Children’s Advocate and National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, Diahann Gordon Harrison, says that women are gradually assuming a more dominant role in human trafficking.

She noted that while men are predominantly identified as the main perpetrators, women are “appearing as traffickers themselves or as very significant players within the human-trafficking syndicate or organisation”.

“They assist with the recruitment and so on. They assist with the orientation as to what the new recruits must do if they are going to have this business operate and bring in the profit. So, we see that women are really using their nurturing side for a not-so-good purpose,” she said.

Gordon Harrison was delivering the 22nd Annual George Liele Lecture, held recently at the Mamby Park Baptist Church in Kingston.

Described as a form of modern-day slavery, human trafficking is a serious crime that involves exploiting people for profit through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. It is considered a violation of human rights and affects millions of men, women, and children globally, including within their own countries.

Information from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that, globally, about 40 per cent of people convicted for human trafficking are women, which is a much higher rate of female participation than in most other forms of organised crime.

They are involved in ownership, management, recruitment, housing and monitoring victims, collecting money, and forging travel documents.

While women and girls remain the majority of victims, particularly in sexual exploitation, traffickers often use women for recruitment because they are perceived as more trustworthy.

Gordon Harrison, in highlighting the scourge of human trafficking, said it is the largest growing form of organised crime in the world, with illegal activities amounting to approximately US$150 billion.

She noted that in addition to violating laws, human trafficking dehumanises its victims.

“It is also a gross and egregious human rights violation that strips the individual, who becomes a victim, of his or her individuality, sense of dignity, sense of worth, and their own direction in terms of how they wish to live their lives,” she pointed out.

Gordon Harrison said that locally, there is a “very strong preventive push” against trafficking in persons, with laws in place to punish perpetrators, protect victims, and take the profit out of the crime.

She noted that there are also public education campaigns targeted at schools and vulnerable populations to raise awareness and prevent persons from falling prey to traffickers.

She informed that there have been 17 convictions associated with human trafficking and “more and more, there are persons who are calling the attention of the authorities to suspected cases so that the checks can be made and a determination can be made if the matter needs to be prosecuted”.

“So, culture shift takes time, and we have to keep going, because if you save even one potential victim, that is one less,” Gordon Harrison said.