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Slavery has existed since the birth of civilization and pre-dates any written record.

Historians trace the origins of slavery back to the Agricultural Revolution 11,000 years ago when our hunter-gatherer ancestors established social stratification. Slavery is responsive to demand and as can be seen over the millennia, it is continually adapting to exploit the ever-changing societal landscape. But despite the historical connotations wrought by the term ‘slavery’, contemporary forms of human exploitation are thriving in the age of globalisation.

In 2014, the Walk Free Foundation (WFF) estimated that more than 35 million people were living in modern slavery worldwide, the highest rate in human history. With someone falling victim to trafficking every 30 seconds, it has become the second most profitable industry after drug trafficking, disproving the misconception that slavery is an issue from a bygone era.

Our modern society of global capitalism is providing the ideal climate to allow the exploitation of human beings to flourish. The deepening of global inequality is conducive to the corruption and deprivation that drives this egregious crime. Polakoff submits that economic globalisation has led to a form of “global apartheid” and a corresponding emergence of a new “fourth world” populated by millions of homeless, incarcerated, impoverished, and otherwise socially excluded people (Polakoff 2007). Devin Brewer notes in his 2009 article Globalization and Human Trafficking for the Topical Research Digest;

“The lesser developed countries of the world have become the factories and workshops for the developed countries. A high demand for cheap labor by multinational corporations in developed countries has resulted in the trafficking and exploitation of desperate workers who, in turn, are subjected to a lifetime of slave-like conditions.”

As socio-economically disadvantaged people improvise to salvage a livelihood in a transforming world, opportunistic predators seize upon the vulnerability of the desperate. The epitome of capitalist development has seen the construction of a new social elite, the celebrity. The pursuit of fame and fortune has forged an entirely new means of coercion, enticing the vulnerable and disillusioned into a life of exploitation.

The ultimate icon of globalisation, the Internet, has also proven to facilitate the trafficking of individuals. Traffickers can now, from the comfort of their own lairs, lure women into trafficking under the guise of mundane job advertisements in foreign countries. Furthermore, victims seeking a better life are transported with logistical ease and need little persuasion to cross borders. Endemic corruption has rendered international borders increasingly porous and with the advancement of technology, false documentation is readily available.

Victims are seen to be living ordinary lives as traffickers are implementing intensified means of psychological coercion. Human trafficking in the 21st century has engineered itself to evade law enforcement and significantly hinder the identification of victims.

The accurate identification of victims of trafficking in the UK is the gateway to the protection of their civil and human rights. As practitioners, we are referred to the UNODC list of ‘Human Trafficking Indicators’ detailing both the general indicators of trafficking in addition to more specific indicators in cases of sexual and labour exploitation, domestic servitude and petty crime. However, even the most experienced practitioner may inadvertently attribute a certain profile to victims of trafficking and as such, we should be mindful that new forms of trafficking are continually emerging which in turn demand the inclusion of new indicators.

As advised by the OSCE at page 45 of its Policing Guidebook;

“Misperceptions of who is likely to be a victim, how victims should behave and where they come from can all hinder victim identification… Even if their life in their country of origin might have been worse than their trafficking experience, that still does not mean that they have not been trafficked”.

The guidance states that there may be a reasonable assumption that a person has been trafficked when the relevant indicators are engaged. Some indicators are obvious whilst others are not. For example, where a person has been engaged in criminal activity, or where there is evidence of harm associated with trafficking, including sexually transmitted disease, there is reasonable cause to suspect that other indicators may be engaged.

There are substantial barriers to the accurate identification of victims of trafficking, which have received extensive documentation by experts. Accurate identification often demands that practitioners adopt a more pro-active approach, to actively seek out the indicators, as victims will rarely volunteer the pertinent information themselves.

Victims are often unaware that they are victims at all, or that their post-flight experiences may be relevant to their asylum claims. The OSCE observes in its Policing Guidebook the following obstacles to effective identification,

• Victims are usually unaware of their rights as victims, do not understand the laws of the country and often do not speak the local language – all of which help traffickers to control the victims and keep the crime.


• The interaction between the trafficker and victim is multifaceted because in many cases the perpetrator is also ‘protecting’ the victim from the authorities if the victim has irregular residence or work-related status.


• Methods of controlling victims do not necessarily involve physical violence. Sophisticated forms of psychological pressure and manipulation are increasingly common in trafficking cases. In many cases they have completely replaced physical violence.


• In cases of both sexual and labour exploitation, shame is another powerful mechanism of control. The trafficker may threaten to reveal to the victim’s family that he or she has been working as a prostitute, victims feel ashamed of ‘being so naïve or weak’, or they may have hoped their entrapment in a human trafficking situation is some kind of misunderstanding and that they will get paid if they comply with the trafficker’s requirements.


• Victims of trafficking may manifest symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that may make their identification even more difficult. Traumatised victims may deny that they have been trafficked; they may experience difficulty in remembering what actually happened; they may fill in blanks in their memory by making up plausible elements of the traumatic situation; and they may refuse to cooperate upon their detection.


