Human traf­fick­ing in sports

 

“This trade is evil. Any trade that makes you exploit people and destroy their future is evil. It is another version of slave trade.” Matthew Edafe, victim of trafficking (Mission89).

 

Intro­duc­tion

 

The prob­lem of sport traf­fick­ing is an area that has received lim­it­ed atten­tion from nation­al Gov­ern­ments and sport organ­i­sa­tions. There is an impor­tant lack of evi­dence on the nature and the scale of this problem.

 

Let us begin by defin­ing more pre­cise­ly the term human traf­fick­ing: it is encom­passed in the umbrel­la term “mod­ern slav­ery” which can be under­stood as the ille­gal and severe exploita­tion of peo­ple for per­son­al or com­mer­cial gain. It is an umbrel­la term that cov­ers var­i­ous forms of human rights abus­es includ­ing forced labour, bond­ed labour, sex­u­al exploita­tion, domes­tic servi­tude and human traf­fick­ing. Human traf­fick­ing is the process by which peo­ple are exploited.

 

Three ele­ments con­sti­tute mod­ern slavery:

1. Act (for exam­ple recruit­ment and trans­porta­tion of persons);
2. Means (for exam­ple use of force, coer­cion, deception);
3. Pur­pose (exploita­tion) must be present to con­sti­tute the crime of human trafficking.

 

How­ev­er, in the case of child traf­fick­ing (any per­son under 18 years of age) the “Means” ele­ment is not required

 

While extant research has focused on var­i­ous aspects and pur­pos­es for which people
are traf­ficked, one under-researched area is sports traf­fick­ing. How­ev­er, as point­ed out by the US Depart­ment of State 2020 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP) Report, “the con­flu­ence of ath­letes’ desire to play, their fam­i­lies’ hopes of escap­ing pover­ty, agents’ desire to prof­it, leagues’ inter­est in mar­ket­ing com­pet­i­tive play­ers and games, and teams’ eager­ness to find young tal­ent all cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that, if left unreg­u­lat­ed, could be ripe for traf­fick­ers to exploit.”

 

It is thus an area that needs to be urgent­ly addressed.

 

1. Esti­mat­ed numbers

It is dif­fi­cult to give exact num­bers on the scale of traf­fick­ing in sports, as there is a lack of ver­i­fi­able data and research on this topic.

The US Depart­ment of State includ­ed traf­fick­ing in sports for the first time in their 2020 TIP Report, and esti­mates that “with­in Europe’s soc­cer indus­try alone, it is esti­mat­ed there are 15,000 human traf­fick­ing vic­tims each year”, main­ly from West Africa.

Some NGOs, like the French NGO Foot Sol­idaire, sug­gests that in 2007 there were over 7,000 Africans in France who were unsuc­cess­ful in sign­ing to a club, while an under­cov­er media inves­ti­ga­tion sug­gest­ed that there were over 20,000 aspir­ing foot­ballers traf­ficked into Europe.

Due to this lack of data, the scope of traf­fick­ing in sports is dif­fi­cult to deter­mine: traf­fick­ing in sports is pre­dom­i­nant­ly found in foot­ball, base­ball, ice hock­ey, bas­ket­ball, but also in less­er researched sports.

 

2. Forms of traf­fick­ing in sports

 

You may have heard of the Olympic star Sir Mo Farah, who revealed ear­li­er this year that he was traf­ficked to the UK as a child to work as a domes­tic ser­vant (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62123886 ). Oth­er cas­es have received media atten­tion, like the for­mer Pre­mier League foot­ball play­er, Al Ban­gu­ra, who was tricked into leav­ing for the UK to become a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball play­er, but was lured into male pros­ti­tu­tion (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34849619 ).

 

In the glob­al sports busi­ness, mod­ern forms of slav­ery may man­i­fest in dif­fer­ent ways. If we think about sup­ply chains, mega sport­ing events and the infra­struc­ture they require, and the pur­suit of sport­ing tal­ent, it soon becomes clear that there are a myr­i­ad of oppor­tu­ni­ties for labour exploita­tion. For exam­ple, the man­u­fac­ture of sports prod­ucts such as uni­forms and mem­o­ra­bil­ia, the con­struc­tion of build­ings used to host sport­ing activ­i­ties, and the recruit­ment of athletes.

