Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment,
harboring, provision, transportation,
or obtaining of a person for labor or
services through the use of force,
fraud, or coercion, for the purpose
of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude,
peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
Trafficking Victims' Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005.
Every year, million of women and children
are trafficked across international borders.
After arms and drugs,
the trafficking of women and children
for sexual exploitation,
is the third largest source
of profit for organized crime.
“As unimaginable as it seems, slavery and bondage still persist in the early 21st century. Millions of people around the world still suffer in silence in slave-like situations of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Trafficking in persons is one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time.”
[U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2003]