The Human Trafficking Resource Center Child Trafficking Awareness Poster
Human Trafficking is the modern day slavery. Human trafficking is real and in every community around the world. The United Nations estimated that thousands of women, men and children are trafficked in countries around the world.
Human trafficking can occur in various ways. The most visible form of trafficking is sex trafficking. However, there are many victims in labor trafficking which is more hidden. There is also the trafficking of body parts and organs.
You can be seeing a victim of human trafficking without knowing.
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center fact Sheet says:
Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sex, debt bondage, or forced labor. They are young children, teenagers, men and women. Trafficking in persons occurs throughout the world, including in the United States.
Definition of Trafficking in Persons
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines “severe forms of trafficking in
persons” as follows:
In the TVPA, the term “commercial sex act” means any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.
Many victims of trafficking, particularly women and children, are exploited for purposes of prostitution and pornography. However, trafficking also takes place in diverse labor contexts, such as domestic servitude, small businesses, factories, and agricultural work. Traffickers use force, fraud and coercion to compel women, men, and children to engage in these activities.
Force can involve the use of physical restraint or serious physical harm. Physical violence, including rape, beatings, and physical confinement, is often employed as a means to control victims, especially during the early stages of victimization, when the trafficker breaks down the victim’s resistance.
Fraud involves false promises regarding employment, wages, working conditions, or other matters. For example, individuals might travel to another country under the promise of well-paying work at a farm or factory only to find themselves manipulated into forced labor. Others might reply to advertisements promising modeling, nanny, or service industry jobs overseas, but be forced into prostitution once they arrive at their destination.
Coercion can involve threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; 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 the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
Victims of trafficking are often subjected to debt bondage or peonage in which traffickers demand labor as a means repayment for a real or alleged debt, yet they do not reasonably apply a victim’s wages toward the payment of the debt, or limit or define the nature and length of the debtor’s services. Traffickers may charge victims fees for transportation, boarding, food, and other incidentals; interest, fines for missing daily work quotas, and charges for “bad behavior” may be added. Debt bondage traps a victim in a cycle of debt that he or she can never pay down, and it can be part of a larger scheme of psychological cruelty.
Are you are victim or seeing a victim of human trafficking? Call the National Human Trafficking Resource center at 1-888-373-7888