 

The traf­fick­ing of migrant ath­letes, often chil­dren, in sport is a prob­lem preva­lent across the glob­al sports indus­try. Accord­ing to Brack­en­ridge, Fast­ing, Kir­by and Leahy (2010) “Traf­fick­ing in the con­text of sport involves the sale of child ath­letes, usu­al­ly across nation­al bound­aries and for prof­it. This has been described as a new form of child slav­ery that leaves play­ers in a pre­car­i­ous legal posi­tion.”

Accord­ing to migra­tion expert James Esson, there are two dis­tinct process­es of trafficking:

1. Traf­fick­ing in sports: young play­ers, or their fam­i­ly, pays an agent or an inter­me­di­ary say­ing he has con­tacts with pro­fes­sion­al clubs abroad. Here, play­ers obtain a con­tract or the oppor­tu­ni­ty to try out with a club, though it involves degrees of exploitation.
2. Traf­fick­ing through sports: Accord­ing to Esson (2020, p.1) ‘[T]he alleged inter­est from a for­eign club is bogus, and the inter­me­di­ary aban­dons the play­er on arrival in a des­ti­na­tion coun­try. This is often after tak­ing the player’s doc­u­men­ta­tion and mon­ey. Once the pre­car­i­ous nature of their sit­u­a­tion is real­ized, the play­er is often said to
   be too ashamed to return home. He remains in the des­ti­na­tion coun­try ille­gal­ly with­out any means of subsistence.’

 

As the 2020 TIP Report points out, “the exploita­tive scheme of recruit­ing, build­ing trust and depen­den­cy, and tak­ing con­trol upon a job offer is uni­ver­sal”. Like oth­er forms of traf­fick­ing, agents take advan­tage of ath­letes and their fam­i­lies’ aspi­ra­tions to become suc­cess­ful and bet­ter their livelihood.

 

 

Though it is most­ly boys being lured into sports traf­fick­ing, the devel­op­ment of women’s sports, notably foot­ball, also attracts young girls.

 

Some authors sug­gest that traf­fick­ing in sports is a form of labour traf­fick­ing involv­ing clan­des­tine net­works of actors includ­ing agents, inter­me­di­aries, and pow­er­ful sports bod­ies who exert own­er­ship and con­trol of young athletes.

Labour migra­tion is an estab­lished prac­tice in the sports indus­try, where ath­letes move across or with­in bor­ders. Many impor­tant sport bod­ies recruit play­ers in South Amer­i­ca, Africa or Asia. Many indi­vid­u­als are also traf­ficked from these regions, most­ly to the Unit­ed States or Europe.

A large pro­por­tion of indi­vid­u­als are report­ed­ly traf­ficked from Africa into Europe to play foot­ball. This is due to the attrac­tion that Euro­pean foot­ball clubs have, and also to the earn­ing poten­tial that exists.

Although traf­fick­ing of West African play­ers into Europe appears to be the most com­mon migra­tion pat­tern for foot­ball, alter­na­tive migra­tion routes are said to exist yet have been researched less, and needs thus fur­ther investigation.

In the case of the Unit­ed States, there have been reports of base­ball play­ers being traf­ficked from Latin America.

a) Nature of recruitment 

Many migrant ath­letes are traf­ficked with the promise of a lucra­tive pro­fes­sion­al career in sports abroad.

Traf­fick­ing in sports take advan­tage of the dreams and aspi­ra­tions of young peo­ple to find a ways out of pover­ty and improve their own and their family’s socio-eco­nom­ic conditions.

This attracts false agents and inter­me­di­aries ready to exploit these young people’s dreams: an agent may offer them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try out for a pro­fes­sion­al club abroad, in exchange for mon­ey to cov­er the place­ment fees and trav­el costs. Some agents also recruit via social media platforms.

