Is sex work linked to human trafficking?

However, sex worker activists and organizations distinguish between human trafficking and legitimate sex work, and assert the importance of recognizing that trafficking is not synonymous with sex work. The Sex Workers Alliance Ireland organization explains: "victims of human trafficking may be forced to work in industries such as agriculture, domestic service as well as the sex industry. It is critical to distinguish human trafficking, which is a violation of human rights, from voluntary migration." The Open Society Foundations organization states: "sex work is done by consenting adults, where the act of selling or buying sexual services is not a violation of human rights. In fact, sex workers are natural allies in the fight against trafficking. The UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work recognizes that sex worker organizations are best positioned to refer people who are victims of trafficking to appropriate services."

Prostitution law

Prostitution law varies widely from country to country, and between jurisdictions within a country. At one extreme, prostitution or sex work is legal in some places and regarded as a profession, while at the other extreme, it is a crime punishable by death in some other places.

In many jurisdictions, prostitution – the commercial exchange of sex for money, goods, service, or some other benefit agreed upon by the transacting parties – is illegal, while in others it is legal, but surrounding activities, such as soliciting in a public place, operating a brothel, and pimping, may be illegal. In many jurisdictions where prostitution is legal, it is regulated; in others it is unregulated. Where exchange of sex for money is criminalized, it may be the sex worker (most commonly), the client, or both, who are subject to prosecution.

Prostitution has been condemned as a single form of human rights abuse, and an attack on the dignity and worth of human beings, while other schools of thought state that sex work is a legitimate occupation; whereby a person trades or exchanges sexual acts for money and/or goods. Some believe that women in developing countries are especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation and human trafficking, while others distinguish this practice from the global sex industry, in which "sex work is done by consenting adults, where the act of selling or buying sexual services is not a violation of human rights." The term "sex work" is used interchangeably with "prostitution" in this article, in accordance with the World Health Organisation (WHO 2001; WHO 2005) and the United Nations (UN 2006; UNAIDS 2002).

In most countries, sex work is controversial. Members of certain religions oppose prostitution, viewing it as contrary or a threat to their moral codes, while other parties view prostitution as a "necessary evil". Sex worker activists and organizations believe the issue of sex worker human rights is of greatest importance, including those related to freedom of speech, travel, immigration, work, marriage, parenthood, insurance, health insurance, and housing.

Some feminist organizations are opposed to prostitution, considering it a form of exploitation in which males dominate women, and as a practice that is the result of a patriarchal social order. For example, the European Women's Lobby, which bills itself as the largest umbrella organization of women's associations in the European Union, has condemned prostitution as "an intolerable form of male violence". In February 2014, the members of the European Parliament voted in a non-binding resolution, (adopted by 343 votes to 139; with 105 abstentions), in favor of the 'Swedish Model' of criminalizing the buying, but not the selling of sex. In 2014, the Council of Europe has made a similar recommendation, stating that "While each system presents advantages and disadvantages, policies prohibiting the purchase of sexual services are those that are more likely to have a positive impact on reducing trafficking in human beings".

The Wolfenden Committee Report (1957), which informed the debate in the United Kingdom, states:
[the function of the criminal law is] to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is injurious or offensive and to provide safeguards against the exploitation and corruption of others, ... It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private lives of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular code of behaviour, further than is necessary to carry out the purposes of what we have outlined.

Views on what the best legal framework on prostitution should be are often influenced by whether one can view prostitution as morally acceptable or not; indeed Save the Children wrote: "The issue however, gets mired in controversy and confusion when prostitution too is considered as a violation of the basic human rights of both adult women and minors, and equal to sexual exploitation per se. From this standpoint then, trafficking and prostitution become conflated with each other."

In December 2012, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, released the "Prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections for sex workers in low- and middle- income countries" document that contains the following "Good practice recommendations":Legal themes tend to focus on four issues: victimization (including potential victimhood), ethics and morality, freedom of the individual, and general benefit or harm to society (including harm arising indirectly from matters connected to prostitution).

Many people who support legal prostitution argue that prostitution is a consensual sex act between adults and a victimless crime, thus the government should not prohibit this practice.

Many anti-prostitution advocates hold that prostitutes themselves are often victims, arguing that prostitution is a practice which can lead to serious psychological and often physical long-term effects for the prostitutes. They may also argue that the act of prostitution is not by definition a fully consensual act, as they say that all prostitutes are "forced" to sell sex, either by somebody else or by the unfortunate circumstances of their lives (such as poverty, lack of opportunity, drug addiction, a history of childhood abuse or neglect, etc.).

In 1999, Sweden became the first country to make it illegal to pay for sex, but not to be a prostitute (the client commits a crime, but not the prostitute). A similar law was passed in Norway and in Iceland (in 2009). Canada (2014), France (2016) and the Republic of Ireland (2017) have also adopted a similar model to that of the Nordic countries (Denmark excluded).

It is argued that street prostitution is not victimless as it may damage the reputation and quality of life in the neighbourhood and diminish the value of property. Peter De Marneffe notes that many prostitutes have not finished school, affecting their ability to be able to have a career that they might have preferred. Therefore, prostitution also affects the application of their talent in other areas of the economy in which they can succeed.
Maxwell (2000) and other researcher have found substantial evidence that there is strong co-occurrence between prostitution, drug use, drug selling, and involvement in non-drug crimes, particularly property crime. Because the activity is considered criminal in many jurisdictions, its substantial revenues are not contributing to the tax revenues of the state, and its workers are not routinely screened for sexually transmitted diseases which is dangerous in cultures favouring unprotected sex and leads to significant expenditure in the health services. According to the "Estimates of the costs of crime in Australia", there is an "estimated $96 million loss of taxation revenue from undeclared earnings of prostitution".
On top of these physical issues, it is also argued that there are psychological issues that prostitutes face from certain experiences and through the duration or repetition. Some go through experiences that may result "in lasting feelings of worthlessness, shame, and self-hatred". De Marneffe further argues that this may affect the prostitute's ability to perform sexual acts for the purpose of building a trusting intimate relationship, which may be important for their partner. The lack of a healthy relationship can lead to higher divorce rates and can influence unhealthy relationship to their children, influencing their future relationships. Although this is more difficult to control by law, it should be considered when creating policies in protecting prostitutes' psychological health.

