Definitions


Human trafficking is usually a covert crime because victims are often prevented from seeking help. Health professionals are one of the few groups that can intervene because they assess victims in a safe environment when they need medical attention.

As defined under U.S. federal law, victims of human trafficking can be divided into three populations:

  1. Children under age 18 induced into commercial sex.
  2. Adults aged 18 or over induced into commercial sex through force, fraud, or coercion.
  3. Children and adults induced to perform labor or services through force, fraud, or coercion.

As part of the trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) under U.S. federal law, “severe forms of trafficking in persons” includes both sex trafficking and labor trafficking and are defined as:

Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.

Labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, throug the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

Coercion (A) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; (B) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or (C) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process (22 U.S.C. 7102 (3)).

Debt Bondage is the status or condition of a debtor arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of those of a person under his or her control as a security for debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined (22 U.S.C. 7102 (5)).

Involuntary servitude a condition of servitude induced by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that, if the person did not enter into or continue in such condition, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process (22 U.S.C. 7102 (6)).
https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-trafficking-in-persons-report/ external link

A victim need not be physically transported from one location to another for the crime to fall within these definitions.

In the US, the 3P paradigm, prosecution, protection, and prevention, with an additional 4th P, partnership, is used to combat human trafficking worldwide.  https://www.state.gov/policy-issues/human-trafficking/ external link

https://fightslaverynow.org/why-fight-there-are-27-million-reasons/the-law-and-trafficking/trafficking-victims-protection-act/trafficking-victims-protection-act external link

Sex traffickers often use violence, threats, and/or offers of love and affection to manipulate or force victims to engage in sex for money. The location of opportunities to sell sex vary from truck stops and highway rest areas to high end clubs or private residences.

Victims of forced labor, more frequently men, can be made to work in factories, on plantations, on construction for little to no pay. Threats of violence to themselves and of loved ones keep them from leaving.

Women are commonly forced into positions of domestic helpers serving as maids, nannies, and kitchen helpers.

There is also a movement to include kidnapping for organ removal as a component part of human trafficking (Budiani-Saberi & Columb, 2013).

https://fightslaverynow.org/why-fight-there-are-27-million-reasons/the-law-and-trafficking/trafficking-victims-protection-act/trafficking-victims-protection-act/ external link


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Women are commonly forced into positions of domestic helpers serving as maids, nannies, and kitchen helpers.

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Budiani-Saberi, D. & Columb, S. (2013). A human rights approach to human trafficking for organ removal.  Med Health Care Philos. 16(4), 897-914.

TVPA, 2000 Human Trafficking State Laws from Trafficking in Persons Report. June 2016 State Department.


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