WHAT IS HUMAN TRAFFICKING?
Human Trafficking is to be deceived or taken against your will, bought, sold and exploited.
​
People are bought and sold for sexual exploitation, forced labour, street crime, domestic servitude or even the sale of organs and human sacrifice.
​
Men, women and children are trafficked within their own countries and across international borders. Trafficking effects every continent and every country.
​
Human Trafficking is a system based on greed, control and power.
​
In whatever shape or form, everyone dreams of progress, whether it's to be loved, to be seen, to belong, or for a better future for their family. Traffickers often exploit that desire amongst the most vulnerable.
​
Trafficking is so often seeded on deception. The trafficker creates an intimate point of sale, making promises of progress like an education, a new start and future choices. This is the ultimate deception.
​
Human Trafficking is a global marketplace where people are the product and everyone has a price tag.
​
It is based on an international conveyor belt of transactions and exchange, with sophistocated trade routes and communications.
This human product creates profit, tens of billions every year... and growing.
SEX TRAFFICKING
"When an adult engages in a commercial sex act, such as prostitution, as the result of force, fraud, coercion or any combination of such means. Under such circumstances, perpetrators involved in recruiting, harboring, enticing, transporting, providing, obtaining, or maintaining a person for that purpose are guilty of sex trafficking. Sex trafficking also may occur within debt bondage, as individuals are forced to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful "debt", purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their crude "sale" - which exploiters insist they pay off before they can be free.
CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING
When a child (under the age of 18) is recruited, enticed, harbored, transported, provided, obtained, or maintained to perform a commercial sex act, proving force, fraud, or coercion is not necessary for the offence to be characterised as human trafficking. There are no exceptions to this rule: no cultural or socioeconomic rationalisations alter the fact that children who are prostituted are trafficking victims. The use of children in the commercial sex trade is prohibited by law.
FORCED LABOUR
Forced labour, sometimes also referred to as labour trafficking, encompasses the range of activities - recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining - involved when a person uses force or physical threats, psychological coercion, abuse of the legal process, deception, or other coercive means to compel someone to work. Once a person's labour is exploited by such means, the person's prior consent to work for an employer is legally irrelevant: the employer is a trafficker and the employee a trafficking victim. Migrants are particularly vulnerable to this form of human trafficking, but individuals also may be forced into labour in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labour, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well.
BONDED LABOUR/ DEBT BONDAGE
One form of coercion is the use of a bond or debt. Some workers inherit debt; for example, in South Asia it is estimated that there are millions of trafficking victims working to pay off their ancestors' debts. Others fall victim to traffickers or recruiters who unlawfully exploit an initial debt assumed, wittingly or unwittingly, as a term of employment. Debts taken on by migrant labourers in their countries of origin, often with the involvement of labour agencies and employers in the destination country, can also contribute to a situation of debt bondage. Such circumstances may occur in the context of employment-based temporary work programs in which a worker's legal status in the destination country is tied to the employer and workers fear seeking redress.
DOMESTIC SERVITUDE
Involuntary domestic servitude is a form of human trafficking found in distinct circumstances - work in a private residence - that creates unique vulnerabilities for victims. It is a crime in which a domestic worker is not free to leave her employment and is abused and underpaid, if paid at all. Many domestic workers do not receive the basic benefits and protections commonly extended to other groups of workers - things as simple as a day off. Moreover, their ability to move freely is often limited, and employement in private homes increases their vulnerability and isolation. Authorities cannot inspect homes as easily as a formal workplace, and in many cases do not have the mandate or capacity to do so. Domestic workers, especially women, confront various forms of abuse, harassment, and exploitation, including sexual and gender-based violence. These issues, taken together, may be symptoms of a situation of involuntary servitude.
FORCED CHILD LABOUR
Although children may legally engage in certain forms of work, children can also be found in slavery or slavery-like situations. Some indicators of forced labour of a child include situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a non-family member who requires the child to perform work that financially benefits someone outside the child's family and does not offer the child the option of leaving. Anti-trafficking responses should supplement, not replace, traditional actions against child labour, such as remediation and education. When children are enslaved, their abusers should not escape criminal punishment through weaker administrative responses to such abusive child labour practices.
CHILD SOLDIERS
Child soldiering is a manifestation of human trafficking when it involves the unlawful recruitment or use of children - through force, fraud, or coercion - by armed forces as combatants or for other forms of labour. Some child soldiers are also sexually exploited by armed groups. Perpetrators may be government armed forces, paramilitary organisations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are made to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers or spies. Young girls can be forced to marry or have sex with commanders and male combatants. Both male and female child soldiers are often sexually abused and are at a high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.