• Another reason why individuals choose not to identify themselves as victims of human trafficking is that they may be told that co-operation with the police will provide them with a short term of residence before they are returned home, which means a return to the misery they tried to escape.

First responders and practitioners alike are encouraged to engage in wide scale information sharing to ensure that emerging forms of trafficking are better identified. A blinkered approach to victim identification could mean the difference between international protection and returning a victim to a life of exploitation.

As new global markets emerge, new opportunities for trafficking are presented and so our approach to victim identification must be pre-emptive. Some of the lesser-known forms of trafficking include;

• Trafficking for the purpose of removal of human organs: the worldwide shortage of healthy organs for transplantation has seen the emergence of trafficking human organs that are harvested and sold on the black market. Witchdoctors in parts of Africa claim that organs and other body parts from albinos have magical powers, human traffickers target albinos for their body parts to be used for local superstitions.


• Procuring or offering a child for illicit or criminal activities including the trafficking or cultivation of drugs, pick-pocketing or shop-lifting;


• Benefit fraud: Once the victims were brought here they were tricked into signing papers to open bank accounts. The fraudsters then falsely applied for tax credits and other benefits using the victims’ details before sending the cash back to ringleaders and leaving many of the people they had trafficked destitute on the streets;


• Children and panhandling: Panhandlers know that using children garners sympathy and can be very lucrative. So much so that children are often rented out, kidnapped, or lured away from their homes. In South Africa, police investigated a crime syndicate that involved panhandlers renting babies and small children from crèches for about $3 per day. Children are also rented directly from the mothers. In these cases, older children’s legs are sometimes broken so that the children appear smaller when tied to the “mother’s” back. Children may also be drugged so that they appear sickly. These children are starved and beaten for several days, and are then maimed or blinded to garner more sympathy;


• Illegal adoption: the ‘baby factories’ of Nigeria, teenage girls and young women are brought by traffickers to the so-called “baby factories” with false promises of jobs or safe abortions. As a result, they are confined and forced to give birth. Some of the victims are trafficked while being pregnant; others are later impregnated by men specially hired for such purposes. Allegedly, their babies are sold for international or domestic adoption, rituals, slave labour or sexual exploitation.


• Trafficking of children for sports; in the UAE camel racing is a national sport with children as young as 4 years old being forced to work up to 18-hour days in the scorching desert heat.


• Young virgin girls are enslaved and used sexually by ‘priests’ in a ritualistic system of servitude called trokosi in Ghana or voodoosi in Togo and Benin;


• The Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints in the United States and Canada has been implicated in the trafficking of minor girls across state and international borders.

Case Study: The Football ‘Slave Trade’

Michael* was 14 years old when he was driven out of his hometown of Douala in Cameroon. Like most his age, he had dreams of becoming the next Yaya Touré or Samuel Eto and hoped to one day play for one of the big European teams. Michael’s dreams came crashing down when his football coach accused him of being gay, forcing him into hiding. His family and friends cast him out until a local businessman agreed to put him in touch with a Nigerian agent.

The agent introduced himself as Benjamin* and provided false documents declaring Michael to be 17 so that he could cross the border without parental consent. Michael couldn’t believe his luck when Benjamin said that he had connections with a football agency, bringing his dreams of football stardom back within reach.

Michael was taken to a local bakery where the owner known as the Igbo Man* agreed to accommodate him while arrangements for his transfer to Europe were being made. Michael shared a room with 18 others, sleeping on the cold, hard floor with only a tattered blanket for warmth. The next four years of his life were spent working grueling 18-hour days in the bakery without pay. He had extensive scarring on his hands from where he had been burnt by the industrial ovens and suffered malnutrition having survived solely on stale bread.

The Igbo Man was a dominant and fearful presence in the bakery. He claimed to be a sorcerer and drew Wiccan symbols on the dormitory threshold, so that he could track Michael’s every move through Juju witchcraft. On the rare occasion that the Igbo Man was challenged, the punishment was brutal and humiliating.

Over the course of the next four years, Benjamin would intermittently visit and inspired hope in Michael, promising football stardom and untold riches. Just as Michael began to lose hope, Benjamin informed him that he had been accepted by a football academy in another part of Nigeria. Initially, Michael had reservations but his uncertainty was assuaged when he arrived at the camp and began training with a group of other boys from across Africa. They had all overcome great hardship to get to the academy and were eager to start their new careers. Benjamin would take groups of 5 or 6 boys to different countries in Europe for trials but would always return alone. He told the others to be patient and that their opportunity would come in time.

After 5 months of waiting at the academy, Michael was told that he and five others had been invited to attend trials for Manchester City Football Club. Benjamin arranged Michael’s visa, passport and paid for his flight to the UK although the other boys were forced to cover the travel cost themselves.

