The prevailing reality in Lebanon, characterized by economic collapse and a financial crisis affecting the population, along with a significant increase in unemployment and a general closure of businesses and investments across various sectors, creates fertile ground for the growth of human trafficking crimes and the spread of its networks. Exploiting multi-faceted poverty that affects more than 75 percent of society, according to United Nations estimates, these networks are expanding their activities today in Lebanon, amid warnings that the country could become a hub and corridor for one of the worst types of human crimes, ranking as the third-largest criminal trade in the world, after illegal drugs and arms. This has led to it being referred to as "modern slavery."
In an attempt to illustrate the impact of the crisis Lebanon is experiencing on various aspects of human trafficking, the "Alhurra" website conducted a series of interviews with individuals who have fallen victim to these criminal activities, either in the past or continuing today, to monitor the changes that have taken place in the activities of these networks and their methods of exploiting victims, and to assess the extent of trafficking phenomena that have started to adopt more extreme characteristics compared to the classical activities previously known in Lebanon.
#### Emerging Phenomena
On September 9, last month, the Lebanese media buzzed with the news of thwarting an operation to sell a Syrian child and the apprehension of gang members responsible for the operation in the city of Jounieh, north of the capital Beirut, leading to the arrest of six people. This crime reminded many of similar incidents that occurred in Lebanon during the Civil War, which devastated Lebanese society and scattered its people, echoing the current conditions in the country. This was not the first incident of its kind in Lebanon during the crisis, as the anti-human trafficking office had previously thwarted an attempt in 2019 to sell a three-year-old Syrian child for 8,000 U.S. dollars. Similarly, the country was rocked in September of the same year by a scandal involving the sale of children perpetrated by a religious organization tasked with their protection.
Between these incidents, media reports documented several cases where parents offered their children for sale due to financial struggles, unable to secure their living costs amid rampant inflation in the country. The phenomenon of parents abandoning their children is also widespread, with infants being dumped in streets, trash cans, mosques, and outside charities, peaking in recent months, particularly in early September 2021, with three cases reported in one week in various Lebanese regions.
From child trafficking to the exploitation of minors, the seduction of girls, the use of family members for labor, the rise of "delivery services," and "online prostitution" via applications, not to mention public auctions for virginity and organizing "group sex" requests, all of these details emerge from confessions made by dozens of detainees at the human trafficking and morals protection office over the past two months, indicating a significant increase in arrests recently, which, in turn, signals the prevalence of this crime across Lebanon.
#### "Abu Shakir" as a Model
On October 16, last month, news broke of the arrest of a human trafficking gang that forced several Syrian girls into prostitution. Investigations by the judicial police into this gang represent a classic example of how human trafficking networks operate in Lebanon, especially regarding exploitation in the sex trade. Six detainees, including three young men, each had their roles: the first, named "Fadl," facilitates prostitution by several Syrian girls who work for the pimp "Abu Shakir," a character whose identity remains unknown to the security forces. "Fadl" communicates with "Abu Shakir" via mobile phone numbers that change every time, with his task being to lure girls from different regions in Syria to Lebanon, under various pretexts, to exploit them and integrate them into the network, which has a "seasonal" number of workers.
As for the second detainee, "Alaa," investigations revealed that his role in the gang was to secure drivers to take the girls to client locations such as hotels or chalets, charge them for the transportation, and then split the money earned from clients—one-fourth for the girl, one-fourth for him, and the remaining half for "Abu Shakir." The third young man, named "Raghib," took custody of the passports of the Syrian girls upon their arrival in Lebanon, holding them throughout their stay to prevent escape, while also providing clients and facilitating their activities.
The girls' testimonies revealed that two of them were forced into prostitution after "Fadl" exploited their need for money and shelter upon their arrival in Lebanon in search of work, and they admitted they faced verbal and physical abuse every time they refused to meet clients. The third girl indicated in her confessions that her "ex-husband was the one who forced her into prostitution after marrying her at fifteen following her parents' death and her uncle's desire to rid himself of her due to the financial burden." While her ex-husband claimed at the time of their marriage that he would wait for her to mature in understanding sexual relations, it later emerged that he had placed a “bid” on her virginity, won by the highest bidder, and she had no idea how much that bid was.
The "Abu Shakir" case does not only reflect the modus operandi of human trafficking networks in Lebanon, but also highlights the Lebanese authorities' approach to such cases, where the Lebanese judiciary suspected the three men of committing a felony while charging the three women with a misdemeanor, rather than treating them as victims of the gang, as revealed by the investigations.