Some peo­ple are recruit­ed through unli­censed sport acad­e­mies. In order for young play­ers to attend they are required to pay exces­sive fees or may enter into sus­pect agree­ments with their ‘coach­es’.

The traf­fick­ing for base­ball play­ers on the oth­er hand attracts more orga­nized and large-scale traf­fick­ing, as tal­ent­ed play­ers can receive greater awards and more lucra­tive con­tracts. This means that these play­ers, once they have signed a pro­fes­sion­al con­tract, will risk to remain under the trafficker’s control.

As point­ed out by the 2020 TIP Report “The dream of com­pet­ing in these coun­tries, in con­junc­tion with inex­pe­ri­ence, hopes of escap­ing pover­ty, the athlete’s desire to play high-lev­el sports, and poten­tial inter­na­tion­al fame makes young peo­ple eas­i­ly exploitable to sports trafficking”.

b) Nature of exploitation 

 

When a per­son is recruit­ed by an agent, he may trav­el to the des­ti­na­tion coun­try through legal chan­nels, using short-terms tourist visas, or via ille­gal chan­nels, using false pass­ports and false trav­el doc­u­ments. When they arrive at des­ti­na­tion, the agent may keep the per­sons mon­ey, pass­port and oth­er impor­tant documents.

 

In some cas­es, the per­son is aban­doned dur­ing tran­sit or upon arrival in the des­ti­na­tion coun­try. With­out pass­port or mon­ey, their stay is ille­gal, and they have no means of going home. This may lead these young ath­letes to engage in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, home­less­ness and even pros­ti­tu­tion to sur­vive. In these cir­cum­stances, these young peo­ple also become more vul­ner­a­ble to oth­er forms of traf­fick­ing and exploitation.

 

In oth­er cas­es, the ath­lete may try out for a club by unof­fi­cial and unreg­u­lat­ed foot­ball train­ing cen­tres, and then being aban­doned, fac­ing the same dif­fi­cul­ties as men­tioned before.

 

Some ath­letes may end up get­ting a con­tract, which terms will usu­al­ly be nego­ti­at­ed by the false agent in his own favour. He does this by using the sense of trust and depen­den­cy he has man­aged to form with the young athlete.

 

This shows how ath­letes may be lured through sports but exploit­ed in oth­er means: some can be forced to work in order to pay off debts putting the vic­tim in a “debt-based coer­cion”, some can be vic­tims of sex­u­al exploitation.

In 2016, the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sale and sex­u­al exploita­tion of chil­dren not­ed that forced labour of chil­dren is strong­ly linked to sport since “[t]he sale of child ath­letes for com­pet­i­tive train­ing and ulti­mate­ly prof­it amounts to a form of sale of chil­dren for the pur­pose of forced labour. It gen­er­al­ly fea­tures an imbal­ance of pow­er, in which finan­cial pow­er is used to draw chil­dren and their fam­i­lies who are in eco­nom­ic hard­ship into unfair prac­tices over which they have no control”.

 

The young ath­letes may not report their traf­fick­er out of fear of reper­cus­sion on their fam­i­lies. There is also a sense of shame and embar­rass­ment for falling vic­tims to the trafficker’s false promis­es. This also explains the lack of data on traf­fick­ing in sports, as so many vic­tims nev­er come forward.

 

 

 

3. Pre­ven­tion

 

As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, there is an impor­tant lack of data on the prob­lem of traf­fick­ing in sports. One prob­lem that aris­es is the dif­fi­cul­ty of defin­ing traf­fick­ing in sports in the light of the UN’s Paler­mo Pro­to­col def­i­n­i­tion: for it to be con­sid­ered human traf­fick­ing, the ele­ment of exploita­tion (the Pur­pose) must be present. How­ev­er, in the con­text of traf­fick­ing in sports, the ele­ment of exploita­tion is not always appar­ent. This can place traf­fick­ing in sports out­side the scope of human traf­fick­ing as defined by the Paler­mo Protocol.

