Political Violence and the Incidence of Human Trafficking: A Statistical Study

• In Event: Poster Session: Dynamics of International Conflict and Competition

Abstract

Human trafficking stands as one of the most pervasive and urgent issues in current global affairs. Among many facets, one can see it through the lens of human security, at the intersection of Human Rights and international security. Under that lens, human trafficking is a security issue that affects societies in both conflict and post-conflict scenarios.

Although it has received a lot of attention in the past decades, empirical, and quantitative, studies on the issue are still in their early stages, both in terms of data collection as well as in terms of statistical analysis.

This study aims to add to this growing literature by zooming in on the human security aspect, considering the relationship between the incidence of political violence within a society with the prevalence of human trafficking in that same society.

To that end, using already available datasets, I will run a series of statistical models investigating political violence determinants of human trafficking flows. Those political violence factors potentially include international militarized conflict, civil wars, terrorist campaigns, Human Rights violations by governments, and episodes of civil disturbances.

Besides the statistical investigation of the impact of those factors, I will also present some case studies in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Senegal, with previously collected qualitative and quantitative data, to provide more in-depth insights into how different forms of political violence might have affected the prevalence of human trafficking in those societies.

Author

• Pedro Goulart, University of Georgia School of Social Work