Condom use is not always a part of sex work, and if sex work were legalized, this could change. By keeping prostitution illegal, there are no laws to govern how the work is performed. It is a well-known fact that condoms help reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. If prostitution was legalized, one of the laws could be the requirement of the use of condoms. It was reported in 2010 that out of eighty-six countries, only about twenty eight countries reported regular condom use in sex work ("sex workers"). If sex work was legalized, the amount of condom use would increase, leading to better protection for both the worker and the client.

The United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others favors criminalizing the activities of those seen as exploiting or coercing prostitutes (so-called "pimping" and "procuring" laws), while leaving sex workers free from regulation. The Convention states that "prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person".

Sigma Huda, a UN special reporter on trafficking in persons said: "For the most part, prostitution as actually practiced in the world usually does satisfy the elements of trafficking. It is rare that one finds a case in which the path to prostitution and/or a person’s experience with prostitution does not involve, at the very least, an abuse of power and/or an abuse of vulnerability. Power and vulnerability in this context must be understood to include disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity and poverty. Put simply the road to prostitution and life within “the life” is rarely marked by empowerment or adequate options."

According to a 2007 report by the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), the most common destinations for victims of human trafficking are Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the US. The major sources of trafficked persons include Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Researchers at Göteborg University released a report in 2010 that argued that prostitution laws affect trafficking flows.

NGOs, academics and government departments often categorise the approach to prostitution laws and approach into 5 models:

All aspects of prostitution are criminalised. Often the sex trade is seen as a violation of human dignity, moral or religious beliefs. e.g. Russia (Also known as "criminalization".)

Whilst prostitution itself is legal, 3rd party involvement is generally prohibited. Solicitation is also often prohibited. Whilst this model recognises prostitutes may choose work in the trade, it is morally wrong. Laws are designed to stop prostitution impacting on the public. e.g. England

Neo-abolitionists believe there is no free choice for people entering prostitution, it violates their human rights and that prostitution is the sale and consumption of human bodies. Whilst prostitutes themselves commit no crime, clients and any third party involvement is criminalised. e.g. Sweden (Also called the "Swedish model" or "Nordic model".)

Whilst prostitution is not prohibited, there is legislation to control and regulate it. The extent and type of control varies from country to country and may be regulated by work permits, licensing or tolerance zones. e.g. The Netherlands (also called "regulationist".)

The decriminalization of sex work is the removal of criminal penalties for sex work. In most countries, sex work, the consensual provision of sexual services for money or goods, is criminalized. Removing criminal prosecution for sex workers creates a safer and healthier environment and allows them to live with less social exclusion and stigma. e.g. New Zealand

Although prostitution is mainly performed by female prostitutes there are also male, transgender and transvestite prostitutes performing straight and/or gay sex work. In Vienna, in April 2007, there were 1,352 female and 21 male prostitutes officially registered. The number of prostitutes who are not registered (and therefore work illegally) is not known. A recent study by TAMPEP, on the prostitute population from Germany, estimated that 93% of prostitutes were female, 3% transgender and 4% male.

Arrest statistics show that in those states where buying and selling sex are equally illegal, the tendency is to arrest the service provider and not the customer, even though there are significantly more customers than sellers. Thus, it is a fact that more women than men are arrested, and the true extent of the crime is underreported. James (1982) reports that, in the United States, the arrest ratio of women to men was 3:2, but notes that many of the men arrested were the prostitutes rather than the clients.

"By 1975, Thailand, with the help of World Bank economists, had instituted a National Plan of Tourist Development, which specifically underwrote the sex industry... Without directly subsidising prostitution, the Act [the Entertainment Places Act] referred repeatedly to the personal services' sector. According to Thai feminist Sukyana Hantrakul, the law 'was enacted to pave the way for whorehouses to be legalised in the guise of massage parlours, bars, nightclubs, tea houses, etc." See Aarons Sach, "A prostitute at nine," The Times of India Sunday Review, 22 January 1995. With particular reference to children, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child creates specific obligations. Article 34 stipulates that:
As of 2000, twenty four countries had enacted legislation criminalising child sex tourism, e.g. in Australia, the Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Amendment Act 1994 covers a wide range of sexual activities with children under the age of 16 committed overseas. Laws with extraterritorial application are intended to fill the gap when countries are unwilling or unable to take action against known offenders. The rationale is that child-sex offenders should not escape justice simply because they are in a position to return to their home country. There is little research into whether the child sex tourism legislation has any real deterrent effect on adults determined to have sex with children overseas. It may be that these people are
simply more careful in their activities as a result of the laws. There are three obvious problems:

In most countries where prostitution is illegal, the prohibition of the sex trade is subject to debate and controversy among some people and some organizations, with some voices saying that the fact that prostitution is illegal increases criminal activities and negatively affects the prostitutes.

