Trafficking in Persons

What is Human Trafficking?

Trafficking in Persons or Human trafficking is often described as a modern form of slavery. It involves the recruitment, transportation, and/or harbouring of persons for the purpose of exploitation, typically for sexual exploitation or forced labour. Victims are forced to provide their services (often sexual) or labour under circumstances where they fear for their safety or that of someone known to them if they refuse to provide that service or labour. Victims suffer physical, sexual and emotional abuse including threats of violence or actual harm, which is compounded by their living and working conditions.

Human trafficking is a serious crime that affects the most vulnerable members of society. Women and children are often the victims of human trafficking, and particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking, however, men can also be trafficking victims.

A set of interrelated “push” and “pull” factors contribute to trafficking in persons. “Push” factors include extreme poverty, unemployment, lack of education, inadequate social programs, gender-based inequality, war and conflict situations, and political unrest in countries of origin. “Pull” factors include a globalized, free-market economy that has increased the demand for cheap labour, goods and services in many countries. Victims may also be “pulled” into trafficking through the promise of money and what is seen as a better life.

Traffickers use many methods to control their victims including force, sexual assault, and threats of violence. Human trafficking occurs both across and within borders, and according to the International Labour Organization, often involves extensive organized crime networks. New communications technologies like the Internet, which allow for instantaneous and worldwide communications, often help facilitate trafficking in persons.

It is difficult to know the exact number of people who are trafficked each year. The International Labour Organization has estimated that the minimum number of persons in forced labour, including sexual exploitation, as a result of trafficking at any given time is 2.5 million. A recent report released by the United Nations’ Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking found that in the year 2006, 21,400 victims of human trafficking were identified in 111 countries. These victims had been trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labour.

The United Nations defines human trafficking as:

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by the means of the 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.

Article 3 (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children supplementing the United Nations’ Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Human trafficking is often confused with human smuggling. Human smuggling involves the procurement of an illegal entry into another country for the purpose of financial or material benefit. Persons who have been smuggled may pay large sums of money and may enter a country clandestinely, or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents. Unlike trafficking victims, the smuggled person usually consents to be smuggled. The relationship between the smuggler and the smuggled person is a voluntary business transaction which usually ends after the border crossing. Smuggled migrants may become victims of trafficking which may make it difficult to distinguish between a situation of trafficking and a situation of smuggling.