Trafficking in Human Organs

This paper presents the two major reasons justifying the ban on the commercial trade on human organs: the commodification of the human body and the exploitation of vulnerable people. Furthermore, it argues that what is ultimately at stake in organ selling is the principle of respect for human dignity.

This book presents a vivid description of the solutions that researchers have discovered for ethical dilemmas that pose themselves at studying disadvantaged, vulnerable and victimized populations. Ethical codes prescribe that the scholar should in all circumstances avoid potential harm, that informed consent is necessary and that the limits of confidentiality should always be respected. However, in the practice of research among women involved in prostitution, illegal immigrant workers, enslaved children, people who sell their organs and all the traffickers thereof, the ethical rules cannot always be followed. This book shows that there is a surprising variety of arguable possibilities in dealing with ethical dilemmas in the field. Authors reflect on concrete experiences from their own fieldwork in a wide variety of settings such as the USA, Singapore, Kosovo and The Netherlands. Some choose to work on the basis of conscientious partiality, others negotiate the rules with their informants and still others purposely break the rules in order to disclose and damage the exploiters. Researchers may find themselves in a vulnerable position. Their experiences, as presented in this volume, will help field workers, university administrators, representatives of vulnerable groups, philosophers of ethics and most of all students to go into the field well-prepared.

This article examines the recruitment and transportation of internally trafficked
children from Benue State in the north-central geo-political zone of Nigeria to Oyo
State in the south-western zone of Nigeria. The study is essentially qualitative: with
the aid of the snowball sampling technique, in-depth interviews (IDIs) were
conducted with drivers, employers and trafficking agents in two recipient communities
in Ibadan. The findings show that human rights abuses manifest at the
recruitment, transportation and destination phases. The human rights abuses
include the recruitment of underage children for domestic work outside their
immediate family environments; transportation under inhumane conditions; restriction
of movement at traffickers’ ‘warehouses’; non-disclosure of amount payable
for the services of domestic servants by agents/traffickers; exclusion of domestic
servants in wage negotiations; and violence by employers. In view of these, there is
a need for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons to
strengthen its internal trafficking campaign.

The Doctrine of Signatures is an old tradition, or a part of many traditions, that plants (as well as animals and minerals and perhaps even phenomena) have clues or signatures in their shapes and forms and actions and things that tell what their purposes are. It is an ancient European philosophy that held that plants bearing parts that resembled human body parts, animals, or other objects, had useful relevancy to those parts, animals or objects.  This makes all wonder if there were fruits and vegetables out there that are good for a certain part of human body and look like that body part as well. All will actually very surprised as to know this, Have you ever wondered to know that there are some foods that look like body parts. Here is the list of these foods that look like body parts they're good for and their benefits.

An intrinsic and material consequence of mass violence is the mass production of human bodies. Depending on each particular instance of mass atrocity, the fate of these bodies can vary: severe mistreatment, mutilation, concealment, destruction, transport, traffic of the corpses are not uncommon occurrences. Drawing from their respective research on human trafficking and on corpses of mass violence, the co-authors of this paper propose to adopt an intersectional approach and legally examine the issue of the trafficking of human remains and organs as one which is highly revealing of both the criminal modus operandi and the perpetrator’s criminal intent.
Yet, international law on the topic is problematically succinct and if the law of human trafficking, as enshrined in the Palermo Protocol (2000), does specify that such trafficking is the deviant obtainment and/or movement of persons for the purpose of exploitation - which does include ‘the removal of organs’ -  it however fails to define both the term ‘persons’ and the term ‘organs’. Perhaps leaving the door open for further ambiguity, the Protocol also falls short of expressly contemplating the trafficking of deceased human bodies. How then is an ‘organ’ to be understood? Would it cover bones and human remains? What use have criminals and traffickers made of organs and human remains? Are the perpetrators of the atrocities and the traffickers the same individuals or is there a chain of criminality? What, if any, legal status, protections and/or rights have been given to bodily parts resulting of atrocities and mass violence?
By raising and addressing these questions, this paper will highlight the features and characteristics of this very particular type of trafficking and will aim at better grasping the inner criminality of trafficking bodies, whether alive or dead.

co-author: Caroline Fournet

This manual provides a foundation of knowledge for those interested in expanding their familiarity with human trafficking and the anti-trafficking movement. The manual is specifically directed toward individuals involved in non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It is divided into three main sections, tailored to entry level, intermediate, and advanced NGO workers.