Those who support prohibition or abolition of prostitution argue that keeping prostitution illegal is the best way to prevent abusive and dangerous activities (child prostitution, human trafficking etc.). They argue that a system which allows legalized and regulated prostitution has very negative effects and does not improve the situation of the prostitutes; such legal systems only lead to crime and abuse: many women who work in licensed brothels are still controlled by outside pimps; many brothel owners are criminals themselves; the creation of a legal and regulated prostitution industry only leads to another parallel illegal industry, as many women do not want to register and work legally (since this would rob them of their anonymity) and other women can not be hired by legal brothels because of underlying problems (e.g., drug abuse); legalizing prostitution makes it more socially acceptable to buy sex, creating a huge demand for prostitutes (both by local men and by foreigners engaging in sex tourism) and, as a result, human trafficking and underage prostitution increase in order to satisfy this demand.

A five-country survey of 175 men for the International Organisation for Migration found that 75% preferred female prostitutes aged 25 or under, and over 20% preferred those aged 18 or under, although "generally clients did not wish to buy sex from prostitutes they thought to be too young to consent to the sexual encounter."

Some have argued that an extremely high level of violence is inherent to prostitution; they claim that many prostitutes have been the subject of violence, rape and coercion before entering prostitution including as children, and that many young women and girls enter prostitution directly from state care in at least England, Norway, Australia and Canada.

Abolitionists believe tolerance of prostitution is tolerance of inegalitarian sexuality in which male sexual demands can override women's sexual autonomy and overall well-being.

In some countries, (or administrative subdivisions within a country), prostitution is "legal and regulated". In these jurisdictions, there is a specific law, which explicitly allows the practice of prostitution if certain conditions are met (as opposed to places where prostitution is legal only because there is no law to prohibit it).

In countries where prostitution is regulated, the prostitutes may be registered, they may be hired by a brothel, they may organize trade unions, they may be covered by workers' protection laws, their proceeds may be taxable, they may be required to undergo regular health checks, etc. The degree of regulation, however, varies very much by jurisdiction.

Such approaches are taken with the stance that prostitution is impossible to eliminate, and thus these societies have chosen to regulate it in an attempt to increase transparency and therefore reduce the more undesirable consequences. Goals of such regulations include controlling sexually transmitted disease, reducing sexual slavery, controlling where brothels may operate and dissociating prostitution from crime syndicates.

In countries where prostitution is legal and regulated, it is usual for the practice to be restricted to particular areas.

In countries where prostitution itself is legal, but associated activities are outlawed, prostitution is generally "not" regulated.

Not all countries with regulated prostitution require mandatory health checks (because such checks are seen as too intrusive, a violation of human rights and a discriminatory policy, since the clients don't have to be subjected to them).

A few jurisdictions, however, require that prostitutes undergo regular health checks for sexually transmitted diseases.

In Nevada, state law requires that registered brothel prostitutes be checked weekly for several sexually transmitted diseases and monthly for HIV; furthermore, condoms are mandatory for all oral sex and sexual intercourse. Brothel owners may be held liable if customers become infected with HIV after a prostitute has tested positive for the virus. Prostitution outside the licensed brothels is illegal throughout the state; all forms of prostitution are illegal in Las Vegas (and Clark County, which contains its metropolitan area), in Reno (and Washoe County), in Carson City, and in a few other parts of the state (currently 8 out of Nevada's 16 counties have active brothels, see Prostitution in Nevada).

The regulation of prostitution is problematic because standard labor regulations cannot be applied to prostitution. The typical relation between employer and employee where the employer is in a position of authority over the employee is, in the case of prostitution, viewed by many as contrary to the physical integrity of the prostitute. It is forbidden to order a person to have sex on a given moment at a given place. Many sex operators also do not want to pay social security contributions, which comes with paid labor. Therefore, many prostitutes, in countries where prostitution is regulated, are officially listed as independent contractors. Sex operators typically operate as facilitators only and do not interfere with the prostitutes.

The existence of regulated prostitution generally implies that prostitution is illegal outside of the regulated context. For example, Nevada has laws prohibiting the following: engagement in prostitution outside of licensed brothels, encouragement of others to become prostitutes, and living off the proceeds of a sex worker.

Demands to legalise prostitution as a means to contain exploitation in the sex industry is now gaining support from organisations such as the UN and the Supreme Court of India.

Below there is a presentation of the legal status of prostitution around the world, as of May 2018

In these countries prostitution itself (exchanging sex for money) is illegal. The punishment for prostitution varies considerably: in some countries, it can incur the death penalty, in other jurisdictions, it is a crime punishable with a prison sentence, while in others it is a lesser administrative offense punishable only with a fine.In these countries, there is no specific law prohibiting the exchange of sex for money, but in general most forms of procuring (pimping) are illegal. These countries also generally have laws against soliciting in a public place (e.g., a street) or advertising prostitution, making it difficult to engage in prostitution without breaking any law. In countries like India, though prostitution is legal, it is illegal when committed in a hotel.In these countries, although prostitutes themselves commit no crime, clients and any third party involvement is criminalised. Also called the "Swedish model" or "Nordic model".In some countries, prostitution is legal and regulated; although activities like pimping and street-walking are generally illegal. The degree of regulation varies by country; for example, not all countries require mandatory health checks because such checks are seen as intrusive, a violation of human rights and discriminatory.The decriminalization of sex work is the removal of criminal penalties for sex work. Removing criminal prosecution for sex workers creates a safer and healthier environment and allows them to live with less social exclusion and stigma.In these countries prostitution is permitted, prohibited or regulated by local laws rather than national laws. For example, in Mexico, prostitution is prohibited in some states but regulated in others.The enforcement of the anti-prostitution laws varies from country to country or from region to region. In many places, there can be a discrepancy between the laws which exist on the books and what occurs in practice. For example, in Thailand, prostitution is illegal, but in practice, it is tolerated and regulated. Such situations are common in many Asian countries.

In areas where prostitution or the associated activities are illegal, prostitutes are commonly charged with crimes ranging from minor infractions such as loitering to more serious crimes like tax evasion. Their clients can also be charged with solicitation of prostitution.

