What is sex trafficking?

 

Many policy makers are still debating what the term "Trafficking" means.

 

The 2000 United Nations Protocol established a generally accepted definition of trafficking as the following:

 

"The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by 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". Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of prostitution of others or other form of sexual exploitation, forced labour services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs".

 

Trafficking is about slavery. The transatlantic trade of slaves from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries of millions of Africans was named "slave trade". Today the term is trafficking - many people do not understand this term. A much clearer understanding of sex trafficking is required.

 

The anatomy* of sex trafficking.

 

All sex trafficking crimes have two components: slave trading and slavery. Slave trading represents the supply side of the sex trafficking industry.

 

Slavery represents the demand side. Within these two components, there are three steps: acquisition, movement and exploitation. - And the "goods" for sale are the women forced into prostitution!

 

Imagine that sex trafficking is a disease infecting human civilization. To eradicate a disease requires an understanding of its molecular anatomy.

 

With this broader understanding, the disease's vulnerable points are revealed and a treatment can be devised to eradicate it.

 

The molecular anatomy of sex trafficking - acquisition, movement and exploitation - must be understood to elucidate its broader functioning as a criminal business.

 

The details of how the business functions reveal the industry's vulnerable points, namely, the drivers of profits and the market force of demand. Analyzing these forces will help us to derive the best tactics to treat the infection. To ensure that the business of sex trafficking is eradicated in the long term, the conditions in the "host organism", that first gave rise to the infection - namely, poverty and economic globalization - must also be addressed.

 

The interrelationship among these three elements reveals the anatomy of sex trafficking, as the figure below shows.

 

Acquisition of sex slaves primarily occurs in one of five ways: Deceit, sale by family, abduction, seduction or romance, or recruitment by former slaves.

 

Each of these means are utilized in almost every country; however, local factors promoted certain means over others.

 

The movement is achieved by almost any conveyance imaginable e.g. in the trunk of a car, by bus, train, plane, speedboat, ferry and even by walk through the mountains on foot or on a horse back depending on the region of the world.

 

A Russian organized crime group might acquire slaves from rural Russia, exploit those female slaves in Moscow, and then receive orders from brothel owners across Europe for more Russian slaves. The Russian crime group could then select the slaves most likely to service the slave owner's needs most effectively - whether for commercial sex, manufacturing industry, forced begging - and transport them accordingly.

 

 Exploitation of sex slaves primarily indicates the violent coercion of unpaid sex services, through in essence, exploitation, begins the moment the slave is acquired.

 

Slaves are raped, tortured, starved, humiliated and drugged during transportation, both for the pleasure of traffickers and also to break the slaves to make them more submissive upon sale.

 

* Text and figure is taken from the exceptional and very good book "Sex trafficking; Inside the business of modern slavery", Siddharth Kara, Colombia University Press, 2009.