Costa Rica – Vacation Paradise With A Sinister Side
While Central America’s Costa Rica boasts lush rainforests, breathtaking waterfalls, and a vast array of exotic wildlife, it is also home to significant human sex and organ trafficking and forced labor. The US State Department says that the Costa Rican government is not doing enough to stop or prosecute these crimes.
Just beyond the resort hotels, ethereal beaches, and primitive wildlife of Costa Rica is a seedy underbelly of corruption that shows no mercy to its victims. An estimated 20.9 million adults and children are bought and sold in the sex trafficking industry. Costa Rica has been identified as a “source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.”
It has the dubious distinction of being one of the top sex tourism destinations, and 80% of the men traveling to Costa Rica for this purpose come from the United States. It is not uncommon for children as young as 8 years old to be exploited by traffickers.
Megan Gill explains that children used in this way does not occur in a vacuum. “The idea is instilled from a young age because of a social norm that a person can be used and abused for financial gain,” says Megan, who, along with Karlie Johnson, founded Love and Scissors. Their organization teaches cosmetology skills to victims of human trafficking in Costa Rica with the ultimate goal of giving them a marketable skill set so they can get off the streets.
Last summer, teachers John Mauro and Amber Kasic of Grand Haven, Michigan, spent three weeks in Costa Rica working with the non-profit Salvando Corazones to build safe houses, and provide rehabilitation and education for young trafficking victims. According to Fox 17 News, their purpose was “to bring awareness to this issue, so that we can give these girls a hand, a fighting chance at a new life.”
Without intervention, agencies such as Traffic911, who work to stop child sex trafficking, say that the average life expectancy of a child forced into this is a mere seven years.
Organ trafficking is also on the increase in Costa Rica in recent years. A joint United Nations and Costa Rican report, titled “Drug Trafficking and the Threat of Organized Crime in Costa Rica” includes analysis of this growing threat:
It seems the victims were recruited due to their economic situation in San José, where local doctors extracted their organs and presumably transplanted them into foreign clients. In exchange for the procedure, the donors received amounts of up to US$20,000.
So while Costa Rica may be a fantastic place to visit for surfing or exploring exotic animals and forests, it has earned an ugly reputation for human trafficking for sex and organs. It is hoped that they will work to end this tragic reality.