Because of their illegal and vulnerable economic status, some migrant sex workers may find themselves in situations where coercion and forced sex work may be present. Under international legal definitions of human trafficking, forced and coercive forms of sex work are considered to be instances of involuntary sex trafficking. However, many scholars caution against categorizing sex workers as either completely voluntary or completely involuntary. They often argue that sex work, like other forms of labor, can span a spectrum between the two extremes, with most circumstances falling in the middle through various labor rights violations. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of migrant sex workers can make them susceptible to exploitative or coercive labor practices that can resemble or be human trafficking.

Migrant sex work

Migrant sex work is the work done by migrant workers in prostitution. Migrant sex work is significant because of its role as a dominant demographic of commercial sex workers internationally. Migrant sex work shares several similarities across various contexts, such as their migration from rural to urban areas or between developing to industrialized nations and the economic push and pull factors that help determine their migrant status. Migrant sex workers have also been at the center of complex discussions over the legality of sex work, the differentiation or conflation of sex work from sex trafficking, and responses from national governments and non-governmental organizations over the regulation of sex work and the provision of services for victims of sex trafficking.

The illegal nature of migrant sex work makes it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. However, social scientists have discovered significant trends regarding the identity of migrant sex workers. While migrants who work in agriculture or construction are largely male, migrants who engage in commercial sex work are largely female with ages ranging from the early teens to middle age. Migrant sex workers make up significant proportions of the sex worker population in many countries, with estimates ranging from 37% in the UK to 90% in Spain.

Migrant sex workers are diverse in terms of nationality of origin. In certain national contexts, such as in the United Arab Emirates, sex workers come from a diverse range of nations of origin, such as Russia, Nigeria, and Thailand. About 60% of sex workers in large Dutch cities, for instance, are women of color from developing nations. As a result, what distinguishes migrant sex workers from local sex workers are primarily their low socioeconomic status, primarily illegal immigration status, and poor language skills. This results in their frequent marginalization in the unregulated and dangerous sectors of the sex industry.

Low economic status and harsh living conditions in migrant sex workers' home country often serve as push factors for migration to more economically advantaged nations. Vast migration between third and first world countries in response to diminishing economic prospects at home has been prevalent since economic globalization widened the income gap between developed and developing nations. As a result, the number of international migrants doubled between 1960 and 2005. This international migration has increasingly become feminized, with females making up 50% of all international migrants.

Migrants enter sex work for a variety of reasons. Female migrants largely migrate for jobs in the care sector, such as domestic work, childcare, and sex work, as opposed to males who engage in more physically demanding labor, such as construction and agriculture. Some migrants may have originally intended to work in commercial sex while others found themselves turning to commercial sex after alternate labor means failed or proved to be less lucrative. Others may engage in sex work as a result of situations involving the need to pay off debts incurred during migration or fees to a wide variety of middlemen who may help secure papers, travel passage, and places of work.

For women who engage in rural to urban migration in developing nations with growing free-trade zones and importation of foreign financial capital and tourism, sex work is often more lucrative than alternative forms of labor, such as working in manufacturing or in factories subcontracting to foreign corporations. Women can choose to engage in commercial sex over these forms of labor, or use sex work to supplement other labor activities, such as domestic work.

Several scholars have noted the growing number of academic studies, news media coverage, and government and NGO reports on migrant sex workers, victims of sex trafficking, and the overlap between these two groups. As the perception of an international sex trafficking pandemic grows, there have been a large number of attempts to count the number of individuals who engage in some sort of migration and sex work, either voluntarily or coerced. However, scholars and activists have often criticized the methodologies of these studies and the motivations behind them.

Because prostitution can be an extremely political topic that represents differing political interests, the method of data collection and the use of collected data can vary in reliability. While more pro-sex work academics, organizations, and activists make an explicit demarcation between sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, many other groups consider prostitution to inherently lack a voluntary component. Many anti-sex work activists consider any form of migration for the purpose of commercial sex to be a form of human trafficking. As a result, depending on the definition of human trafficking by the organization or data collector, the number of either migrant sex workers or victims of sex trafficking can dramatically change depending on whether or not these two categories of individuals are conflated. Scholars, service providers, and practitioners who attempt to remain apolitical and outside the feminist views on sex trafficking and sex work regarding prostitution still often remark how the legal definitions of human trafficking are still too vague for them to efficiently and neutrally define and count victims. As a result, who is considered to be a migrant sex worker or victim of sex trafficking can widely vary.

The illegal nature of either the migration, sex work, or both components of migrant sex work make it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. Scholars Guri Tyldum and Anette Brunovski call sex workers "hidden populations" which they define as "A group of individuals for whom the size and boundaries are unknown,and for whom no sampling frame exists." The reasons why a sampling frame does not exist lies in the illegal and stigmatized nature of sex work. In order to protect their identity from law enforcement and family members, sex workers are often unwilling to participate in studies and surveys that may compromise their privacy and identity.

Migrant sex work is also incredibly diverse due to the large number of countries and migration contexts that are involved. There is no statistically generalizable portrait of migrant sex workers' day-to-day lives, living and working conditions, and relationships with other sex workers, clients, or third party intermediaries. Studies are unlikely to capture the sheer diversity in migrant sex worker experiences, especially when many of them come from selective samples, such as from a sex worker service provider or even shelter for human trafficking victims., As a result, many scholars caution against accepting any survey or study of sex workers as generalizable.