At the entry level, the definitions of key terms like human trafficking, exploitation, and modern slavery are explored and distinguished from each other. The methods and ends of human trafficking are further differentiated, as the ways traffickees are initially taken into trafficking and the exploitative ends for which they are used thereafter, respectively. Then, human trafficking is subdivided into labor and sex trafficking, then defined and explored; and so are the other lesser-acknowledged types of human trafficking that do not fit neatly into the previous two categories.

The intermediate level focuses on the supply and demand aspects of human trafficking – what drives and compels both exploiters and future victims to fall into their corresponding roles. Five factors (poverty, gender/age bias, migrant statuses and statelessness, refugee status/war situations, and religious minority associations) are examined as indicators of susceptibility to human trafficking. Furthermore, prostitution and pornography are analyzed for their connection with human trafficking and potential sex work legalization options are explained.

At the advanced level, the manual delves into the question of why the practices of trafficking and modern slavery are not yet eradicated, despite the many NGOs and stakeholders working tirelessly to combat it. The current issues of quality research, collaboration, public understanding, and legal implementation are taken in turn to help answer this question with perspective and context.

Human trafficking is a crime that ruthlessly exploits women, children and men for sex and forced labor. This global crime generates billions of dollars for the traffickers. The International Labor Organization estimates that 20.9 million people are victims of forced labor globally (Fedetov, 2012).  As concluded by Shelley (2010), human trafficking will grow in the twenty-first century as a result of economic/demographic inequalities in the world, the rise of conflicts and possibly global climate change.

This essay will provide a critical analysis of the concept of cross-border human trafficking as a transnational issue.  It hopes to answer the following:
1)    What is cross-border human trafficking? 
2)      What is the current situation of cross-border human trafficking?
3)      What are the reasons for the proliferation of cross-border human trafficking?
4)      What are the consequences of human trafficking in our modern society?
5)      What are the possible solutions to prevent cross-border human trafficking?

A broad range of illicit activities, such as drug trafficking, arms trading, money laundering, and human trafficking have flourished in the context of a globalizing economy. The transnational dimension of this phenomenon clearly makes interstate cooperation essential. However, international collaboration against illicit trade and transnational crime has been elusive and uneven, particularly in morally contested issues such as human trafficking, forced labor, and organ trade. This paper seeks to contribute to a growing International Relations literature on global prohibition regimes and interstate cooperation against illicit trade by focusing on a significantly neglected issue area: transplant tourism and organ trafficking. Recent reports indicate that organs have become part of an illegal multibillion-dollar industry, ranking tenth in a list of the most profitable illicit activities. Despite widespread condemnation at the international and national levels, concrete steps in the fight against transplant tourism have been very limited, particularly when compared to other forms of human trafficking. The empirical analysis here suggests that both domestic political and economic factors condition the willingness of governments to implement national policies against the international organ trade. But, in addition, to account for the limited attention and success in the construction of a global prohibition regime against international organ trafficking, it is important to look at the cleavages among transnational civil society groups involved in this issue.

It cannot be gainsaid that issues of Euthanasia and end-of-life decisions have become of one the most controversial items in contemporary Health law discussions. Notwithstanding the unending polemics, there appears to be no meeting points for the divergent views, as newer and more delicate dimensions are further introduced to the contest by the day.

This Paper re-explores the major issues surrounding the Euthanasia debate from the tripartite dimensions of Law, ethics and religion. This Paper engages the pro-Euthanasia campaign, advocating for caution in a world where the cry for more liberalization continues to grow by the day. This Paper concludes that  the ever increasing strident calls for further liberalization, is nothing but a recipe for disaster, submitting that such will only end up being a fulfillment of the slippery slope prophecy.

