Increasing and Reduction Factors in the Issue of Human Trafficking in Malaysia from the Perspective of Enforcement

The issue of human trafficking is a global issue that plagues most countries in the world, including Malaysia. This article aims to discuss the qualitative analysis findings on the factors that influence the issue of human trafficking in Malaysia from the perspective of enforcement. This study is an analysis of data obtained from in-depth interviews with five informants among the authorities who are directly involved in dealing with human trafficking issues. Based on the findings from the interviews conducted, the factors that influence the issue of human trafficking in Malaysia can be divided into two, namely, factors that influence the increase and factors that influence the reduction of the issue. Factors influencing the increase in human trafficking issues comprise economic factors in Malaysia and poverty factors of the victims in their country of origin while factors influencing the reduction in these issues are community awareness factors as well as operational and enforcement factors. Introduction Human trafficking is a very complex and worrying global issue (Daily News Online, 2016). In Malaysia, although various efforts to address this issue have been carried out by the authorities, the issue still persist to this day. The Royal Malaysian Police issued the total number of human trafficking cases in Malaysia recorded from 2015 until March 2019 (Table 1). International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 1 0 , No. 8, 2020, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2020 HRMARS 845 MATTER 2015 2016 2017 2018 March 2019 TOTAL Number of Cases 127 439 410 281 48 1305 Number of Suspected Trafficked Persons 1261 2173 2298 1148 233 7113 Number of Victims 248 661 514 58 17 1498 Table 1: Royal Malaysian Police Distribution of Statistics of Human Trafficking Cases in Malaysia from 2015 to March 2019 Based on these statistics, human trafficking is indeed a very worrying issue. This record high number of human trafficking cases has led to a statement from The U.S. Department of State which indicated that Malaysia is still unable to address the issue of human trafficking as a whole and has not been able to achieve the best rankings in the human trafficking report that they released. (U.S. Department of State, 2018). The human trafficking report released each year by the U.S. Department of State gives a ranking to each country according to the efforts made by those countries in combating human trafficking in their respective countries based on the minimum standards set by the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) (U.S. Department of State, 2019). The ranking given to each country in the human trafficking report comprise rankings of Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Observation and Tier 3. Tier 1 is the best ranking given through this report followed by Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch list and Tier 3 which is the lowest ranking. The ranking for Malaysia from 2015 to 2019 in the human trafficking report is shown in the table below. Based on human trafficking reports released from 2014 until 2019, Malaysia has never been placed at Tier 1 but has been placed once at Tier 2 , six times at Tier 2 Watch list and once at Tier 3. Figure 1: The Ranking for Malaysia In 2014-2019 Human Trafficking Report by The U.S. Department of State 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Malaysia Rankings in the 2014-2019 Human Trafficking Report