Whether or not human trafficking and migrant sex work should be considered the same concept has been a contentious debate among feminist activists, government officials, scholars, and religious organizations for the past 15 years. This debate currently dominates much of the public discussion surrounding human trafficking and sex work. On one side of the debate are anti-prostitution activists who conflate migrant sex work and human trafficking because they do not believe in voluntary prostitution or because they view any migration for the purpose of sex work as human trafficking. This perspective has largely dominated mainstream governmental and NGO perspectives toward human trafficking across international contexts. On the other side of the debate are pro-sex work academics and activists who argue for the separation of voluntary migrant sex work from involuntary human trafficking and a greater focus on labor and migration rights instead of trafficking. This group works for the recognition of the right of prostitutes to pursue sex work as a legitimate form of work, more flexible and open borders for migrants, and a greater focus on the spectrum of coercive labor conditions.

Sex work and sex trafficking conflation is also a heavily debated legal topic. Several scholars argue that existing legal provisions aimed at combating human trafficking, such as the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, do not adequately account for the variety of sex worker conditions and contexts, voluntary or involuntary. For instance, Filipina hostesses who migrate to Japan to work as entertainers must give up their legal documents to their recruiters during the migration process. While the law considers the process of giving up a passport to a third party intermediary as a condition of human trafficking, several scholars, activists, and the sex workers themselves do not regard this to be human trafficking, particularly when individuals consent to this component of the migration process.

Issues surrounding the definition of human trafficking in relation to sex work and migration situations have contributed to a highly contentious debate and has played a prominent role in structuring how governments have responded to migrant sex workers in terms of viewing them as unwilling victims of a crime or as criminals themselves.

Many migrant sex workers migrate illegally or become illegal migrants after leaving previously legal statuses and jobs for sex work. Illegal migrant status can heavily restrict sex worker access to legal alternatives to sex work, legal sex work venues, and government-provided social services. The consequences are that migrant sex workers are unable to turn to law enforcement during sexual assaults and rapes or access services available to sex workers with appropriate legal status and citizenship. The possibility of facing deportation and anti-immigration sentiments are critical ways in which migrant sex workers are marginalized. Migrant workers who initially migrate under legal means can become illegal migrants in violation of their visas if they decide to enter sex work.

Migrant sex workers who have legal status largely do not exist for two reasons. First, governments with legal sex industries typically do not allow foreign nationals to participate legally. New Zealand and Australia are two examples that prohibit foreign individuals with various visa statuses from participating in sex work, making individuals who choose to do so anyway illegal under immigration law. Second, governments that do not have legal sex industries typically allow the entrance of foreign nationals who are currently working as prostitutes or have a history of prostitution.

The legal status of sex work varies in various different national contexts around the world. Scholar Janie Chuang identifies the following four regulatory models for prostitution:

Proponents of legalizing prostitution often argue that legalization will provide regulation and benefits to an industry that suffers from negative externalities as a direct result of its illegal status, such as the inability of sex workers to seek legal action towards violent customers or exploitative labor conditions. Proponents for partial criminalization argue that making the act of buying sex, as opposed to selling sex, illegal will eliminate unequal penalties that are traditionally felt by the sex worker, especially when the sex worker is not voluntarily participating in commercial sex.

However, legalization of sex work does not mean all sex workers benefit. Even in situations where sex work is decriminalized and legalized, such as in Denmark, the migrant sex worker population is often negatively affected. In the Netherlands, when sex work is legalized, the legal benefits are largely accrued only by sex workers who have legal status or Dutch citizenship. As a result, the illegal migrant sex worker population that comprises 50%-60% of the overall sex worker population does not have access to licensed and regulated establishments and find themselves pushed into illegal and potentially dangerous sectors of sex work.

National governments have responded to migrant sex work similarly to the way they have responded to mass migration. Anti-immigration sentiments have flared in many receiving countries of mass migration, such as the United States. and various European countries, such as France. Along with these negative sentiments are negative attitudes directed at migrants who engage in sex work, with concerns over sex work's relationship with transnational organized crime, sexually transmitted diseases, and lower moral standards. States have responded by tightening their borders and deporting migrant sex workers.

State response may differ based on anti-human trafficking attitudes that often prevail. Some states are sympathetic to migrant sex workers who are considered to be victims of human trafficking and not voluntary sex workers. Some governments, such as that of the United States, provide legal and health services to individuals who engage in commercial sex if these individuals are proven and officially certified by law enforcement to be victims of human trafficking.

Response from non-governmental organizations have largely been centered on anti-trafficking activism and service provision that may also include migrant sex workers. Much of NGO response to migrant sex work has been on increasing awareness of human trafficking problems. Anti-trafficking NGOs have played a role in providing health services and contraceptives. Sex worker outreach organizations also exist in the areas of public and global health. NGOs also largely target migrant sex workers for their high risk of attracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases. They offer services such as providing contraception in the form of condoms, engaging sex workers in educational classes concerning sexual and other forms of physical health, and providing HIV and other STD testing.

In some contexts, such as the United States, NGOs have played a role in facilitating illegal migrant access to legal status and eventually permanent residency or citizenship. However, these legal benefits are often only available for individuals who can prove their involvement in commercial sex work was involuntary and a form of human trafficking victimhood. On the other hand, some NGO-run campaigns encourage migrant sex workers to return to their nations of origin.

The existence of anti-human trafficking NGOs has also been spurred by the United States Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons' Trafficking In Persons Report. A prominent component of the TIP Report ranking of countries's response to human trafficking is their involvement and encouragement of civil society and non-governmental efforts at combating human trafficking.

There have also been organizations that explicitly support the existence and rights of migrant sex workers, many of which are sex worker activist groups themselves. These groups primarily argue for the recognition of sex work as a legitimate form of work or for the rights and legal status of migrant workers to exist. Many of these NGOs argue for more open border and security policies that would not harm migrant sex workers and the risks that accompany illegal status. Such groups include the New Sex Worker Project, International Union of Sex Workers, and The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe.

