The office of the United nations High Commissioner for Human Rights defines "trafficking in persons" as:
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring 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.
Human trafficking is modern-day slavery! It exists in virtually every country in the world today and takes many forms.
Sex Trafficking
Trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation is often the first thing people think of when they hear 'human trafficking'. When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into performing commercial sexual acts, that person is a victim of human trafficking. If the adult initially consents but is maintained in these acts through coercion, force and/or deception, he or she is still a trafficking victim. Sex trafficking can be found in:
- Adult bookstores
- Bars/strip clubs
- Brothels
- Escort services
- Exotic dancing establishments
- Hotels and truck stops
- Massage parlors
- Modeling studios
- Pornography production houses
- Phone sex operations
- Sex tourism
- Street prostitution
In Canada, sex trafficking is the most common form of human trafficking. Victims predominantly include Canadian-born women and children (including Aboriginal women) as well as foreign nationals, mainly from Eastern Europe and Asia.
Labour Trafficking
Although most people think of human trafficking in relation to sexual exploitation, labour trafficking, also called forced labour, is an equally heinous form of this crime. Any adult who is forced or coerced - through physical or psychological means - to work is a victim of human trafficking. Whether or not the individual initially consented to the job or employment opportunity becomes irrelevant once coercion, deception, and force is used to keep an individual working.
Victims of labour trafficking have been found in almost every job setting or industry imaginable including:
- Agriculture
- Childrearing
- Construction and landscaping
- Elder care and medical facilities
- Factories
- Food processing
- Hotels
- Housekeeping
- Meat-packing
- Private homes
- Restaurants
Canada is a destination country for men and women subjected to labour trafficking. Victims mainly include foreign workers (from Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa) who enter the country legally but are then subjected to forced labour.
Debt Bondage
Debt bondage, or bonded labour, is an arrangement whereby a person is forced to pay off a loan with direct labour in place of money and is a very common ploy used to control victims of human trafficking. Often this debt is rigged so that the worker never makes enough to pay it off. Some workers even inherit their ancestors' debt. Children may also be sold into bondage to settle their parents' or other family members' debt.
Child Soldiers
A child soldier is anyone under the age of 18 who has been recruited or used in hostilities by either state armed forces or non-state armed groups and can play a wide variety of roles; fighter, porter, cook, cleaner, courier, spy, and human shield or suicide bomber, as well as for sexual purposes. While not every child (particularly over the age of 15) participating in conflicts is necessarily a victim of human trafficking, many are recruited unlawfully, even abducted from their homes, abused and exploited for the purposes of armed conflict.
Forced Marriages
Not to be confused with 'arranged marriages' which require the consent of the future husband and wife, forced marriages are arranged without the consent of all parties involved and often include elements of coercion, deception and exploitation during the arrangement of the marriage as well as in the marriage itself. Forced marriages can qualify as a form of human trafficking when an individual is forced into marriage and repeatedly raped (sex trafficking) or treated like a slave or servant by her husband and his family (labour trafficking).
Street Begging
Street begging is a form of human trafficking when an individual, usually a child, is coerced or forced (sometimes bought or abducted) to beg or pick pockets on the street, the earnings of which are then handed over to their keeper. Many children are subject to extreme abuse, including deliberate mutilation (gouged out eye, amputated limb) to make them more pitied and, therefore, better 'earners'.
Organ Harvesting
Although not as widespread as sex or labour trafficking, the trafficking of persons for the purpose of removing their organs or other body parts is mentioned in the United Nations' Trafficking in Persons Protocol. Victims may be lured by false promises and are sometimes left for dead or even killed. Generally, these harvested organs move from underdeveloped countries to developing or developed nations.
Child Victims of Human Trafficking
Children are especially vulnerable to human trafficking in all of its forms. The use of children in the commercial sex trade is illegal in Canada and in most countries around the world and, therefore, any child (under the age of 18) in the sex trade is considered a victim of human trafficking; the use of force or coercion is irrelevant.
Children are legally able to engage in certain forms of work. However, forms of slavery or slavery-like work practices continue to exist and are a form of human trafficking, regardless of where this work is taking place and regardless of the relationship between the child and his or her traffickers (family or strangers).
50% of those trafficked today are children (under the age of 18). Begging, forced marriages and unlawful soldier recruitment are examples of human trafficking where children make up the majority of victims.