#### In Times of Crisis... Humans Are Cheaper
The story of this gang is not unfamiliar to the accounts that "Alhurra" has received, as "Fatoun" continues to live through a similar ordeal that has yet to conclude, sharing new insights about prostitution during the crisis. "Prices are much lower," Fatoun confirms, stating that the financial collapse has significantly diminished the payment for sexual services, reflecting a reduced share that gangs allocate to their victims. Instead of the $1,500 she previously received as a monthly salary before the crisis, she now earns only $400, while the minimum charge paid by clients has dropped from $100 per hour to one million Lebanese lira (approximately $40 today) "if the client is Lebanese," whereas for tourists or foreigners, the pricing remains in dollars but at lower rates than before.
Fatoun believes she is currently participating in this field "voluntarily," unlike her initial experience in Lebanon, where she was deceived into believing she would work in a clothing laundry in Beirut. She recounts how she was exploited in her first experience back in 2015, “For a week, I didn't know what was happening,” adding, “I thought I was waiting to start work, and the owner of the house I arrived at convinced me he was operating a legitimate business, telling me about the job. Once I reassured my family about my arrival and status over consecutive days, it came time for them to confiscate my mobile phone.”
Fatoun was transferred to another house containing four other girls, where they were all stripped of their phones, "except one who worked with the gang previously, living among us to monitor us, while two young men took turns guarding the place and communicating with her in emergencies when the girls rebelled, especially after we learned about the true nature of the work prepared for us, as they would threaten and verbally abuse us until we were afraid and calmed down." Fatoun refused to go to the first client, suffering severe physical abuse during which she was filmed naked and threatened with having the images sent to her family and exposed, “This scenario was harder for me than anything else that could happen,” she says. “To send the photos to my family means I would be deprived of returning to Syria and my village for the rest of my life, unless one of my family members killed me.” Under this pressure and threat, Fatoun began her journey of exploitation.
In 2018, after three years of enduring the gang and their work, as they grew comfortable with her, she visited Syria to see her sick father with special permission from the gang while under the threat of leaking the images and pursuing her if she breached the agreement to return or informed the authorities. She did not return to Lebanon, planning to escape through Turkey to Europe, but the plan failed even though the gang did not expose her contrary to their threats.
“At the beginning of 2020, the economic situation and living conditions in Syria worsened, and I decided to return to Lebanon,” she adds, having contacted a former gang member who had stopped working with them, the only one who had kept in touch with her throughout that period, reassuring her. She asked him about work in Lebanon and discovered that he was working for himself in the Hamra area of Beirut.
"This time I returned to work by my own decision," Fatoun continues, although she confirms that finding another job could have spared her this option. Driven by the difficult economic and living conditions, she continues in this work until today.
#### COVID-19 Stimulating the “Market”
The new gang Fatoun deals with targets hotels in the Hamra area, resorts, and the waterfront (Ain el-Mreisseh, Manara, and Raouche), providing clients with "delivery" services for girls after contacting them through WhatsApp or Telegram on a designated work number. She confirms that the COVID-19 pandemic period led to a boom in the network's activities, as demand for "delivery" increased, especially to hotels and chalets during lockdown periods. Pricing would rise during total closures set by the Lebanese state due to mobility difficulties.
Fatoun did not adhere to any health or preventive protocols during that time, stating, “On the contrary, the guys brought more clients who were forced to stay at hotels as a precautionary measure by the Lebanese government for those arriving through Beirut Airport, be they Lebanese or foreigners. We were obliged to meet them without regard for health risks, and indeed I and four other girls contracted COVID-19 at one point, but we got through it safely.” This period marked a significant transformation in the life of "Safia" (name changed), aged 21, who decided after contracting the virus due to her prostitution work, to escape the gang that had exploited her for a long time and sought refuge with a Lebanese protection organization, where she currently lives in a safe, secret shelter waiting to travel out of Lebanon.
#### Exploitation from Childhood
Safia's journey of exploitation began in her childhood, after her mother abandoned her in Syria to flee to Europe following her divorce in 2012. After the death of her grandmother in Syria, she was left with her only aunt, who fled with her to Lebanon after marrying her husband, who lived in the "Badaoui" area in Tripoli. Her aunt's marriage diminished the child’s status, depriving her of care and attention, culminating in one night when her aunt's husband suggested that Safia drop out of school and start working. She remarks, "I was still a child back then, and that night he began telling me about their financial struggles and the need to work and produce money in life, belittling the importance of education and life in Tripoli, assuring me he would help me find work in Beirut, on the condition I visit them later."
Safia moved to an area surrounding the "Shatila" camp accompanied by her aunt’s husband, who left her in a house with three women and around seven children. “On the same night, a man came to tell us that as Syrians in Lebanon, we would die of hunger unless we worked and earned money by any means necessary, claiming he was caring for us through the income from that work, arguing that poverty and begging weren't shameful and that without them, we had no place other than the street. Since I was older than the other children, he promised to arrange sewing work for me, as long as I started begging until then.”
