Human trafficking is a horrifying yet relatively widespread practice that has for centuries involved threatening, abductions, fraud, deceit, and coercion to recruit, transport, transfer, and harbor a person. The victims of human trafficking are then subjected to various forms of exploitation, usually economic or sexual. This paper particularly reviews the issue of human trafficking through the three lenses of the ethics triangle: deontology (rules-based approach), utilitarianism (consequences-based approach), and virtue theory (morals-based approach).
The concept of invoking obligation is a fundamental principle in deontology that operates based on the rules of an accepted ethical code. The premise is that a good or proper activity complies with an obligation that may be determined via logic. Human trafficking is one of society’s greatest and fastest-growing illegal sectors, and it is consequently wrong from a deontological standpoint. As a result of the issue’s illegality, a deontologist will always observe the law and, as a result, will avoid or work to eradicate human trafficking (Burnor and Raley 300). A person who believes in the idea will make consistent decisions since such decisions will take into account one’s responsibilities, which may include commitments to other people or society. In terms of the rules-based approach, human trafficking is unethical primarily because it is illegal, which inherently implies its negative consequences for human society.
The goal of utilitarianism is to achieve the greatest amount of happiness possible. According to the view, what characterizes good or right is an activity that gives the greatest number of people an immense amount of joy, or rather an absence of misery. Utilitarianism evaluates an activity based on its outcomes, not on how much it benefits the parties involved. Furthermore, utilitarianism makes an activity ethical if its initial consequences are negative, but its final effects are positive.
As such, this approach leads to an objectively disturbing perspective on the human trafficking problem. It establishes that human trafficking can be in equal measure ethical and unethical, depending on whom a philosopher decides to focus. For example, sex trafficking may be beneficial in the long run since it allows sex workers to make money while also taking care of their necessities. It may bring joy and pleasure to the customer, as well as financial benefits to the traffickers involved. On the other hand, it is a negative since it takes advantage of a vulnerable, often kidnapped individual that can be seriously harmed and has the potential to severely sabotage family values within the society. In reality, this type of trafficking will damage much more people than it would benefit in any acceptable way, but the utilitarianism ethics theory does not follow this logic.
Furthermore, another important component of the notion is that no one’s suffering or pleasure is more or less valued than another’s. For instance, the suffering a victim endures as a result of forced work is comparable to the pleasure a human trafficker derives from pursuing their benefits and interests, particularly in terms of money. What matters, then, is quantity or intensity, which entails selecting a decision or a collection of expected results that have the best chance of giving the most enjoyment to all parties involved. These metrics appear to be extremely emotionally inappropriate given the particular subject but are nevertheless the key elements in the consequence-based lens on human trafficking.
Finally, Virtue Ethics radically rejects human trafficking, as it operates on the principle of only performing actions that one would be comfortable having performed toward them. Virtue ethics focuses on a person in general instead of their separate actions, viewing one’s decisions as contributing elements to one’s overall morality. It depicts an image of a morally pure and just behavior as the ethical ideal a person should strive towards in every action and decision of their life.
Consecutively, its perspective on human trafficking appears to be the most intuitive, and the easiest for most individuals to understand and agree with. It asserts that human trafficking is wrong simply because of its lack of virtue and its immorality (Burnor and Raley, 318), which in turn stems from the violation of the fundamental human rights of freedom and autonomy that victims are stripped of. Furthermore, it characterizes the perpetrators of human trafficking, as well as the willing and informed beneficiaries of trafficked labor or sexual favors, as immoral people.
Overall, the issue can be assessed through one of the three-axis, that had formed the lenses of ethics around them. One might examine whether trafficking a human being is legal or not, whether it leads to positive consequences or not, or whether it is moral or not. However, it is important to mention that although utilitarianism is the only outlook, which does not initially provide a clear rejection of the human trafficking problem, it still might render it unethical. To argue this point, a utilitarianist would have to articulate that the negative consequences of human trafficking outweigh the positive, which can be achieved simply by the fact that the number of victims outweighs the number of perpetrators.
Work Cited
Burnor, Richard, and Raley, Yvonne. Ethical Choices: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy with Cases. 2nd ed., Oxford, 2017.