challenges and difficult questions for humanitarian organizations and governments to ponder. Among those issues, human trafficking among displaced persons looms large. Humanitarian organizations, governments and other interested parties (such as the open-source mapping community) are actively involved in collecting data on the Syrian refugee crisis. However, given the difficulties inherent in monitoring trafficking cases, nothing significant has surfaced.

Using basic text mining, social network analysis, and mapping techniques to investigate the crisis through social media posts, my findings seek a proof-of-concept for counter-trafficking in persons (CTIP) methods going forward. It may be possible, in future work, to augment the traditional monitoring process for counter-trafficking in persons using electronic traces mined automatically from the Internet.

Chapter 1 

Introduction

People are lured and coerced into modern-day slavery at an alarming pace. We call this

“human trafficking” in lieu of more telling designations. This term is an umbrella under which several equally-grievous criminal activities reside. Human trafficking may refer to “forced labor,” where persons are either enslaved against their will and put to work or handed an impossible choice between dangerous working conditions for impossibly low wages and their own demise (their families are likely threatened as well). On the other hand, human trafficking may refer to sex trafficking, a practice whereby people (typically young females) are kidnapped and forced into an existence as sex objects without any say in the matter.

In this project, I will explore the umbrella of human trafficking through a very particular lens. Just as trafficking may refer to several activities, those activities affect some populations and situations differently than others. One context where even the most basic descriptive research appears lacking is the trafficking of persons in refugee camps. Refugee populations are displaced, often living in poor conditions, and sometimes lacking basic needs when camps exceed their capacities. This makes an ideal scenario for traffickers aiming to prey on withered, weakened targets wandering far from home. The data necessary for us to begin understanding the extent and, perhaps, the cause of this corner of the trafficking umbrella is virtually nonexistent.

What we do have, however, is a timely and relevant case where an ongoing refugee crisis has produced numerous reports of human trafficking incidents. Syria, in the midst of a bloody civil war and a massive humanitarian crisis, provides a number of challenges and difficult questions for humanitarian organizations and governments to ponder. Among those issues, human trafficking in refugee camps looms large. Humanitarian organizations, governments and other interested parties (such as the open-source mapping community) are actively involved in collecting data on the Syrian refugee crisis. However, given the difficulties inherent in monitoring trafficking cases, nothing significant has surfaced thus far. With traditional means of monitoring and thwarting acts of modern-day slavery once again dropping the ball, we have to get creative. Prior work on traffickers and other similar criminal operations has suggested that web analytics can augment traditional law enforcement and humanitarian efforts. Not only do the perpetrators often use online classifieds and social media to ply their trade, but it may be possible to uncover reports of trafficking incidents or indicators of vulnerability in specific populations by monitoring open source electronic communications and web documents.

Using the situation in Syria as a case study for better understanding trafficking among displaced populations, I will employ several web-based monitoring methods in an attempt to augment existing monitoring practices. The result, if this project is successful, will be a proof-ofconcept for using electronic traces in web data to help improve the quality and timeliness of the monitoring of human trafficking.

The scope of this project is such that not every avenue of web analytics that is applicable to the human trafficking phenomenon will be explored. While I will make a point of highlighting many potential sources and methods of capturing relevant electronic traces (including social media, online classifieds and web documents), I have settled on Twitter as the primary data source for evaluating the monitoring methods developed through the rest of the project. When an ongoing news story becomes a topic of global interest, Twitter often becomes a place for widespread discussion on that topic. A running capture of tweets using the keyword “Syria” will often produce tens of millions of tweets per day (or, even, per hour). Early examinations of our capture suggest the potential to uncover, at the very least, indicators of vulnerability in specific geographic areas. If time permits me to explore potential sources of electronic traces relevant to monitoring human trafficking, I may take them up as well. Given constraints on time and resources, I believe that Twitter is an excellent starting point.

MONITORING HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN DISPLACED POPULATIONS

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