International Organ Trafficking Crisis: Solutions Addressing the Heart of the Matter

The grave inadequacy of current international attempts to curtail organ trafficking signals the need for a new approach in the form of a fundamental paradigm shift. Instead of continuing to focus efforts solely on criminalization, countries must devise a broad scheme aimed at decreasing organ shortages. These shortages fuel the illegal organ market, as people desperate for life-saving transplants travel internationally to purchase organs. Until the demand for this underground market subsides, traffickers will continue to exploit inconsistent legal loopholes in different countries by hopping across borders. To effectively address this problem, the international community must craft a new binding instrument that uniformly criminalizes organ trafficking while simultaneously encouraging domestic legislation to address the organ shortage.