With the highest rate of human trafficking in East and Central Africa, several nongovernmental organizations in Kenya are now under investigation by INTERPOL , the world’s largest international police organization, with 188 member countries. The Interpol Sub-regional Bureau for Eastern Africa is based in Kenya’s capital in Nairobi.
Young women as well as girls who are trafficked can also become a living supply for human body organ transplants.
“Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of using their organs, in particular kidneys, is a rapidly growing field of criminal activity,” says INTERPOL. “In many countries waiting lists for transplants are very long, and criminals have seized this opportunity to exploit the desperation of patients and potential donors,” continues Interpol.
The trail of corruption in Kenya may also reveal human trafficker’s collusion with Kenyan authorities which may include the police and intelligence, as well as the judiciary. This alleged collusion may enable the illegal industry to grow as it goes ‘unchecked’ inside the country.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the most prevalent destinations for trafficked organs is Western Europe and the United States. These destinations have the highest number of patients waiting for a new kidney, liver, heart or pancreas.
Organizations currently under investigation are based in Kenya’s capital Nairobi and in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city. For legal reasons the organizations cannot be named since investigations are ongoing and there are pending court cases.
On CNN last night Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive talked to the network's Christiane Amanpour about child trafficking and organ trafficking from victims of the earthquake that struck a few weeks ago.
Trade in people is not a new phenomenon, but the modern manifestation of slavery, according to US researchers. However, writing in the Journal of Global Business Advancement, they point out that human trafficking and trade in human organs has intensified with increased globalization. They hope to raise awareness of the issue among the business research community with a view to finding solutions.
It is a tragic fact of life that the world's most disadvantaged people are often the most easily exploited. Seeing greener grass on foreign shores, many are willing to risk everything with a people smuggler and to spend their life savings to be transported across borders with counterfeit documents. They often leave family behind, hoping to send money home, but more often than not end up beholden to the smugglers' associates and enslaved in a lowly job with little pay and poor accommodation, constantly on the look out for the shadow of immigration officials over their shoulder.
Now, Patriya Tansuhaj of the Department of Marketing and International Business Institute at Washington State University, in Pullman and Jim McCullough of the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, suggest that international human trade is essentially the dark side of international business. They claim that the problem has been largely ignored by the international business research community. "International business academicians can no longer leave the understanding of this phenomenon in the hands of political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists," they assert, "We must be actively involved in providing a more systematic explanation with a clear set of recommendations to governments and the global business sectors."
The researchers suggest there has been a widespread assumption that globalization can only have a positive impact on individuals and societies around the world. This world view is far too simplistic and unrealistic, the researchers say, and ignores the dark side of international business to the detriment of legality and ethics. They cite the example of young Laotians looking West across the Mekong River to Thailand and dreaming of an escape that will give them and their loved ones a new life outside the poverty trap. Illegal crossings facilitated by criminals who trade in people is common here and across borders in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Donate your own kidneys before asking poor Filipinos to do so.
This was the challenge Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral leveled at Department of Health officials for approving the exemption of eight Israeli patients from the moratorium of kidney transplants to foreigners.
Cabral on Monday expressed her distress over the decision of the DoH National Transplant and Ethics Committee (NTEC) allowing the foreign patients to undergo transplantation, which was subsequently approved by the Philippine Board of Organ Donation and Transplantation (PBODT).
"Assuming that altruism is the only reason for the PBODT and NTEC's recommendation, may I suggest that it is but right that they each give one of their kidneys to these foreigners before they ask others to do so," Cabral said in a statement Monday.
"Their good example should influence many others to do the same. That happening, the DoH should find it easy to get a host of affluent individuals, along with the [poor people], to donate their kidneys too," she said.
She also dared transplant surgeons and other experts and physicians involved in kidney transplantation to perform such altruistic act.
"Then, we shall have no problem providing kidneys to all Filipinos with renal failure who want a transplant [and] we may even be able to spare some for foreigners," she said.
Cabral issued such biting statement also as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee against Trafficking, which has been mandated to protect the poor and the disadvantaged and to ensure that the law against human trafficking was implemented.
