Human Trafficking

The most common and respected definitions of human trafficking are those identified and sanctioned by the United Nations (in its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Person, Especially Women and Children) and the U.S. Congress (in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000). Both definitions focus heavily on the identification of forced labor and sex trafficking. This entry discusses the incidence, prevalence, and types of human trafficking, with a focus on women and children.

The U.S. Congress classifies severe forms of human trafficking as

• 1.
  sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; and
• 2.
  the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

More commonly, human trafficking acts are manifested or classified by social and health care providers, researchers, governments, policymakers, advocates, and community groups in a number of ways, including forced labor (of adults and children), sex trafficking (of adults and children), bonded labor, debt bondage among migrant workers, involuntary domestic servitude, and child soldiers. Sex trafficking can include prostitution, sexual servitude, pornography, live-sex shows, stripping, “mail-order brides,” and sex tourism. Labor trafficking, for example, can take place in domestic environments, sweatshops or factories, migrant agricultural environments, peddling, and restaurant work. Bonded labor involves the exploitation of workers who assume (typically as a term of their employment) or inherit debt and are manipulated to work for traffickers. This exploitation can include the assignment of large fees and [Page 310]costs as a term of employment for migrant workers that require exploitative and hazardous work conditions to pay off the debt. Involuntary domestic servitude typically involves an informal work environment where individual or small groups of workers (sometimes hired legally as domestic workers) are held in isolation and are exploited and abused by their employers or private citizens. For example, in 2007, a wealthy couple residing in Long Island (New York) was charged with trafficking after it was discovered they forced two women from Indonesia to work excessive hours, beat and tortured them, failed to provide them with adequate food, and required them to sleep in closets.

Although human trafficking (and forms of human slavery) has existed throughout history, the issue has received heightened attention within the last 10 years in the United States and other developed and industrialized nations as more structured efforts have been enacted to identify the scope and nature of the problem and develop policies and laws to confront this problem. These efforts have included (but are not limited to) attempts at providing victims protection from prosecution, providing immigration and social services to victims, confronting demand for commercial sex, creating and enforcing more progressive labor policies (including protections for victims and marginalized, migrant, and low-wage workers), and developing collaborative partnerships among governments and nongovernmental organizations aimed at identifying and protecting victims of human trafficking.

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