How­ev­er, authors sug­gest that in some cas­es there are var­i­ous degrees of exploita­tion, decep­tion and fraud. Authors like McGee not­ed that there is a “cock­tail” of decep­tion used by agents to recruit young play­ers, cou­pled with cor­rup­tion, fraud and exploita­tion to “auc­tion the child off to sports fran­chis­es and clubs around the world, in a quest to max­i­mize the finan­cial return on their invest­ment”. Decep­tion is also used to lure par­ents into sign­ing fraud­u­lent contracts.

 

There is also a poor under­stand­ing of the exploita­tion that can occur dur­ing the trans­fer of the ath­letes to the des­ti­na­tion coun­try, and how it dif­fers with law­ful and unlaw­ful migra­tion, like for exam­ple human smug­gling where the per­sons agree vol­un­tar­i­ly to being moved to anoth­er country.

Anoth­er issue may arise when young ath­letes are moved to oth­er coun­tries by their par­ents or with their con­sent. In these cas­es, the young peo­ple may by sub­ject to intense train­ing to increase their chance of suc­cess. There is a need for research on this top­ic to under­stand how these prac­tices can be seen as forms of trafficking.

 

The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is start­ing to give atten­tion to the prob­lem of traf­fick­ing in sports: the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child and the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Orga­ni­za­tion (ILO) con­ven­tions on child labour all rec­og­nize the fun­da­men­tal rights of the child, which can be linked to traf­fick­ing in sports as it par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­gets young athletes.

The 2016 UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sale and sex­u­al exploita­tion of chil­dren have stat­ed that “the sale of child ath­letes for com­pet­i­tive train­ing and ulti­mate­ly prof­it amounts to a form of sale of chil­dren for forced labour”.

2017 marks the adop­tion of the Kazan Action Plan, based on the Inter­na­tion­al Safe­guards for Chil­dren in Sports, where nation­al Gov­ern­ments com­mit to link sport pol­i­cy devel­op­ment to the 2030 Agen­da of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs). This doc­u­ment calls on Stat­ed to pro­tect chil­dren, youth and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble groups in the con­text of sports in rela­tions to the SDGs tar­gets 5.2 (elim­i­nate all forms of vio­lence against all women and girls in pub­lic and pri­vate spheres, includ­ing traf­fick­ing and sex­u­al and oth­er types of exploita­tion), 8.7 (take imme­di­ate and effec­tive mea­sures to erad­i­cate forced labour, end mod­ern slav­ery and human traf­fick­ing and secure the pro­hi­bi­tion and elim­i­na­tion of the worst forms of child labour,) and 16.2 (end abuse, exploita­tion, traf­fick­ing and all forms of vio­lence and tor­ture against children).

 

Despite this, there are var­i­ous chal­lenges to address­ing sports trafficking:

 

• First, the absence of reli­able data: due to this, the true scale and nature of the prob­lem is dif­fi­cult to assess, leav­ing peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions igno­rant of the issue.
• Sec­ond, the lack of Gov­ern­ment enforce­ment and poor over­sight by sport gov­ern­ing bod­ies: one dif­fi­cul­ty is that sports traf­fick­ing is a cross-bor­der activ­i­ty, involv­ing thus dif­fer­ent legal and reg­u­la­to­ry systems.
• Third, traf­fick­ing in sports can be dif­fi­cult to detect. As there can be vol­un­tary aspects in sports traf­fick­ing, the issue of whether an ath­lete was exploit­ed aris­es. Because many young peo­ple dream of becom­ing an inter­na­tion­al ath­lete, they will­ing­ly accept to leave their ori­gin coun­try to pur­sue this dream. This pos­es the ques­tion whether exploita­tion occurred or not. Nev­er­the­less, exploita­tion, decep­tion and coer­cion can occur to encour­age an ath­lete to leave their home. How­ev­er, in the case of chil­dren, it is irrel­e­vant whether they con­sent­ed to cir­cum­stances that led to them being trafficked.

In the cas­es where the young play­er signs a con­tract, it can still be con­sid­ered traf­fick­ing, as “[W]hat allows this process to be defined as traf­fick­ing is that these con­tracts are often high­ly exploita­tive and unfavourable for the play­er with agents tak­ing as much as 50 per­cent of the play­er salary for the dura­tion of the con­tract” (Mason et al, 2019, pp.746–747).