She reiterated that Republic Act 9208 (the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003) made selling or importing of human organs by means of fraud, deception and abuse of power punishable by jail terms of at least 20 years plus stiff fines.
Filipinos in dire need of cash have been the usual victims of an illegal harvesting kidney-harvesting network operating in various parts of the country. Most of the time, these poor Filipinos are being duped into selling their kidneys for a meager amount.
Asia Against Child Trafficking, a nonprofit group advocating for an absolute ban on kidney trade, earlier reported that Filipinos are the cheapest source of kidneys in the global black market for human organs, selling them for a measly $1,500.
As global demand for live transplants keeps growing, the shadowy organ trading business is rapidly expanding, dominated by unscrupulous brokers and facilitated by inadequate national legislations, widespread corrupt practices and a general lack of public awareness on the extent of the trade.
The illegal trade in body parts is largely dominated by kidneys because they are in greatest demand and they are the only major organs that can be wholly transplanted with relatively few risks for the living donor.
Organ trafficking accounts for around 10 per cent of the nearly 70,000 kidney transplants performed worldwide annually, although as many as 15,000 kidneys could be trafficked each year.
China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, the Philippines, Moldova, and Romania are among the world's leading providers of trafficked organs. If China is known for harvesting and selling organs from executed prisoners, the other countries have been dealing essentially with living donors, becoming stakeholders in the fast-growing human trafficking web.
Trafficked organs are either sold domestically, or exported to be transplanted into patients from the US, Europe, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and especially Israel.
As global demand for live transplants keeps growing, the shadowy organ trading business is rapidly expanding, dominated by unscrupulous brokers and facilitated by inadequate national legislations, widespread corrupt practices and a general lack of public awareness on the extent of the trade.
The illegal trade in body parts is largely dominated by kidneys because they are in greatest demand and they are the only major organs that can be wholly transplanted with relatively few risks for the living donor.
Organ trafficking accounts for around 10 per cent of the nearly 70,000 kidney transplants performed worldwide annually, although as many as 15,000 kidneys could be trafficked each year.
China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, the Philippines, Moldova, and Romania are among the world's leading providers of trafficked organs. If China is known for harvesting and selling organs from executed prisoners, the other countries have been dealing essentially with living donors, becoming stakeholders in the fast-growing human trafficking web.
Trafficked organs are either sold domestically, or exported to be transplanted into patients from the US, Europe, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and especially Israel.
Ten years ago, organ trafficking was largely seen as a rumour. Since then a number of countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, Moldova) have taken decisive steps to go after the traffickers, criminalise the trade in human organs, or ban transplants from living donors. Nonetheless, this has come at the risk of driving the trade underground, or shifting it to other countries.
Arguing that laws and policies are insufficient to effectively curb organ trafficking, Organs Watch, COFS and other non-governmental organisations say it is essential for civil society to be actively engaged in this combat so organ trafficking is universally recognised as a medical human rights abuse and a "body tax on the poor".
MUMBAI - The arrest of "Doctor Kidney" Amit Kumar for running a sizeable racket in live kidneys has highlighted the role that South Asia plays as the hub of an international trade in human organs.
A sophisticated but unregulated healthcare industry, a "donor pool" of desperately poor people ready to sell a kidney, and a corrupt monitoring system have combined to create a special brand of "medical tourism" in the region, especially in India and neighboring Pakistan.
While India's 1994 Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA) is observed mostly in the breach, the impact of Pakistan's Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance passed in 2007 is yet to be gauged. Until last year, the organ trade was legal and flourished openly in that country.
Top transplant surgeons are collaborating with criminal organ trafficking networks to target the desperate, noted Nancy Scheper-Hughes, founding director of Organs Watch, an academic research project at the University of California, Berkeley, while speaking at the Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking this month.
"The latest arrests reveal a global network larger in scale than any other one," said Dr Samiran Nundy, gastroenterological surgeon at the prestigious Sir Gangaram Hospital in New Delhi. Nundy was one of the architects of India's transplantation laws that should have put an end to paid transplants in this country. The THOA was the result of activism by a small group of conscientious medical professionals appalled by the trade.
Kumar is accused of luring poor laborers to his "hospital" in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon with promises of job offers or large sums of money. Typically, they were promised 300,000 rupees (US$7,500) but paid only 30,000 ($750) after the surgery, police said.
