What is Human Trafficking?
The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, Especially Women and Children, defines trafficking in persons as:
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring 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. Exploitation shall include, at a
minimum, the
exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation,
forced
labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the
removal of
organs.3
In recognition of the undeniable scope and magnitude of human trafficking
worldwide, the
U.S. federal government passed the Trafficking Victim Protection Act (TVPA)
in 2000. The
TVPA served to broaden the definition of trafficking to include a wide array
of exploitation, defining severe forms of human trafficking as:
A. Sex trafficking in which a commercial
sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or
in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years
of age; or
B. 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.
1 Dobriansky Paula J., U.S. Department of State, Ending Modern
Day Slavery: U.S. Efforts To Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Available at <http://www.state.gov/g/rls/rm/2004/31063.htm>(June
2004).
2 U.S. Department of State, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons,
Trafficking in Persons Report 2005.
Available at <http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2005/46606.htm>
(June 2005).
3 Ibid.
4 “Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000”
P.L. 106-386 Available at
<http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/10492.pdf>
(June 2005).
5 International Labour Organization, Global Report 2005: A Global Alliance
Against Forced Labour. Available at
<http://www.ilo.org/dyn/declaris/DECLARATIONWEB.DOWNLOAD_BLOB?Var_DocumentID=5059>
(June 2005).