Exploitation

We can define exploitation as any act where someone abuses the pain points and weakness of another. The exploiter takes advantage of others for their benefit, while the one who is being exploited doesn’t get their full rights. Exploitation happens with women, men, and children of every background and age. For instance: child labor, sexual assault, domestic violence, criminal activities, immigrant slavery, and capital slavery are types of exploitation. Let’s dig into them in detail so that you can spot exploitation and help others.

Types of Exploitation

1.    Capital Exploitation:

 Capital exploitation happens when your boss sucks the blood out of you to increase his internal revenue but only pays so little that you can barely survive. This is common in offices, agriculture, and food factories. It originates resentment and anger in the employee toward the employer, but he is bound to work due to poverty or other reasons.  

[According to Marx’s theory of exploitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#cite_ref-ReferenceA_3-1) , the exploiter belongs to a socio-economic class called the bourgeoisie and the exploited belong to the working class(wage earners) called the proletariat.

For instance: The employer invests money and gives the raw material for baking a cake, but it is the employee who bakes the cake and generates redundant products for the employer by doing extra work.  The employer is doing absolutely nothing. But surplus or redundant product goes to capital which he distributes to broaden his network of exploitation.

2.    Sexual exploitation

Exploiters manipulate adolescent boys and girls to do intimate activities for them in exchange for expensive things like gifts, clothes, bags, or money. In addition, they take advantage of their pain points, threaten them to expose them in front of the world, and make them feel indebted.

In some cases, the victim is doing this without their consent because they have been trafficked or smuggled. The exploiter gets people in the country with free travel expenses and job opportunities. But in the end, they force them to do pornography and prostitution introducing them as call girls in clubs, private places, and whorehouses.

3.    Criminal Exploitation

All the activities which are prohibited under the criminal act are executed mostly through those under 18, who are orphans, homeless, or in an inferior position to resist.  This comes under child criminal exploitation(CCE). The criminal activities that a child is forced to do could be:

  • Drug dealing or hemp tilling(which is soft drug cultivation)

  • ATM cards robbery

  • Forgery by making fake documents and presenting them as real ones to deceive others

  • Accustomed to Beggary and snatching

  • Dip or pickpocketing

4.    Domestic Enslavement or Servitude

This exploitation is most common in houses where helpers or assistants are being exploited in return for little wages. They are supposed to work 24/7 like a machine. Their employer could hit them, abuse them sexually or cut down their wages at all. Such exploited people often do not get basic requirements like proper clothing, food, medical checkup, and a place to sleep.

It is tough to indicate such exploitation because the helper is not allowed to talk to anyone or go out. But still 10,613 victimized prospects were appealed to [National referral mechanism](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2021-uk-annual-report-on-modern-slavery/2021-uk-annual-report-on-modern-slavery-accessible-version#:~:text=In%20total%2C%2010%2C613%20potential%20victims,(3%2C560)%20of%20all%20referrals.)  , out of which 34% prospects were UK locals.

5.    Human Trafficking

United Kingdom’s [Palermo protocol](https://www.kirkleessafeguardingchildren.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2016-01-27-The-Palermo-Protocol-Definition-of-Trafficking.pdf)  which stops and penalizes human trafficking defines it a constituent of three factors.

  • Abduction: if a person is being transported, smuggled, and shifted from their home town to another place or country, it happens mostly in county lines.

  • Way or wild card: the factor by which the victim is convinced or forced to move, including treat, terror, betray, compassion, love, or fraud.

  • Final Intention: The purpose for which the victim is trafficked includes slavery, coerced labor, sexploitation, and enslavement.

All these intentions are discussed above. Although undertaking identity documents of the victim is common so that he or she can’t move out of the place. Even they are being threatened with exposure to the immigration agencies in case they refuse to do the slavery.

How bad is exploitation in the UK?

Despite the Modern slavery act that acquired royal concession in 2015, statistics about exploitation are not very pleasant, have a look at them.

In 2019, out of 2,251 prospects, 48% of labor enslavement and 39% of sexploitation cases were approved by [Army Salvation](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/modernslaveryintheuk/march2020#:~:text=of%20the%202%2C251%20potential%20victims,39%25%20had%20experienced%20sexual%20exploitation.)

 in England and Wales. This didn’t stop here, the United Kingdom had 13,000 [exploits of trafficking in 2022]( https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-trafficking-in-persons-report/united-kingdom/) 

Signs of Exploitations

  • Change in behavior, a person could become quiet, afraid, hide things, and don’t hang out with people at all.

  • Physical abuse in the form of marks, bruises, and untreated cigarette burns.

  • STIs

  • Financial abuse could be in the form of no money to pay the rent or buy necessities.

  • Sudden cash flow in the bank accounts of someone

  • Changes in identity documents repetitively

  • Sudden changes in the appearance of somebody especially women doing white slavery.

What to do if you or someone around you is a victim of exploitation

If you are a victim

  • Ask for help, reach out to people who can drag you out of this situation

  • Contact agencies working to stop exploitation

  • Educate yourself about your rights to stop abuse and exploitation

  • If emergency call 999, otherwise call 101

If you know someone who is a victim

  • First, know the red flags that indicate it is an exploitation

  • Reach out to an exploited person, and try to converse with them.

  • If they are willing to get help, make sure you take them to the police for help or call National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888

  • Call western adult protection Gateway service at 028 9504 9999 or southern adult protection Gateway service at [028 9504 9999](https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/who-contact-if-you-suspect-abuse-exploitation-or-neglect)

  • If you spot child exploitation, call Crimestoppers at 0800 555 111 [voluntarily](https://www.trafford.gov.uk/residents/children-and-families/Child-Exploitation.aspx)

  • If they refuse out of their fear, try to get indulge them in conversation and ask questions, tell them about their rights, and what the state can do for them

  • Exploited people are often not in a good mental state, so arrange a psychiatrist for them, if they don’t get easy with you.

  • Run a campaign to raise information about human exploitation

  • Join communities and volunteer to prevent modern slavery to execute these Voldmort from the society to prosper.