He is alleged to have conducted more than 500 transplants over an unspecified period, charging up to $50,000 dollars for each operation. Investigators say his patients came from Britain, the United States, Turkey, Nepal, Dubai, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
The racket first came to light on January 24 when police raided Kumar's hospital following a complaint by a "donor" who had been paid less than the amount promised. At his hospital police found recipients recovering from surgery and arrested a number of doctors, nurses and support staff.
KATMANDU, Nepal: The alleged leader of a syndicate accused of illegally removing hundreds of kidneys, sometimes from poor laborers held at gunpoint, was deported back to India on Saturday night from Nepal where he was arrested days earlier, officials said.
Nepalese authorities handed over Amit Kumar to Indian officials who had been seeking his extradition since he was arrested Thursday at a jungle resort in neighboring Nepal, said Upendra Aryal, a top police officer in Nepal's capital, Katmandu.
Authorities had been searching for Kumar since last month, when he fled after police said they broke up the kidney transplant racket they claimed he ran from an upscale New Delhi suburb. Police were also investigating whether Kumar was involved in illegal kidney transplants in Nepal, Aryal said. Indian authorities declined to comment on the case.
Indian police say Kumar headed an illegal organ transplant ring based in the affluent New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. Authorities believe his group sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world in the past nine years. Police said they raided the operation's main clinic in Gurgaon in January and broke up the ring, which officials claim spanned at least five Indian states and involved at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics, as well as a car outfitted as a laboratory.
Subsequent raids allegedly uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names.
"When I woke up, I felt this terrible pain on my abdomen. They told me they had taken out my kidney. "I thought I was going to die."
Shakeel Ahmed only wanted to come to Delhi to find work. So when two men approached him outside the railway station offering him a construction job, he readily agreed.
"They drove me to a house far away. On the way they asked me some strange questions like if I had any diseases," he says. Later that night he was transferred along with two other men to another house. "There were these men in green coats they took a sample of my blood. "I was given an injection and I passed out."
Massive racket Shakeel and two other victims are now being kept in a solitary ward in a civic hospital in Gurgaon, an affluent suburb of Delhi, under the watchful eyes of a policeman. They were brought here by the police, who found them during a raid on an illegal clinic. It was the first hint that they had stumbled on a massive racket involving millions of dollars and reaching out to all corners of India and even some countries abroad.
"Many men, mostly poor labourers, were brought here and their kidneys removed," says Gurgaon police commissioner Mohinder Lal. "They were offered between $1-2000. The recipients were wealthy clients in India and other countries. Some of them were from Greece, Arab countries, United States and one or two patients from European countries."
An international investigation is now under way. Interpol has been alerted to look out for two doctors believed to be the kingpins of the operation.
But in India a debate is now beginning on why so few people come forward to donate their organs. An estimated 150,000 Indians need a kidney transplant every year, but only 3,500 are available.
One of the needy is Kamal Verma. A year ago he was told that he would need a transplant or undergo dialysis for his failing kidneys. "The laws in India are so that it makes it impossible to get a kidney legally. "I can only get one from a blood relative." It's one of the major reasons for the thriving black market.
"Every hospital has a tout. In fact, the doctors or nephrologists will often suggest a person that you can contact to get a kidney. They charge up to $10,000. "But I don't have the money and in any case it's illegal so I don't want to go down that route."
So the once active trade exhibitor is now resigned to a life of virtual retirement. "I can barely see, I can't do a strenuous job, I get short of breath. My life is finished," he says as he suns himself on the terrace of his modest flat. Small-town India It's this hopeless mismatch between demand and supply that is being ruthlessly exploited by some doctors and agents.
And fueling it is a million-dollar black economy that has spread its tentacles across the country.
'Who can refuse?' "I needed the money," says Om Prakash simply. A house painter, he's in his forties but looks a decade older. His cheeks are hollowed, his eyes glazed and his skin is stretched tight over his bones.
"Three years ago some men said they'd pay me 80,000 rupees ($2,000) for my kidney. "Who can refuse?
6/7/07- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expressed alarm on Thursday over rising cases of trade in human organs in Asia, and said globalization had increased risks of human trafficking.
