What are the root causes of trafficking?
While virtually no country is totally sheltered from trafficking (either as a receiving or a sending party), trafficking seems to be thriving when four conditions are met. Trafficking occurs when, in a flawed system unable to prevent it from happening, there is demand for trafficked victims, opportunities for traffickers, and a vulnerable pool of potential victims. A flawed system is a system in which adequate laws to prevent trafficking and protect victims are not in place or not enforced; where corrupt authorities (including law enforcement agencies) allow trafficking to happen and may even benefit from it. It is also a system where migration policies are not consistent with labour market realities, that is where the opening of borders and the improvement of infrastructure and transportation have not led to a concomitant relaxation of restrictions on movement and migration for labour – thus exacerbating labour market imbalances and increasing the extent of irregular migration. Demand
