Expertise on Legal Aspects of Organ Trafficking and THB for the Removal of Organs

Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal (THB/OR) has long remained a subject of rumour and unconfirmed reports. Since the 1980s, however, a growing body of fieldwork and other research by journalists and medical anthropologists has documented cases of such trafficking, particularly in the past fifteen years, as the demand for organs continues to grow. That research has shed light on this phenomenon, in part, through detailed portraits of victims, recipients and those engaged in directing or otherwise furthering the organ removal networks. Patients in wealthier countries, languishing on waiting lists, are increasingly travelling abroad to obtain the required organ. The victim-donors are generally suffering from acute poverty and are deceived or coerced by the trafficking networks into giving up an organ for a mere fraction of the money the recipient has paid the traffickers.