Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

64
Urban crime and violence
Youth gangs are
found throughout
the world, partly
spurred by rapid
urbanization,
exclusion, poverty
and the enactment
of repressive public
policies towards
marginalized groups
Many young men
from marginalized
communities join
gangs who help to
replace the
extended family and
who provide
economic and social
values not found in
mainstream society
Western Europe, and nations within Southeast Asia, Central
America and Western Africa. Corruption and weak state
institutions have been identified as some of the principal risk
factors associated with the prevalence of transit routes in
some of these regions and nations. In one of the highest
transit zone states – Bulgaria – corruption linked to organized
crime and human trafficking were cited as principal
reasons initially hindering its accession to the EU. 98
Trafficking people is a relatively low-risk, low-cost
venture for organized crime. The International Organization
for Migration (IOM) notes that ‘compared with other illicit
forms of trafficking such as drugs or weapons, the investments
made by the traffickers in a victim are limited to
transportation and, sometimes, documentation, bribes,
protection and marketing’. 99 Moreover, unlike other illegal
commodities such as drugs, which can generally be sold only
once to a consumer, human contraband can be sold several
times over.
The regions that are the most common destinations
include countries within Western Europe, East and
Southeast Asia, and some countries in the Western Asia subregion,
such as Turkey. The US and Canada, respectively, are
identified as very high and high destinations for human
trafficking. Germany is the highest destination nation for
women and children trafficked for sexual purposes. 100
There are two prime reasons underlying trafficking to
destination countries: the first is the demand for cheap
labour in destination nations; the second is the perception of
greater economic and living opportunity in destination
nations by victims from origin nations. These beliefs are
easily exploited by traffickers who typically prey on poorly
educated individuals from distressed social and economic
backgrounds. For example, a United Nations Interregional
Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) study that
documents women trafficked from Romania to Germany
notes that:
Recruiters targeted young women (17 to 28
years old) from rural areas with a low level of
education and no employment. While being
recruited, 95 per cent of victims were lied to
regarding the nature of the work they were
going to perform in Germany, the working
conditions and the living conditions in
Germany. 101
Trafficking often involves the movement of persons,
especially females, from rural to urban areas across borders,
as well as within their own nations. Victims are lured to
cities with promises of work or marriage, such as in Lao PDR,
Viet Nam and Indonesia, where many are later exploited in
factories, for sexual purposes or domestic servitude. In
Ecuador, some poor farm families have been forced to sell
their children to work in the cities, and in Cambodia,
traffickers move large number of rural women to cities to
take advantage of the demand for cheap labour and sex. 102
Indeed, serving the urban sex industry is a primary reason
for trafficking women and girls.
Youth and territory-based gangs
Like organized crime, youth gangs are found throughout the
world, partly spurred by rapid urbanization, exclusion,
poverty and the enactment of repressive public policies
towards marginalized groups. Some gangs, such as the Crips
found in the US and Europe, have international reach and
have become ‘institutionalized’ by virtue of persistence over
time, complex organizational composition, adaptive survival
strategies and the ability to meet some local community
needs. In the US, increase in gang violence has been
popularly linked to the growth in cocaine markets beginning
during the 1980s, although empirical studies do not clearly
support causal connections. 103 In Latin America, youth gangs
constitute key features on the urban violence landscape, and
are variously known as pandillas, maras, bandas, galeras,
quadrilhas, barras and chapulines. 104 Examples include the
youth gangs of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, whose
violence is legendary throughout Latin America, even spawning
an internationally acclaimed movie entitled Cidade de
Deus (City of God). In Brazil, two-thirds of all homicides
involve youths, 105 where children as young as six years are
drawn into gangs to serve as lookouts and carriers of hard
drugs. 106 Apart from drug trafficking, youth gangs in
Guatemala regularly engage in pick pocketing, mugging,
theft and bus robberies, kidnapping and arms trafficking, as
well as various forms of social violence such as territorial
conflict, rape and vandalism. 107 In sub-Saharan Africa, where
the impacts of rapid urbanization and poverty have been
particularly severe, many young men from marginalized
communities join gangs who help to replace the extended
family and who provide economic and social values not
found in mainstream society.
Although seen as a reaction to economic conditions,
one research stream suggests that institutionalized urban
youth gangs have evolved as avenues through which resistance
identities have been forged as a means for marginalized
young people to stand against prevailing cultures and the
instability of modernizing societies. 108 In this context, youth
gangs may be distinguished from organized crime groups,
which have been described as primarily profit driven. While
no reliable numbers exist, it has been estimated that, worldwide,
membership of youth gangs runs into millions –
spreading throughout both high and low crime cities. While
the direction of causality is arguable, recent research
suggests that cities that have high violence rates tend to have
institutionalized youth gangs, and this includes Chicago, Los
Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Medellin, Caracas, Kingston, Lagos,
Mogadishu and Belfast. 109
Although youth gangs often become involved in
common crime and violence, their enterprises also intertwine
with mainstream community life, thus making
suppression especially challenging. While this involvement
may include politics, one trend has been away from politicization,
especially as left-wing movements declined during
the 1990s. A recent study quotes a Central American
journalist in this regard, who notes: ‘Until recently, a rebellious
youth from Central America would go into the
mountains and join the guerrillas. Today, he leaves the