Bruce Reed, IOM regional representative, said trafficking in persons for sexual or labor exploitation and other purposes such as adoption, false marriage and human organ donation was the third-largest international criminal activity, behind drugs and arms smuggling.
"The profile (of those being trafficked) is constantly changing," Reed told a seminar on human trafficking in Manila. "Women and girls are being trafficked for non-sex work and cases of men and boys are also being reported in the region."
Reed said many trafficking cases in Asia "end up in situations of forced begging, delinquency, adoption, false marriage, or most recently, as victims of the thriving trade in human organs".
He said trafficking for organs was on the rise in China and in many impoverished states in Southeast Asia, like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Although rising, the number of those being trafficked for organs was dwarfed by those being smuggled for sex, Reed said, saying there was constant demand from the entertainment and hospitality industry.
Chinese migrants apply for jobs at a job fair
The IOM said there could be 30 million Asians living outside their country, making them more susceptible to sexual and labor exploitation.
"Due to globalization, improved communications, more accessible travel and high technology, people are traveling like never before, substantially increasing the numbers of persons exposed to the influence of traffickers and criminal networks," Reed said.
A truck packed with 40 children was intercepted in the central Mozambican province of Manica this week, sparking concern over increased child trafficking and the urgent need for effective legislation to address the problem.
"All the children are now in the protective custody of social welfare authorities in Chimoio [in Manica Province]. While investigations are underway, authorities have been trying to contact their parents," the UN Children Fund's (UNICEF) Thierry Delvigne-Jean told IRIN. "They have arrested a number of adults," he added. According to a statement released by the UN in Mozambique on Thursday, the truck was stopped by police on Monday in Inchope and the case is being investigated.
It is not exactly known where the children were being taken. "The details surrounding the case remain vague - there is a lot of contradicting information," said Carmen Ramos, Country Director for Save the Children Norway."
The driver said he was taking the children to schools in Tete [a province in western Mozambique] and Maputo [the county's capital] to study the Koran, and that he had made the same trip with children 10 times before," she said.
It seemed the children had not been kidnapped because the parents had given their consent, "but the parents don't know where these schools are," Ramos added, which suggested that the children might have been in the truck for reasons other than schooling."
This incident calls attention to the serious problem of child trafficking and the urgent need for the adoption of legal instruments to enforce the protection of children against abuse and exploitation," UN Resident Coordinator Ndolamb Ngokwey said in the statement.
Let Down By the Law Mozambican law makes no provision for prosecuting alleged human traffickers; consequently, no suspected trafficker has ever been tried for the crime, even though the practice is illegal under international law.
Nevertheless, suspected human traffickers have been prosecuted by the state and Rede Came, a Mozambican child protection non-governmental organisation, under laws covering kidnapping, the corruption of minors and hijacking, but these carry much milder penalties than violations of the trafficking laws in other countries.
A proposed Children's Act was approved by the Council of Ministers in March 2007 but has not yet become law. "The Act is pending with parliament and is expected to be adopted early this year," the UN statement said. "A specific law against human trafficking was also approved by the Council of Ministers in 2007 and is pending parliament's approval."
When it became law, the Act would cover child rights and include an article directing the state to adopt special legal and administrative measures to stop the kidnapping, sale and trafficking of minors."The UN urges Parliament to place this legislation on the agenda of the legislative session due to commence in March," said UNICEF Representative Leila Pakkala."
Once passed by parliament, the Children's Act and the Anti-Trafficking Laws will strengthen the legal and protective framework for children, including victims of trafficking and abuse."
Growing Concern Although there are no recent figures on human trafficking in Mozambique the practice is believed to be growing. A 2003 study on trafficking in the region by the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) estimated that 1,000 Mozambican woman and children were being trafficked to South Africa every year, mainly for sexual exploitation.
The capital, Maputo, is the main destination for internal trafficking, while South Africa is the main destination for children trafficked outside of Mozambique"Studies have found that Mozambique is both a country of origin and transit for child trafficking. The capital, Maputo, is the main destination for internal trafficking, while South Africa is the main destination for children trafficked outside of Mozambique and from neighbouring countries," the UN statement read.