Global institutions, although suggesting measures to deter organ trafficking, reiterate the lack of official statistics about this illegal trade. In this article, we explore the reasons why organ trafficking remains unreported. We argue that the complex factors that perpetuate invisibility facilitate trafficked organs being “laundered” in the health care systems of the purchaser’s country, hindering accurate estimation of the problem. The factors are as follows: (a) issues of globalization, jurisdiction, and law enforcement; (b) the power of health care professionals; (c) the reimbursement of transplantation costs abroad by insurers; (d) ambivalence of the victim status of the sellers; and (e) the buyers as vulnerable offenders.

In international law, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children is the principal instrument to combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal. In 2011, Australia’s first investigation involving organ trafficking made headlines, raising questions about the application of relevant criminal offences and their compliance with international law. This article outlines international requirements and explores Australia’s legislative approach to criminalising organ trafficking in Div 271 of the Criminal Code (Cth). These offences are analysed in close reference to international law and best practice guidelines. The article concludes by developing recommendations to combat trafficking for the purpose of organ removal more effectively.

The term human beings trafficking was defined internationally by the Palermo Protocol in 2000, despite having an open definition, thanks to the subjective elements of the crime that appears from three components: an action (objective), a way (subjective) and a purpose (exploration). One of the modes is the organs and tissues traffiking, this is little known because often lies obfuscates it between myth and urban legend. In the present article we will critically analyze the mode of operation for the removal of organs and the application of law no 9.434/97. The methodology was constructed from the documentary, jurisprudential and doctrinal research, with support on the inductive method. The main conclusions can be seen that there is much inefficiency in the transplantation system and in its regulatory decree that despite trying to curb the practice of organs trafficking, their devices are unsatisfactory to achieve this goal. Moreover, the national transplant system has several flaws and irregularities regarding its management and coordination by the ministry of health. Nevertheless, when analyzing two cases widespread in our country, "pavesi case" and "operação bisturi", it was revealed that there was poor performance of the three state powers (legislative, executive and judiciary). Furthermore, this research shows that the palermo protocol, now ratified by brazil in 2004, has no application and needs regarding human trafficking for the purpose of removal of organs.

Given the current organ shortage, a prevalent alternative to the altruism-based policy is a market-based solution: pay people for their organs. Receiving much popular and scholarly attention, a salient normative argument against neoliberal pressures is the preservation of human dignity. This article examines how advocates of both the altruistic status quo and market challengers reason and weigh the central normative concept of dignity, meant as inherent worth and/or rank. Key rhetorical strategies, including motivations and broader social visions, of the two positions are analyzed and evaluated, and the separation of morally normative understandings of dignity from market encroachment is defended.

Transplantation procedures have become increasingly sophisticated and nowadays offer unforeseen opportunities of survival to hundreds of thousands of patients. However, due to the global organ shortage, unethical practices like organ trafficking and transplant tourism have progressively emerged and spread worldwide, rapidly becoming a highly profitable business for transnational organised criminal groups. These practices represent a serious threat to public health and human security, egregious violations of fundamental human rights and a bold infringement of universal principles of medical ethics, and they thus call for a robust response from the international
community at large. Being a complex and multifaceted phenomenon of global proportions, the major challenge in combating organ trafficking is to criminalise “all” unethical conducts as transplant-related crimes at both domestic and international level. This paper aims to offer a critical overview of the international legal instruments applicable in this field and to discuss the pivotal role that international criminal law can play in support of prescriptive bioethics in the global fight against organ trafficking.

