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Human Trafficking is...

The recruitment, transportation, harboring, or delivery of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labor and sexual exploitation.

Trafficking victims typically are recruited using coercion, deception, fraud, the abuse of power, or outright abduction. Threats, violence, and economic leverage such as debt bondage can often make a victim consent to exploitation. Exploitation includes forcing people into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, forced prostitution.

Human Trafficking Defined

The chart below, extrapolated and simplified from the 2000 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children definition, is a useful tool for analyzing individual cases to determine whether or not they constitute trafficking. In order for a situation to be trafficking, it must have at least one of the elements within each of the three criteria of Process, Means, and Goal.

Process

+

Way/Means

+

Goal

Recruitment

or

Transportation

or

Transferring

or

Harboring

or

Receiving

A

N

D

Threat

or

Coercion

or

Abduction

or

Fraud

or

Deceit

or

Deception

or

Abuse of Power

A

N

D

Prostitution

or

Pornography

or

Violence/Sexual Exploitation

or

Forced Labor

or

Involuntary Servitude

or

Debt Bondage

(with unfair wages)

or

Slavery/Similar practices