The United States Department of State exerts significant influence on the migration and human trafficking policies of foreign government through the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons releases an annual Trafficking In Persons Report that rates all countries based on their response and action regarding human trafficking within and between their borders. Their ratings are based on whether or not a government is deemed compliant with U.S. minimum standards for response to human trafficking, which are articulated in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. According to the U.S. Department of State, countries are rated on the following standardsCentral to the U.S. Department of State understanding and discussion of human trafficking involves the international flow of migration. According to the Department of State, "Although not all trafficking involves migration, and not all migration is human trafficking, the vulnerabilities of migrants make them a tempting target for traffickers." Countries' responses towards migrant workers' conditions of vulnerability therefore play a pivotal role in their Trafficking in Persons Report ranking.

National governments respond to Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings and the potential consequence of sanctions in a variety of ways. These responses also differ in their effects on migrant sex workers. Many countries respond by placing more restrictive immigration standards or greater migration regulations, all for the purpose of seemingly improving state response to human trafficking risks that may accompany open borders. However, the effects of these new regulations have been mixed when it comes to the actual well-being of migrant sex workers. For example, South Korea, after their Tier 3 ranking in the 2001 TIP, launched an in-depth national survey to examine the conditions of their foreign sex workers. At the head of this new effort, however, was a government minister who had previously sough to abolish prostitution. The result was a national law that outlawed the role of third-party migration intermediaries who played an important role in facilitating the migration process of women into South Korea.

In 2003, Congress under the Bush Administration announced the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a commitment of $15 billion over five years (2003–2008) from United States to internationally fight the HIV/AIDS. In an effort to combat human trafficking and the supposed role of sex trafficking in spreading HIV/AIDS, the legislation explicitly opposes any efforts that do not conflate prostitution and sex trafficking:Within PEPFAR lies the controversial anti-prostitution pledge, a pledge NGOs and governments, with few exceptions, must sign declaring their opposition to prostitution or service provision to prostitutes. This pledge has been heavily criticized by NGOs working to fight HIV/AIDS, sex worker rights activists and organizations, and even national governments who feel a declaration of opposition towards prostitution would be counterproductive to eliminating HIV/AIDS among a vulnerable population. This pledge and its requirement of opposition to prostitution has affected the funding of many organizations working explicitly with migrant sex workers by eliminating many of their social services and increasing their risk of abuse and limited mobility.

Countries within the European Union have varied legal statuses for prostitution and sex work. Two European nations have served as representative examples of the two popularly debated legal responses to prostitution: Sweden's model of criminalizing the purchase of sex, but not the act of selling it; and the Netherlands' model of legalizing and regulating sex work. Many pro-sex work advocates argue that the Dutch model of legalization and regulation is the most beneficial for the labor standards and working conditions of sex workers, while many anti-sex work and anti-sex trafficking activists argue that the Swedish Model helps eliminate unfair criminalization of prostitutes instead of the janes, johns and pimps who exploit them. Criminalizing clients and pimps additionally avoids prosecuting prostitutes who are in reality victims of human trafficking.

However, many scholars argue that neither of these models have had dramatically different results in the status of sex workers or trafficking victims. Rather, both models have only deepened the dangers of sex work for vulnerable groups that engage in sex work, primarily socioeconomically disadvantaged migrant workers. Criminalization of buyers of sex work has created more dangerous situations for individuals who continue to engage in commercial sex. Often, they can no longer conduct transactions in public spaces because their clients fear arrest and legal action. As a result, sex work is less susceptible to outreach, and migrants who fear legal repercussions themselves for their legal statuses are unwilling to be involved in situations that may involve law enforcement or service provision.

Under the Dutch Model, these legal benefits and reduction of risk are not available to migrant sex workers who are largely illegal. Regulated and legalized sex work requires the registration of brothels, mandated health testing for sex workers, and various other regulations for indoor working spaces and the procurement of clients. As a result, illegal migrant workers who fear deportment over their legal status cannot participate in the formal paperwork associated with legal sex work. They continue to become marginalized from more privileged sex workers.

The United Arab Emirates's geographic location makes it an important stepping stone for migrants from the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia who wish to eventually work in Europe or the United States. The UAE's economic boom and aggressive development in the early to mid 2000s made it not only attractive to foreign migrants, but also dependent on them. In Dubai, migrants make up almost 90% of the population. While this migrant population is very diverse in terms of nation of origin, the population is divided into mainly two key demographics: poor, vulnerable laborers who come to Dubai through restrictive labor contacts; and rich, Western businessmen and financiers. Both populations contribute to Dubai and the greater UAE in very different yet very important ways. While the more privileged Western migrants contribute financial capital to the development of the city, the poor migrants contribute much of the physical labor necessary to build the city's physical structures.

Along with demand for migrant laborers was also the demand for migrant sex workers. Because of the diversity in the demographics of individuals who live and work in Dubai, a highly diverse and stratified commercial sex industry also exists to cater to these diversities in background, income, and class. For example, the spectrum of sex worker diversity ranges from migrants from Nigeria, Iran, Philippines, and Russia, with their skin tone corresponding to the price they command and the male clientele they see: the lighter the sex worker's skin color, the more Western the clientele and the higher the price. As a result, the UAE's migrant sex worker population is highly diverse and burgeoning. However, because the UAE is a Muslim country without legal prostitution, these sex workers remain largely underground, illegal, and in constant fear of law enforcement intervention and the possibility of deportation.

Because of the UAE's large migrant worker population, restrictive labor contracts, and lack of anti-trafficking partnerships with NGOs, the United States Department of State Trafficking In Persons Report gave UAE a series of Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings. As a result, the UAE allowed more local and international NGO presence to develop, including those working to end human trafficking and sex trafficking.