Most children who fall prey to traffickers are aged between 13 and 18. "Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to exploitation due to their age and dependency," UNICEF said.
Mozambique's 19.8 million people are desperately poor: 40 percent live on less than US$1 a day, and recovery from a 16-year civil war that ended in 1992 has been slow. According to UNICEF, there are 1.6 million orphans, 380,000 of whom have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.
Amnesty International stated in a 2005 report that trafficking in the former Portuguese colony was also thought to be linked to the extraction of human organs for ritual and witchcraft purposes, with allegations that the practice was taking place in the northern provinces of Nampula and Niassa.
Police in India have issued an alert for a doctor alleged to be involved in an organ trading racket.
Last week, police in Gurgaon, a suburb of the capital Delhi, raided a house which was used to carry out illegal kidney transplants. Hundreds of poor labourers were tricked into selling kidneys, officials says.
Trade in human organs is banned in India but many continue to sell their kidneys to clients, including Westerners, waiting for transplants.
Gurgaon is an affluent suburb of Delhi, home to high-rise apartment blocks and call centres. It is here, in a nondescript house, that many poor labourers were lured from across northern India and bribed into selling their kidneys, according to the police. For this they were allegedly paid up to $2,500.
The clients are said to be wealthy Indians, and even some foreign visitors, who were in urgent need of a kidney transplant and willing to pay large sums for it. Last week, the police raided the illegal clinic after being tipped-off by a victim. Four people were arrested but the main person alleged to be behind the racket, a doctor, is missing.
Gurgaon police commissioner Mohinder Lal told the BBC that an alert had been sounded at airports to prevent him from leaving the country. He said police also planned to approach Interpol to issue a warrant for his arrest.
Despite banning the trade in human organs, India continues to be one of the major centres of the trade.
There are 1.2 million child victims of human trafficking per year around the world, according to data given by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Children are used as an economic profit source by organized crime. Trafficking of minors is a prosperous business, which moves 40 billion dollars a year. For under age children alone, the profit reaches 23.5 million euros a year.
"Children are easier to recruit, convince and move and therefore, due to the low costs, they generate an enormous economic profit."
"A child begging in Vienna or Madrid can earn a hundred euros a day, while girls who are forced to prostitute themselves generate profits of 1,000 to 3,000 euros a week. If we take into account that a procurer pays around 3,000 euros a day for each girl, he will have paid off the purchase in a week and he will obtain profits from then on."
In declarations to journalists before taking part in a child trafficking congress organized by Save the Children, Liliana Orjuela, who is in charge of the organization has explained that child exploitation does not only happen in the Global South but also in Europe, especially in poor countries like Romania or former Soviet republics, where there are many at risk minors.
According to local police, in Spain there are around 20,000 minors who have been forced into prostitution, begging or who have been victims of international crime nets which have used them for labor exploitation, illegal adoptions or even organ trafficking. According to Save the Children and Spanish Net against human trafficking data, 50,000 women and girls are victims of human trafficking in Spain. They come from Morocco, Sub-Saharan Africa, eastern countries, Brazil and Central America, and are brought to Spain where "there is great demand."
In a precedent-setting ruling yesterday the Haifa District Court yesterday sentenced two Haifa men to jail for trafficking in humans for the purpose of harvesting their organs.
John Allan (formerly Mohammad Gheit), 59, was sentenced to four years in jail with a three-year suspended sentence. Allan was also ordered to pay each of his six victims NIS 15,000. Hassan Zakhalka, 32, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and 12 months suspended sentence for aiding and abetting human trafficking for the harvest of organs. Advertisement This is the first time an Israeli court has issued a conviction for this offense, based on a law passed at the end of last year. The pair confessed to the charges against them in a plea bargain with the prosecution.
Allan and Zakhalka admitted that at the end of 2006, they persuaded Arabs from the Galilee and central Israel who were developmentally challenged or mentally ill to agree to have a kidney removed for payment. They located their victims by placing ads in the newspaper offering money for organ donation. According to the indictment, the pair gave false information to the donors, and also pressured and threatened them to give up their kidney. After the surgery, Allan and Zakhalka did not pay the donors as promised. Read the full article
