WUNRN
ORGAN TRADE BLACK MARKET - POOR
WOMEN & CHILDREN - TRAFFICKING - DECEPTION - HIGH RISKS
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New Internationalist - May 2014
Issue
The illicit trade in human
organs – mainly kidneys – is a multimillion dollar business. Spanning
continents, bringing together for a brief period the medically desperate with
the desperately poor, it is portrayed by the pushers as helping out people in extreme
need. But this illegal, exploitative trade remains firmly in the hands of
criminal networks.......
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----- Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 1:50 PM
Subject: Organ Trade Black Market - Poor Women & Children -
Trafficking, Deception
WUNRN
Organ Trade/Trafficking - Tragic
Global Reality & Exploitation of Extremely Poor, Marginalized, Vulnerable,
At Risk, WOMEN & GIRLS
AN ORGAN IS SOLD EVERY HOUR, THE WORLD
HEALTH ORGANIZATION WARNS - BLACK MARKET OF ORGANS ON THE RISE
By Damien Gayle -
Desperate: An Indian woman shows the scar from where she
sold her kidney in a black market transplant operation.
An organ is sold once
an hour, the World Health Organisation has warned, amid fears that the illegal
trade is again on the rise.
The U.N. public health
body estimates that 10,000 organs are now traded every year, with figures
soaring off the back of a huge rise in black market kidney transplants.
Wealthy patients are
paying up to £128,500 for a kidney to gangs, often in China, India and
Pakistan, who harvest the organs from desperate people for as little as £3,200.
Eastern Europe also
has a huge market for illegal organ donation and last month the Salvation Army
revealed it had rescued a woman brought to the
With kidneys believed
to make up 75 per cent of the black market in organs, experts believe the rise
of diseases of affluence - like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart
problems - is spurring the trade.
The disparity of
wealth between rich countries and poor also means there is no shortage of
willing customers who can pay a premium - and desperate sellers who need the
cash.
Dr Luc Noel, a WHO
official, told The Guardian: 'The stakes are so big, the profit that can be made so
huge, that the temptation is out there.'
The WHO does not know
how many of the 106,879 known transplant operations in 2010 were performed with
illegally harvested organs, but Dr Noel believes the figure could be as high as
10 per cent.
A lack of law
enforcement in some countries, and an inadequate legal framework in others
meant that the traffickers urging poor people to part with an organ have it too
easy, said Dr Noel.
A medical source with
knowledge of the situation in
'The
stakes are so big, the profit that can be made so huge, that the temptation is
out there'
Dr Luc Noel, WHO official
'While commercial
transplantation is now forbidden by law in
He added that some of
Jim Feehally,
professor of renal medicine at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust,
said that the key issue was one of exploitation, with poor donors often left
with no medical care to recover from the brutal operations.
'The people who gain are the rich transplant patients who can afford to buy a kidney, the doctors and hospital administrators, and the middlemen, the traffickers,' he said. 'It's absolutely wrong, morally wrong.'
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http://www.unric.org/en/human-trafficking/27447-organs-for-sale - Full Text - 2013 - UN Regional Info Centre Western. Europe
Organs for Sale
Human trafficking is most commonly known
for the severe forms of violence it entails, such as incarceration, rape,
torture and sexual enslavement. But human trafficking does not stop with human
beings. All over the world, the organs of human beings are being trafficked,
sometimes with, and sometimes without, the consent of those to whom they
belong. People are directly, or indirectly, being forced to sell their own
organs for a low price, often to middlemen, who make thousands of Euros from
poor vulnerable persons........
At its 59th Session, the General
Assembly discussed the trafficking of human organs in the context of
transnational organized crime. Within the Resolution that emerged from
discussions, the General Assembly “Urged Member States to adopt measures to
prevent, combat and punish the illicit removal of, and trafficking in, human
organs.”
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THE ORGAN TRADE - Film - Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYprLPJSxQg
This film shows men in The Organ
Trade, but continued evidence shows women and children, often very poor,
sometimes kidnapped and abducted, exploited in the sale of organs.
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WUNRN
KIDNAPPING, ABDUCTING, MURDER OF
CHILDREN
FOR SALE OF CHILDREN'S ORGANS -
GIRLS
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Direct Link to Report to the United
Nations 2007 of Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children,
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography:
ABDUCTED & MISSING CHILDREN.
SALE OF CHILDREN'S ORGANS
SCROLL DOWN TO 2007 and
A/HRC/4/31.
Mandate of Current UN Special
Rapporteur on Sale of Children +
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UN.GIFT - Global Initiative to Fight
Human Trafficking
TRAFFICKING FOR HUMAN BODY ORGANS -
GIRLS & WOMEN
While
it is commonly believed that trafficking only takes places for commercial
sexual exploitation or for forced labour, trafficking in fact takes many forms
such as trafficking for forced marriage and trafficking for organ trade among
others.
Trafficking in organs is a crime that occurs in three broad categories.
Firstly, there are cases where traffickers force or deceive the victims into
giving up an organ. Secondly, there are cases where victims formally or
informally agree to sell an organ and are cheated because they are not paid for
the organ or are paid less than the promised price. Thirdly, vulnerable persons
are treated for an ailment, which may or may not exist and thereupon organs are
removed without the victim's knowledge. The vulnerable categories of persons
include migrants, especially migrant workers, homeless persons, illiterate
persons, etc. It is known that trafficking for organ trade could occur with
persons of any age. Organs which are commonly traded are kidneys, liver and the
like; any organ which can be removed and used, could be the subject of such
illegal trade.
Trafficking in organ trade is an organized crime, involving a host of
offenders. The recruiter who identifies the vulnerable person, the transporter,
the staff of the hospital/ clinic and other medical centres, the medical
professionals, the middlemen and contractors, the buyers, the banks where
organs are stored are all involved in the racket. It is a fact that the entire
racket is rarely exposed and therefore, the dimensions are yet to be
appropriately fathomed.
Several International standards are in place on trafficking for organ trade:
a. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons
includes "organ removal" and its subsequent sale as an end purpose of
trafficking. Article 3 of the UN Trafficking Protocol that defines trafficking
in persons, clearly includes trafficking for the purpose of removal of organs.
b. Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (2000) to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) - This protocol states that the sale of children for the purpose of transferring their organs for profit should be a criminal offence.
c. World Health Organization (WHO)
The Guiding Principles on Human Organ Transplantation (1991) of WHO state that
the commercialization of human organs is 'a violation of human rights and human
dignity'.
d. An Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine Concerning Transplantation of Organs and Tissues of Human Origin (2002) prohibits organ and tissue trafficking, deriving a financial gain or comparative advantage from the human body and its parts and calls on States to provide appropriate sanctions for such trafficking.
The response to trafficking in organ trade has more or less been lacklusture. Considering the serious health implications and the severe human rights violations of the vulnerable victims, it is essential that this issue gets the desired attention. This requires several steps including the following:
- Appropriate laws in sync with the UN Protocols and
principles.
- Stringent law enforcement against all those involved.
- Training and orientation of the law enforcement