Canada has emerged as an important country for migrant sex work. Canada has seen a significant influx of migrant sex workers because of the notion that the West is seen as a mecca of opportunity. Furthermore, Canada is a rich nation and some women envision themselves becoming citizens one day. Many women from different parts of Asia, especially Thai women, started migrating to Canada because of the labor flow and migration policies. More women from Europe started traveling to Thailand for sex work thus, forcing women in their homelands to travel for work. Also, migration reforms in parts of Europe havemade it harder for people to stay for an extended period of time.

Different parts of Canada have different problems which cause women to deal with acts of violence. In particular, many women experience violence with this career which often does not get reported. In Toronto, many women did not report violence, but in Vancouver women were more likely to report acts of sexual assault.

Whether or not human trafficking and migrant sex work should be considered the same concept has been a contentious debate among feminist activists, government officials, scholars, and religious organizations for the past 15 years. This debate currently dominates much of the public discussion surrounding human trafficking and sex work. On one side of the debate are anti-prostitution activists who conflate migrant sex work and human trafficking because they do not believe in voluntary prostitution or because they view any migration for the purpose of sex work as human trafficking. This perspective has largely dominated mainstream governmental and NGO perspectives toward human trafficking across international contexts. On the other side of the debate are pro-sex work academics and activists who argue for the separation of voluntary migrant sex work from involuntary human trafficking and a greater focus on labor and migration rights instead of trafficking. This group works for the recognition of the right of prostitutes to pursue sex work as a legitimate form of work, more flexible and open borders for migrants, and a greater focus on the spectrum of coercive labor conditions.

Migrant sex work

Migrant sex work is the work done by migrant workers in prostitution. Migrant sex work is significant because of its role as a dominant demographic of commercial sex workers internationally. Migrant sex work shares several similarities across various contexts, such as their migration from rural to urban areas or between developing to industrialized nations and the economic push and pull factors that help determine their migrant status. Migrant sex workers have also been at the center of complex discussions over the legality of sex work, the differentiation or conflation of sex work from sex trafficking, and responses from national governments and non-governmental organizations over the regulation of sex work and the provision of services for victims of sex trafficking.

The illegal nature of migrant sex work makes it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. However, social scientists have discovered significant trends regarding the identity of migrant sex workers. While migrants who work in agriculture or construction are largely male, migrants who engage in commercial sex work are largely female with ages ranging from the early teens to middle age. Migrant sex workers make up significant proportions of the sex worker population in many countries, with estimates ranging from 37% in the UK to 90% in Spain.

Migrant sex workers are diverse in terms of nationality of origin. In certain national contexts, such as in the United Arab Emirates, sex workers come from a diverse range of nations of origin, such as Russia, Nigeria, and Thailand. About 60% of sex workers in large Dutch cities, for instance, are women of color from developing nations. As a result, what distinguishes migrant sex workers from local sex workers are primarily their low socioeconomic status, primarily illegal immigration status, and poor language skills. This results in their frequent marginalization in the unregulated and dangerous sectors of the sex industry.

Low economic status and harsh living conditions in migrant sex workers' home country often serve as push factors for migration to more economically advantaged nations. Vast migration between third and first world countries in response to diminishing economic prospects at home has been prevalent since economic globalization widened the income gap between developed and developing nations. As a result, the number of international migrants doubled between 1960 and 2005. This international migration has increasingly become feminized, with females making up 50% of all international migrants.

Migrants enter sex work for a variety of reasons. Female migrants largely migrate for jobs in the care sector, such as domestic work, childcare, and sex work, as opposed to males who engage in more physically demanding labor, such as construction and agriculture. Some migrants may have originally intended to work in commercial sex while others found themselves turning to commercial sex after alternate labor means failed or proved to be less lucrative. Others may engage in sex work as a result of situations involving the need to pay off debts incurred during migration or fees to a wide variety of middlemen who may help secure papers, travel passage, and places of work.

For women who engage in rural to urban migration in developing nations with growing free-trade zones and importation of foreign financial capital and tourism, sex work is often more lucrative than alternative forms of labor, such as working in manufacturing or in factories subcontracting to foreign corporations. Women can choose to engage in commercial sex over these forms of labor, or use sex work to supplement other labor activities, such as domestic work.

Several scholars have noted the growing number of academic studies, news media coverage, and government and NGO reports on migrant sex workers, victims of sex trafficking, and the overlap between these two groups. As the perception of an international sex trafficking pandemic grows, there have been a large number of attempts to count the number of individuals who engage in some sort of migration and sex work, either voluntarily or coerced. However, scholars and activists have often criticized the methodologies of these studies and the motivations behind them.

Because prostitution can be an extremely political topic that represents differing political interests, the method of data collection and the use of collected data can vary in reliability. While more pro-sex work academics, organizations, and activists make an explicit demarcation between sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, many other groups consider prostitution to inherently lack a voluntary component. Many anti-sex work activists consider any form of migration for the purpose of commercial sex to be a form of human trafficking. As a result, depending on the definition of human trafficking by the organization or data collector, the number of either migrant sex workers or victims of sex trafficking can dramatically change depending on whether or not these two categories of individuals are conflated. Scholars, service providers, and practitioners who attempt to remain apolitical and outside the feminist views on sex trafficking and sex work regarding prostitution still often remark how the legal definitions of human trafficking are still too vague for them to efficiently and neutrally define and count victims. As a result, who is considered to be a migrant sex worker or victim of sex trafficking can widely vary.

The illegal nature of either the migration, sex work, or both components of migrant sex work make it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. Scholars Guri Tyldum and Anette Brunovski call sex workers "hidden populations" which they define as "A group of individuals for whom the size and boundaries are unknown,and for whom no sampling frame exists." The reasons why a sampling frame does not exist lies in the illegal and stigmatized nature of sex work. In order to protect their identity from law enforcement and family members, sex workers are often unwilling to participate in studies and surveys that may compromise their privacy and identity.