The growing problem of organ trafficking as one of the components of human trafficking does not lose its relevance to the globalizing world, especially to the developing countries. Being part of the global community, and at the same time being developing countries Azerbaijan and North Macedonia face the problem of human trafficking. This article is a review study of comparative character. The purpose of this study is to reveal the features of the fight against organ trafficking, to disclosure the facts of this crime in Azerbaijan and North Macedonia, as well as analysis of the legislation of both countries. In this study has been used the literature search method. Data has collected by entering the key words on the search engine. According to the findings of this study Azerbaijan and North Macedonia are the source, transit and distant countries of human trafficking. However due to the poor official information there are lack of evidences on organ trafficking in these countries.

In India, as in most countries where trade in human organs is legally prohibited, policies governing transplantation from living donors are designed to identify and exclude prospective donors who have a commercial interest in donation. The effective implementation of such policies requires resources, training and motivation on the part of health professionals responsible for organ procurement and transplantation. If professionals are unconvinced by or unfamiliar with the ethical justification of the relevant laws and policies, they may fail to perform a robust evaluation of prospective donors and transplant candidates, and to act on suspicions or evidence of illicit activities. I comment here on a recent paper by Aggarwal and Adhikary (2016), in which the authors imply that tolerance of illicit commercialism in living kidney donation programmes is not unreasonable, given the insufficiency of kidneys available for transplantation. I argue that such tolerance is unethical not only because of the harmful consequences of kidney trafficking, but because professional tolerance of commercialism undermines public trust in organ procurement programmes and impairs the development of sustainable donation and transplant systems.

... the surprisingly large number of impoverished Indians who, for more than a decade, had been selling their kidneys (Goyal et al ... As Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak have argued, the heterogeneity of use-value is a "private grammar" (Spivak, "Scattered Speculations" 119 ...

El término Trata de Seres Humanos (la Trata) fue internacionalmente definido por el Protocolo de Palermo en el año de 2000 y, pese a presentar una definición abierta, debido a los elementos subjetivos del crimen, se configura a partir de tres elementos constitutivos: una acción (objetiva), un medio (subjetivo) y una finalidad (de explotación). Una de las modalidades poco difundidas es la Trata de Órganos y Tejidos Humanos, pues muchas veces éste se encuentra ofuscado entre el mito y leyenda urbana. Se entiende también que la Trata es una forma contemporánea de esclavitud, un crimen contra la humanidad y, que consiste en alejar una persona (generalmente en situación de vulnerabilidad) de su entorno el origen (muchas veces en situación de exclusión socio-económica), con la finalidad de explotarla en otro lugar de destino.  Ante lo expuesto, el objetivo del presente texto es presentar el concepto de esclavitud, su actualización contemporánea y la interpretación ampliada del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos (TEDH) sobre la Trata como una forma contemporánea de esclavitud. A partir de entonces,  se plantea la posibilidad de que el comercio de órganos también pueda considerarse una forma de esclavitud. Por ello, se busca la reflexión crítico-teórica, teniendo en cuenta los instrumentos jurídicos como soporte de los conceptos abordados. La construcción de dicho análisis se ha desarrollado bajo la premisa de que, para esclavizar a una persona, no es indispensable que ésta desempeñe una actividad forzada; siendo así, no es imprescindible que esté viva y, consecuentemente, no es necesario que su cuerpo esté entero. La dificultad de análisis ha residido en pasar de la figura de “no funcionalidad” a la de “sin vida”. No obstante, esta conflicto se ha resuelto en la medida en que la ciencia jurídica admite la primacía de los derechos de la personalidad, incluso después del fallecimiento del cuerpo humano. La metodología se ha articulado a partir de la investigación documental, jurisprudencial y doctrinal, con apoyo del método inductivo.

Convegno organizzato dall'"Osservatorio sui diritti umani: bioetica, salute, ambiente" in collaborazione con la Fondazione Scuola Medica Salernitana, Università degli Studi di Salerno, 18 maggio 2015
Keynote speaker: Dr. Carlo Chiaromonte, Head of Criminal Law Division, Council of Europe

Organ trafficking is perhaps the most obscure form of human trafficking. It is an international problem with transnational dimensions and involves the intersection between the world of organized crime, impoverished organ donors, sick recipients and unscrupulous medical staff. This article starts out by exploring the global patterns of organ trafficking, highlighting the physical and psychological harm caused to victims. The statistics on organ transplants and patterns of organ trafficking as well as the social, economic and legal dimensions of this type of crime are examined. The article subsequently continues with a discussion of the domestic, regional and international legal and semi-legal instruments established to battle organ trafficking and reflects upon whether or not these instruments are effective in curtailing this growing problem. The article ends with a discussion of alternative approaches to deal with the problem of organ trafficking and makes a case for more problem-dr...