 

How can traf­fick­ing in sports be pre­vent­ed? Many pre­ven­tive mea­sures exist, but remains ineffective:

There is an ongo­ing debate involv­ing inter­na­tion­al, region­al and nation­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies of the game, sport and non- sport NGOs, politi­cians, the media and the Unit­ed Nations around the pro­tec­tion of young ath­letes and theirs rights.

FIFA have cre­at­ed guide­lines to pro­hib­it inter­na­tion­al trans­fers in foot­ball of chil­dren under the age of 18. How­ev­er, it comes with five exceptions:

1. par­ents mov­ing to a new coun­try in which the new club is locat­ed for rea­sons not linked to football;
2. the trans­fer takes place with­in the EU or EEA;
3. prox­im­i­ty to the nation­al border;
4. the play­er flees his coun­try of ori­gin for human­i­tar­i­an rea­sons with­out par­ents and is tem­porar­i­ly per­mit­ted to reside in the coun­try of arrival;
5. and the play­er is a stu­dent and moves with­out his par­ents to anoth­er coun­try tem­porar­i­ly for aca­d­e­m­ic reasons.

How­ev­er, these rules have not been ade­quate­ly enforced. Authors such as Firth (2019) sug­gests that, in the case of Pre­mier League clubs “there is no evi­dence of clubs show­ing lead­er­ship in the fight against mod­ern slavery”.

As such, clear and strict reg­u­la­tions should be designed and enforced.

At the civ­il soci­ety lev­el, some NGOs have also attempt­ed to address sports traf­fick­ing. The NGO Mis­sion 89, who pro­tects young ath­letes in the name of sport, have pro­duced ini­tia­tives to place the rights of the child at its fore­front, hold­ing all stake­hold­ers account­able, and to raise aware­ness about sports traf­fick­ing. One impor­tant ini­tia­tive is the “Frame­work on Safe­guard­ing Chil­dren from Traf­fick­ing in Sport”.

Anoth­er impor­tant ini­tia­tive are anti-traf­fick­ing cam­paigns, both at sport­ing events and in ori­gin coun­tries to raise aware­ness among young play­er on the dan­gers of false agents. This is done by NGOs such as “It’s a penal­ty”.

NGOs and civ­il soci­ety at large advo­cate for a mul­ti-agency approach to tack­ling traf­fick­ing in sports. This is need­ed notably to address the root caus­es as to why young peo­ple are ready to leave their ori­gin coun­try at any cost.

Mis­sion 89 notes that sports asso­ci­a­tions, Gov­ern­ments, bor­der agen­cies, trans­port com­pa­nies, sport agents and oth­er actors must coop­er­ate and also be trained on the issue of traf­fick­ing in sports.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham Rights Lab has issued a series of rec­om­men­da­tions to pre­vent and tack­le traf­fick­ing in sports, in their 2021 Report “The prob­lem of sports traf­fick­ing: set­ting an agen­da for future inves­ti­ga­tion and actions”. Some of the will be pre­sent­ed here:

1. Aware­ness rais­ing: sport clubs, asso­ci­a­tions and gov­ern­ing bod­ies should raise aware­ness of the issue of traf­fick­ing among their staff but also among pro­fes­sion­al athletes
2. Clear reg­u­la­tions on eth­i­cal recruit­ment: the recruit­ment prac­tices of young ath­letes should fol­low mod­ern slav­ery, human traf­fick­ing and labour and employ­ment rights and stan­dards. Inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions on children’s rights should also be fol­lowed, as traf­fick­ing in sports main­ly affects young boys and girls.

More­over, addi­tion­al research is need­ed on traf­fick­ing in sports. NGOs like Mis­sion 89 also point out that there is a need of aware­ness rais­ing and edu­ca­tion among young ath­letes and their par­ents about safe path­ways to pro­fes­sion­al sports careers, as to avoid exploita­tion and trafficking.