Making her way through two years of disguised begging, selling flowers, tissues, or chewing gum, she states, “I only knew Hamra Street and its offshoots, and the path to home, everything beyond was unknown and held a worse fate for me. Each penny collected went to the landlord, and we kept a small amount of spare change hidden from him.” Safia's tale of hardship persisted until 2019, when an Arab tourist approached her in Hamra Street, trying to convince her to accompany him to the hotel. “I didn’t understand what the man wanted; I kept asking him for money while he continued to invite me to the hotel in exchange for cash. After losing hope with me, he left, whereupon a young man, who monitored us in the street for our protection, came over to me and asked what had transpired, then approached him to talk.”
The young man returned to Safia and urged her to accompany the man to the hotel, “He said to me then: ‘You’ve been promoted; go with him to the hotel and just do what he asks’,” only to discover later that they had agreed on not engaging in sex with her, but rather just some intimate touches while she felt shocked and embarrassed by what was happening, executing only what was requested, during which she received some money with assurances that the required fee was paid to the young man.
The "promotion" Safia received this time signified a new exploitation of her femininity, after having previously been a victim as a child. The working conditions grew harsher, and dealing with the new gang and its demands and nature of work proved tough for Safia, where she worked for less than a year among hotels and homes on demand until she contracted the COVID-19 virus in 2020.
"I received no care or attention, finding myself alone in an isolated room, reviewing my life, decisions, and future, realizing that if I didn’t escape from this cycle today, I would remain trapped for life," says Safia, who recalled a young woman who had offered her help during her time begging by referring her to the organization she works with. Indeed, she contacted her, who arranged a safe escape to the organization and submitted her asylum papers to leave Lebanon.
#### The Most Vulnerable
The stories previously presented, along with investigations by law enforcement agencies, display how human trafficking networks exploit the most vulnerable individuals in society, which the head of legal affairs and advocacy at the Anti-Human Trafficking department of the "Kafa" organization, Moawana Ishaq, corroborates. She indicates in her conversation with "Alhurra" that "the most significant facilitators of trafficking operations are poverty and the general economic conditions of the victim and their family."
Ishaq suggests that even women who engage in prostitution of their own accord are often exploited, "as no one enters the world of prostitution and exploitation entirely willingly, without previous pressures and needs stemming from early marriages or sexual abuse, especially since it’s a violent world against women, especially those in fragile conditions." Furthermore, Ishaq includes factors such as conflicts, wars, and security lapses that produce even more vulnerable groups within society, placing them at risk of deception and exploitation. "Hence, we see that human trafficking networks have significantly increased their activity after the Syrian displacement to Lebanon, accompanied by the poverty and social and familial disintegration and the loss of personal security, which has facilitated human trafficking and victim entrapment."
According to statistics from the General Directorate of General Security, the number of Syrian women arrested for sex work between 2011 and 2018 was alarmingly high, constituting 30% of those detained. This figure soared to 69% just two years later, rising to 77% in 2015, and reached 57% by 2018. A study conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Beirut, in cooperation with the Lebanese Ministry of Justice, even revealed that a significant number of human trafficking and forced sex work victims in Lebanon come from impoverished countries, fleeing misery on the premise that they would work as dancers or fashion models in exchange for amounts they could not earn in their homelands. Many sign contracts written in Arabic without understanding their content.
#### Towards a Deteriorating Situation
If this was the case before the economic crisis, Ishaq states that "the fact that about 70% of the Lebanese population lives below the poverty line confirms that the condition today is worse and that human trafficking is on the rise, especially given the rampant corruption in Lebanon that reflects leniency in enforcement measures and application of laws."
Currently, Ishaq lacks specific numbers that reflect the Lebanese reality regarding human trafficking and its increasing prevalence during the crisis but relies on available indicators to build her analysis. She confirms that "the true picture is very difficult to convey completely, firstly due to the difficulty of accessing and penetrating these communities, and secondly, because of the nature of these crimes, which cannot be recorded without being uncovered, hence statistics indicate only revealed cases and not the existing reality. These are termed covert crimes."
Ishaq stresses the necessity of not overlooking the issue of foreign domestic workers in Lebanon, who are subjected to a sponsorship system that is a primary facilitator for their victimization by human traffickers, especially under current circumstances where they are deprived of their wages and confined to homes, often prohibited from traveling under the pretext of economic conditions and financial collapse. She concludes by asserting that stopping human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Lebanon is a state matter: "Firstly, there should be security efforts to control networks and establish proactive and preventive measures. The state must ensure a minimum standard of social care and improve economic conditions to prevent reaching the vulnerabilities that lead victims to exploitation and initiate real awareness campaigns effectively notifying about the risks of exploitation and methods of entrapment."
