What is Modern Slavery?
Over
the past 15 years, “trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking”
have been used as umbrella terms for activities involved when someone
obtains or holds a person in compelled service.
The United States government considers trafficking in persons to
include all of the criminal conduct involved in forced labor and sex
trafficking, essentially the conduct involved in reducing or holding
someone in compelled service. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act as amended (TVPA) and consistent with the United Nations Protocol to
Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women
and Children (Palermo Protocol), individuals may be trafficking victims
regardless of whether they once consented, participated in a crime as a
direct result of being trafficked, were transported into the
exploitative situation, or were simply born into a state of servitude.
Despite a term that seems to connote movement, at the heart of the
phenomenon of trafficking in persons are the many forms of enslavement,
not the activities involved in international transportation.
Forced Labor
Also known as involuntary servitude, forced labor may result when
unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more vulnerable by high
rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption,
political conflict, or even cultural acceptance of the practice.
Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be
forced into labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or
bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are
often sexually exploited as well.
Sex Trafficking
When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution – or
maintained in prostitution through coercion – that person is a victim of
trafficking. All of those involved in recruiting, transporting,
harboring, receiving, or obtaining the person for that purpose have
committed a trafficking crime. Sex trafficking can also occur within
debt bondage, as women and girls 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 must pay off before they can be free.
It is critical to understand that a person’s initial consent to
participate in prostitution is not legally determinative; if an
individual is thereafter held in service through psychological
manipulation or physical force, that person is a trafficking victim and
should receive the benefits outlined in the United Nations’ Palermo
Protocol and applicable laws.
Bonded Labor
One form of coercion is the use of a bond, or debt. Often referred to
as “bonded labor” or “debt bondage,” the practice has long been
prohibited under U.S. law by its Spanish name, peonage, and the Palermo
Protocol calls for its criminalization as a form of trafficking in
persons. Workers around the world fall victim to debt bondage when
traffickers or recruiters unlawfully exploit an initial debt the worker
assumed as part of the terms of employment. Workers may also inherit
intergenerational debt in more traditional systems of bonded labor.
Debt Bondage Among Migrant Laborers
Abuses of contracts and hazardous conditions of employment for
migrant laborers do not necessarily constitute human trafficking.
However, the burden of illegal costs and debts on these laborers in the
source country, often with the support of labor agencies and employers
in the destination country, can contribute to a situation of debt
bondage. This is often exacerbated when the worker’s status in the
country is tied to the employer in the context of employment-based
temporary work programs and there is no effective redress for abuse.
Involuntary Domestic Servitude
A unique form of forced labor is the involuntary servitude of
domestic workers, whose workplace is informal, connected to their
off-duty living quarters, and not often shared with other workers. Such
an environment, which often socially isolates domestic workers, is
conducive to nonconsensual exploitation since authorities cannot inspect
private property as easily as formal workplaces. Investigators and
service providers report many cases of untreated illnesses and,
tragically, widespread sexual abuse, which in some cases may be symptoms
of a situation of involuntary servitude. Ongoing international efforts
seek to ensure that not only that administrative remedies are enforced
but also that criminal penalties are enacted against those who hold
others in involuntary domestic servitude.
Forced Child Labor
Most international organizations and national laws recognize that
children may legally engage in certain forms of work. There is a growing
consensus, however, that the worst forms of child labor should be
eradicated. The sale and trafficking of children and their entrapment in
bonded and forced labor are among these worst forms of child labor. A
child can be a victim of human trafficking regardless of the location of
that exploitation. Indicators of forced labor of a child include
situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a
non-family member who has the child 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 labor, such as
remediation and education. However, when children are enslaved, their
abusers should not escape criminal punishment by virtue of longstanding
patters of limited responses to child labor practices rather than more
effective law enforcement action.
Child Soldiers
Child soldiering can be a manifestation of human trafficking where it
involves the unlawful recruitment or use of children—through force,
fraud, or coercion—as combatants, or for labor or sexual exploitation by
armed forces. Perpetrators may be government forces, paramilitary
organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to
be used as combatants. Others are made unlawfully to work as porters,
cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls can be forced
to marry or have sex with male combatants. Both male and female child
soldiers are often sexually abused and are at high risk of contracting
sexually transmitted diseases.
Child Sex Trafficking
According to UNICEF, as many as two million children are subjected to
prostitution in the global commercial sex trade. International
covenants and protocols obligate criminalization of the commercial
sexual exploitation of children. The use of children in the commercial
sex trade is prohibited under both U.S. law and the Palermo Protocol as
well as by legislation in countries around the world. There can be no
exceptions and no cultural or socioeconomic rationalizations preventing
the rescue of children from sexual servitude. Sex trafficking has
devastating consequences for minors, including long-lasting physical and
psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction,
unintended pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death.
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