How­ev­er, sports organ­i­sa­tions and asso­ci­a­tion do not have the pow­er to tack­le the issue of traf­fick­ing in sports alone, as the main dri­ving force to com­bat it must come from Gov­ern­ments, as they are the only ones who have juris­dic­tion to pur­sue crim­i­nals. Accord­ing to the 2020 TIP Report, “Gov­ern­ments should acknowl­edge when their nation­al sport leagues or asso­ci­a­tions in their coun­try are not ade­quate­ly pro­tect­ing ath­letes and inves­ti­gate cas­es where agents vio­late anti-traf­fick­ing and labor statutes”. Fur­ther­more, the TIP Report sug­gests var­i­ous ways in which Gov­ern­ments could pre­vent and tack­le traf­fick­ing in sports:

1. increas­ing coor­di­na­tion between their youth or child ser­vices pro­grams and their sports programs;
2. train­ing con­sular offi­cers on com­mon indi­ca­tors or schemes traf­fick­ers use with­in stu­dent or sports visas programs;
3. and pur­su­ing part­ner­ships or dia­logues with sports agen­cies and leagues to begin to address this form of human traf­fick­ing, such as through nation­wide pub­lic aware­ness initiatives.

 

We would like to wish you suc­cess in all your endeav­or, and we would be hap­py to con­tribute by orga­niz­ing a webi­nar, or more, on human traf­fick­ing in sports. As you may know, we already have 22 webi­na­rs on the top­ic of human traf­fick­ing and a lot of followers. 

 

Bib­li­og­ra­phy:

 

Brack­en­ridge, C., Fast­ing, K., Kir­by, S., and Leahy, T (2010) Pro­tect­ing Chil­dren from Vio­lence in Sport, Inno­cen­ti Pub­li­ca­tions [online]. Avail­able at: https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/ pdf/violence_in_sport.pdf

Esson, J. (2020) ‘Play­ing the vic­tim? Human traf­fick­ing, African youth, and geo­gra­phies of struc­tur­al inequal­i­ty,’ Pop­u­la­tion, Space and Place 26(6): pp.1–12

Firth, D. (2019) ‘The response of Pre­mier­ship foot­ball clubs to the Mod­ern Slav­ery Act,’ Evi­dence sub­mis­sion to the All Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Group on Sport, Mod­ern Slav­ery and Human Rights [online]. Avail­able at: https://www.appgshr.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2019/08/The-responce-of-Premiership-clubs-to-modern-slavery-v1.pdf

Mason, C., Dar­by, P., Dry­wood, E., Esson, J. and Yil­maz, S. (2019) ‘Rights, Risks and Respon­si­bil­i­ties in the Recruit­ment of Chil­dren with­in the Glob­al Foot­ball Indus­try,’ Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Children’s Rights 27: pp.738–756

McGee, D. 2012. Dis­placed child­hood: Labour exploita­tion and child traf­fick­ing in sport. In: Quayson, A. & Arhin, A. (eds.) 1 ed. Labour Migra­tion, Human Traf­fick­ing and Multi­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tions: The Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Illic­it Flows. New York: Rout­ledge, pp.71–90.

McGee, D. 2015, ‘What the next FIFA pres­i­dent could do to tack­le child traf­fick­ing in foot­ball’, The Con­ver­sa­tion, 11 Decem­ber [online]. Avail­able at: https://theconversation.com/what-the- next-fifa-president-could-do-to-tackle-child-trafficking-in-football-52016

 Report Of The Spe­cial Rap­por­teur Of The Human Rights Coun­cil On The Sale Of Chil­dren, Child Pros­ti­tu­tion And Child Pornog­ra­phy (2016), Sale of chil­dren, child pros­ti­tu­tion and child pornog­ra­phy, A/71/261. Avail­able on: https://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/71/261

U.S. Depart­ment of State (2020) Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Annu­al Report [online]. Avail­able at:https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2020-TIP-Report-Complete-062420- FINAL.pdf

Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham Rights Lab (2021) The prob­lem of sports traf­fick­ing: set­ting an agen­da for future inves­ti­ga­tion and action. Avail­able on: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/resources/reports-and-briefings/2021/august/the-problem-of-sports-trafficking.pdf