For anyone facing such crimes, they can seek assistance through the hotlines of the "Kafa" organization (76090910), which operates a secret shelter for victims of human trafficking.
#### The State... Powerless and Impotent
These expectations of the Lebanese state come at a time when all its institutions are suffering from incapacity and decay due to the ramifications of the economic crisis, which has diminished the capabilities and budgets of the security forces, affecting their abilities and activities accordingly. According to the Public Relations Division of the Internal Security Forces, there is a significant and serious effort being put forth in combating human trafficking, both in terms of training and law enforcement and arrests, but the current problem is that the spread of these crimes occurs at a time when the security forces are under immense pressure due to the country's conditions, with crises and their impacts creating challenges; “However, this does not deter us from fighting human trafficking just as we combat any other crime on a national level, and we are continuing our role in this aspect,” says Ishaq.
She confirms that "the fight against human trafficking is given special priority, as it primarily affects the most vulnerable groups within society, and secondly, because human trafficking is often the entry point to various criminal activities such as drug-related offenses and violence."
Nevertheless, the security forces lack clear figures regarding instances of human trafficking in Lebanon, and there are no statistics available to analyze the spread and evolution of these criminal activities over the past years, despite the importance of such data for any strategy to combat human trafficking.
Based on previous statistics from the Internal Security Forces, the number of human trafficking victims in 2015 was 19, rising to 87 in 2016, before declining to 54 in 2017. Today, the only figures available relate to arrests recorded, which can be used to compare arrest frequency across years and establish trends of increase.
According to data provided by the security forces to "Alhurra," 92 people were arrested in 2020 on charges of engaging in prostitution, with 38 for facilitating it (operators), along with seven individuals arrested for human trafficking, and one for human smuggling. In contrast, up until the end of August in 2021, 11 arrests were made for human trafficking, 55 for prostitution, and 46 for facilitating prostitution, in addition to one case concerning smuggling people.
These figures reflect only the arrest data and not the overall prevalence of human trafficking in Lebanon, where security forces assert that "the current conditions and the economic collapse and its social repercussions have increased human trafficking crimes, especially since the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon has greatly inflated the rates of these crimes since 2011."
The Public Relations Division of the security forces asserts that "trafficking in human beings has been incorporated into training the Internal Security Forces and preparing its personnel, where approximately 2000 personnel from various ranks have received training on dealing with human trafficking crimes and interacting with their victims, particularly those in direct contact with such cases in investigative rooms and with entities specifically working on combating these crimes."
The division emphasizes that the 2011 law concerning human trafficking aims not only to criminalize it but also to protect and assist victims through psychological, moral, and material support, and provide protection from their exploiters.
It also sees a role for the judiciary in distinguishing between prostitution and human trafficking crimes, clearly defining them through several indicators. For instance, the law enacted in 2011 greatly facilitates justice for victims of human trafficking, as before its enactment, human trafficking victims in Lebanon were often penalized rather than protected regarding sexual exploitation, forced labor, and coerced begging. The law also established a recognized investigation mechanism that helps safeguard the rights of victims and reveals their exploitation while considering their psychological conditions.
#### The Law
Lebanon passed the Human Trafficking Law (number 164) in 2011 in response to international pressures that directed efforts toward this issue, as prior to this, Lebanon had no legal framework to criminalize human trafficking or to define its concept clearly, allowing victims to be legally punished for acts in violation of the law, such as prostitution and begging, without acknowledging the exploitation they suffered.
The 2011 law lays out that exploiting any individual through force or threats carries a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years, alongside a financial fine ranging from 100 to 600 times the minimum wage, considering it a felony. Article 586 of the law classifies prostitution as one form of human trafficking, encompassing the definition of the crime that includes "attracting, transporting, receiving, holding, or providing shelter for a person through force or threats, kidnapping or deception, exploiting authority or exploiting vulnerability, offering or receiving money or benefits, or using these means against someone with authority over another person, with the goal of exploiting them or facilitating their exploitation by others." The consent of the victim is disregarded in cases where any of the aforementioned means are utilized.
Despite the legal progress made, human rights organizations express several concerns about some of its ambiguous provisions regarding how to deal with human trafficking victims and their need for protection, citing conflicts with other legal articles, such as Article 523 of the Penal Code, which still equates prostitution networks with their victims. There are significant concerns regarding the degree of commitment of the Lebanese state to enforce the law and exert necessary efforts to combat this historical scourge in the country.
The annual report from the U.S. Department of State on monitoring and combating human trafficking still classifies Lebanon at Tier 2, indicating that it does not meet the minimum standards required for combating trafficking but is making efforts toward that goal, in addition to noting that Lebanon "has not provided victim support and protection services but relies on NGOs, nor has it made significant efforts to prosecute or punish perpetrators of trafficking crimes."
