What is Human Trafficking?
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The official definition, taken from the United Nation's Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, is "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation."
Anti-trafficking activist and scholar Kevin Bales' definition is less of a mouthful:
Slavery: "being forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence, and being unable to walk away."
Isn't slavery a thing of the past?
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Slavery was outlawed individually by most countries throughout the 19th century, however, it was not officially illegalized internationally until the United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others in 1949.
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There's a distinct difference between outlawing slavery and abolishing it: slavery still exists, and the legal term for it today is human trafficking. When slavery became illegal, it shifted to a black market industry that has only grown in the last 100 years.
There are currently more slaves, now called human trafficking victims, than at any other time in history.
Doesn't human trafficking have to do with transporting people?
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The term 'trafficking' intuitively implies movement, but the legal definition of trafficking does not include this. Human trafficking is being forced to work under threat of violence; sometimes that involves being moved around, sometimes it does not.
Types of Human Trafficking
Labor Trafficking
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Labor trafficking encompasses forced labor within any industry (most commonly seen in agriculture, construction, production, restaurants, hospitality, etc.) Most labor trafficking cases are unpaid or barely paid, but any labor that is forced, required under threat of violence, or coerced in any other means constitutes labor trafficking. Manifestations of labor trafficking include debt bondage (also called bonded labor), domestic servitude, and prison labor.
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While most human trafficking awareness focuses on sex trafficking, more than 70% of human trafficking worldwide is labor trafficking.
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Sex Trafficking
Commercial sexual exploitation is not the most common, but is the most widely known, form of human trafficking. In the United States, traffickers' methods of exploitation must (legally) fall under one of three categories: force, fraud, or coercion. While force (threats of violence, sexual assault, abduction) is often emphasized in the media as the beginning of sex trafficking, coercion is the most common form of sex trafficking recruitment and is much more difficult for victims to identify or protect themselves from.
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Even though there are more labor trafficking victims than sex trafficking victims globally, sex trafficking makes more money worldwide. Of the $150 billion that the International Labor Organization estimates traffickers made in 2016, $99 billion of that was made by sex traffickers.
Other Forms of Human Trafficking
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While most cases of human trafficking fall under labor or sex trafficking, trafficking can manifest itself in many different ways across the world. Some other forms of trafficking include child soldiers, forced or child marriage, and organ harvesting.