‘We demand dignity for the victims’. Such was the pledge of the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs following the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight mh17 in rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine and the looting of the corpses of the 298 victims. Although not an isolated instance, the indecent disposal of the corpses of the victims seems to have escaped legal scrutiny. Drawing from this and other case studies, this article addresses the legal qualification of acts of mistreatment perpetrated against the corpses of victims of international crimes. It analyses all relevant dispositions pertaining to international humanitarian law, international criminal law and the law of trafficking in human beings. While these provisions fail to legally characterize such acts, the judiciary however tends to recognize their criminality; a recognition which, in the authors’ views, could make its way into the text of international (criminal) law.

Co-author: Caroline Fournet

Citation: 15 (5) International Criminal Law Review 896-925 (2015).

O  comércio  de  órgãos  é  um  assunto  penoso  a  ser  tratado,  posto  causar desconforto  aos  estudiosos  e  à  sociedade  em  si.  Diante  disso,  motivou-se  a  pesquisa  nesse assunto  através  da  realização  de  um  levantamento  de  campo  para  verificar  a  opinião  da população  de  Maringá –Paraná,  pela  possibilidadede  encontrar  a  melhor  resposta  à problemática.  Para  tanto,  realizaram-se  450  entrevistas,  dividindo-as  em  três  grupos: profissionais  da  área  da  Saúde,  Direito  e  Comunidade  Geral.  A  tratativa  era  relacionada  à situação de dificuldade econômica, com a proposta de venda de órgão. O objetivo é verificar se há uma tendência à aceitação de criação de um comércio de órgãos na cidade pesquisada. Sendo  a  escassez  o  maior  problema  relacionado  aos  transplantes,  será  que  a  legitimação  do comércio de órgãos seria a solução?

By 2005, human organ trafficking, commercialization, and transplant tourism had become a prominent and pervasive influence on transplantation therapy. The most common source of organs was impoverished people in India, Pakistan, Egypt, and the Philippines, deceased organ donors in Colombia, and executed prisoners in China. In response, in May 2008, The Transplantation Society and the International Society of Nephrology developed the Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism consisting of a preamble, a set of principles, and a series of proposals. Promulgation of the Declaration of Istanbul and the formation of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group to promote and uphold its principles have demonstrated that concerted, strategic, collaborative, and persistent actions by professionals can deliver tangible changes. Over the past 5 years, the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group organized and encouraged cooperation among professional bodies and relevant international, regional, and national governmental organizations, which has produced significant progress in combating organ trafficking and transplant tourism around the world. At a fifth anniversary meeting in Qatar in April 2013, the DICG took note of this progress and set forth in a Communiqué a number of specific activities and resolved to further engage groups from many sectors in working toward the Declaration's objectives.

In the medical field, organ donation is used to help a person with a failed organ. In this area, a deceased i.e., brain dead person is a main source of organ for donation or transplantation. This process dates back to the ancient times but modern medicine has reformed its process. There are many factors that may determine how an organ is retrieved from a deceased, or a live person however, they quite a number of raise legal and ethical questions.

Many authors have argued for moral and legal unacceptability of buying and selling human organs. Recently, Roberto Andorno has revived an argument for such a conclusion based on a Kantian conception of human dignity. I try to show that instead we need an empirical conception of dignity and that there are good reasons, relating to the vulnerability of the poor sellers, which lead to a negative moral judgment on organs commodification. Admittedly, such an argument may be not as strong as those based on a “pure” conception of human dignity.