On arrival, the boys were taken to a hostel and instructed not to leave the accommodation. They found themselves locked in a room day and night with no money or documents. When Michael asked what was happening, he was told that he would be sent back to Nigeria if he didn’t do as he was told.

When he finally summoned the courage to escape, Michael found himself destitute and painfully alone. He slept on the streets for six months before being referred to the Red Cross. He was advised to claim asylum and did so the following week with the help of a refugee support group.


Michael’s story is sadly replicated across Africa and in 2007 Fifa president Sepp Blatter accused Europe’s richest clubs of engaging in “social and economic rape” as they scour the developing world for talent.

In April of the same year, a continent-wide talent hunt launched by the Aspire sports academy in Qatar screened over 750,000 children across Africa hoping to discover the next Football Superstar. The program became a breeding ground for human exploitation as unlicensed academies sprang up across Africa and unscrupulous coaches were intent on finding the next multi-million ‘golden ticket’. Oblivious parents would incur huge amounts of debt to cover the agency fees demanded by bogus football agents who would take the children out of school to allow them to concentrate on football full-time.

“Since having a professional footballer in the family would be the financial equivalent of a lottery win, many reckon the risk to their child’s education is worth taking” - Journalist and trafficking expert Dan McDougall The Scandal of Africa’s trafficked players.

McDougall has conducted extensive field research across Africa in a bid to unearth the source of this seemingly anomalous form of trafficking. He states that,

“Ninety percent of the academies we visited in Accra and Abidjan – the principal city of Ivory Coast – were run by local men with limited knowledge of the game… Coaches, as well as European and Arab middlemen haggle over the best players, signing some as young as seven on tightly binding contracts – effectively buying them from their families in the hope of making thousands of dollars selling boys on to clubs in Europe.”

The 2010 documentary film Black Diamond: Fool’s Gold gives unprecedented insight into football’s trafficking underworld and the harrowing accounts of impoverished families who have lost brothers and sons to this ‘modern slave-trade’. Internationally acclaimed investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw provides undercover footage of negotiations with traffickers operating within the trade, revealing that,

“The corruption is at a very elementary stage and builds up as you keep investigating… Football becomes an important conduit for human trafficking because most of the targets and not highly educated, they are also very eager to travel and will jump at any opportunity to become the next big players like Essien or Drogba”.

Having had time to reflect on his ordeal, Michael began to suspect that his circumstances had been engineered from the outset so that his traffickers could better exploit his vulnerability. It became apparent in the football camp that he was not the only one who had been exploited; boys had come from across Sub-Saharan Africa, comprising mainly of outcasts and runaways. Despite Fifa regulations stating that players ‘must have a clear connection’ with their national team, boys from Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea, Zambia and Mali flock to Ivory Coast and Ghana in the hope of eventually playing for their adopted nation.

The reality facing most of Africa’s young players is one of exploitation and neglect. Each year, an estimated 15,000 hopeful young African players are trafficked to Europe and abandoned once their careers fail to materialise. Fortunately for Michael, unlike the 99% of trafficking victims who are never rescued, his story provides a flicker of optimism. Michael obtained not only a positive Conclusive Grounds decision but was also granted asylum. Despite being initially detained under the fast-track procedure and with a pre-drafted refusal letter on file, his identification as a victim of trafficking brought him back from the brink.

Conclusion: Prevention is Better than Cure

The nexus between global inequality and human trafficking is unquestionable. However the campaign to eradicate human trafficking demands a paradigm shift from the pursuit of deterrent measures to the promotion of basic economic, social, and cultural rights. The absence of these rights, especially in the underdeveloped world, has perpetuated the trafficking of humans and as the economic divide widens, more and more victims will fall into the gaping chasm of inequality.

Until the day we achieve an egalitarian utopia wherein human trafficking cannot prevail, it is our shared societal duty to identify potential victims by looking beneath the surface of the quotidian.

Since his grant of asylum, Michael has joined a five-a-side football team and is an avid Swansea City fan. His continued love for the game helped salvage his ambition and rebuild his life.

*Names changed for the purpose of anonymity

About the Author

Eleri Haf Davies joined Duncan Lewis in May 2014. She is currently working as a Public Law Caseworker and is based in the firm’s Cardiff branch. Eleri completed the LPC in July 2013 with Swansea University gaining Distinction; she then successfully attained her Level 1 IAAS accreditation in December 2013. Eleri completed her Undergraduate studies in 2011 with Swansea University, gaining a First Class Joint Honours degree in Law and Spanish.

Eleri is a first language Welsh speaker and speaks fluent Spanish; in 2007 she was granted a bursary for linguistic excellence from Swansea University. Between 2009 and 2010, Eleri undertook voluntary work for an NGO in Medellín, Colombia working with displaced families and children affected by gang violence. During her time in Medellín she conducted ethnographic research into the socio-economic, political and human rights climate of the city for a study entitled “Medellín: From Murder Capital to Model City?”.