Migrant sex work is also incredibly diverse due to the large number of countries and migration contexts that are involved. There is no statistically generalizable portrait of migrant sex workers' day-to-day lives, living and working conditions, and relationships with other sex workers, clients, or third party intermediaries. Studies are unlikely to capture the sheer diversity in migrant sex worker experiences, especially when many of them come from selective samples, such as from a sex worker service provider or even shelter for human trafficking victims., As a result, many scholars caution against accepting any survey or study of sex workers as generalizable.

Because of their illegal and vulnerable economic status, some migrant sex workers may find themselves in situations where coercion and forced sex work may be present. Under international legal definitions of human trafficking, forced and coercive forms of sex work are considered to be instances of involuntary sex trafficking. However, many scholars caution against categorizing sex workers as either completely voluntary or completely involuntary. They often argue that sex work, like other forms of labor, can span a spectrum between the two extremes, with most circumstances falling in the middle through various labor rights violations. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of migrant sex workers can make them susceptible to exploitative or coercive labor practices that can resemble or be human trafficking.

Sex work and sex trafficking conflation is also a heavily debated legal topic. Several scholars argue that existing legal provisions aimed at combating human trafficking, such as the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, do not adequately account for the variety of sex worker conditions and contexts, voluntary or involuntary. For instance, Filipina hostesses who migrate to Japan to work as entertainers must give up their legal documents to their recruiters during the migration process. While the law considers the process of giving up a passport to a third party intermediary as a condition of human trafficking, several scholars, activists, and the sex workers themselves do not regard this to be human trafficking, particularly when individuals consent to this component of the migration process.

Issues surrounding the definition of human trafficking in relation to sex work and migration situations have contributed to a highly contentious debate and has played a prominent role in structuring how governments have responded to migrant sex workers in terms of viewing them as unwilling victims of a crime or as criminals themselves.

Many migrant sex workers migrate illegally or become illegal migrants after leaving previously legal statuses and jobs for sex work. Illegal migrant status can heavily restrict sex worker access to legal alternatives to sex work, legal sex work venues, and government-provided social services. The consequences are that migrant sex workers are unable to turn to law enforcement during sexual assaults and rapes or access services available to sex workers with appropriate legal status and citizenship. The possibility of facing deportation and anti-immigration sentiments are critical ways in which migrant sex workers are marginalized. Migrant workers who initially migrate under legal means can become illegal migrants in violation of their visas if they decide to enter sex work.

Migrant sex workers who have legal status largely do not exist for two reasons. First, governments with legal sex industries typically do not allow foreign nationals to participate legally. New Zealand and Australia are two examples that prohibit foreign individuals with various visa statuses from participating in sex work, making individuals who choose to do so anyway illegal under immigration law. Second, governments that do not have legal sex industries typically allow the entrance of foreign nationals who are currently working as prostitutes or have a history of prostitution.

The legal status of sex work varies in various different national contexts around the world. Scholar Janie Chuang identifies the following four regulatory models for prostitution:

Proponents of legalizing prostitution often argue that legalization will provide regulation and benefits to an industry that suffers from negative externalities as a direct result of its illegal status, such as the inability of sex workers to seek legal action towards violent customers or exploitative labor conditions. Proponents for partial criminalization argue that making the act of buying sex, as opposed to selling sex, illegal will eliminate unequal penalties that are traditionally felt by the sex worker, especially when the sex worker is not voluntarily participating in commercial sex.

However, legalization of sex work does not mean all sex workers benefit. Even in situations where sex work is decriminalized and legalized, such as in Denmark, the migrant sex worker population is often negatively affected. In the Netherlands, when sex work is legalized, the legal benefits are largely accrued only by sex workers who have legal status or Dutch citizenship. As a result, the illegal migrant sex worker population that comprises 50%-60% of the overall sex worker population does not have access to licensed and regulated establishments and find themselves pushed into illegal and potentially dangerous sectors of sex work.

National governments have responded to migrant sex work similarly to the way they have responded to mass migration. Anti-immigration sentiments have flared in many receiving countries of mass migration, such as the United States. and various European countries, such as France. Along with these negative sentiments are negative attitudes directed at migrants who engage in sex work, with concerns over sex work's relationship with transnational organized crime, sexually transmitted diseases, and lower moral standards. States have responded by tightening their borders and deporting migrant sex workers.

State response may differ based on anti-human trafficking attitudes that often prevail. Some states are sympathetic to migrant sex workers who are considered to be victims of human trafficking and not voluntary sex workers. Some governments, such as that of the United States, provide legal and health services to individuals who engage in commercial sex if these individuals are proven and officially certified by law enforcement to be victims of human trafficking.

Response from non-governmental organizations have largely been centered on anti-trafficking activism and service provision that may also include migrant sex workers. Much of NGO response to migrant sex work has been on increasing awareness of human trafficking problems. Anti-trafficking NGOs have played a role in providing health services and contraceptives. Sex worker outreach organizations also exist in the areas of public and global health. NGOs also largely target migrant sex workers for their high risk of attracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases. They offer services such as providing contraception in the form of condoms, engaging sex workers in educational classes concerning sexual and other forms of physical health, and providing HIV and other STD testing.

In some contexts, such as the United States, NGOs have played a role in facilitating illegal migrant access to legal status and eventually permanent residency or citizenship. However, these legal benefits are often only available for individuals who can prove their involvement in commercial sex work was involuntary and a form of human trafficking victimhood. On the other hand, some NGO-run campaigns encourage migrant sex workers to return to their nations of origin.

The existence of anti-human trafficking NGOs has also been spurred by the United States Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons' Trafficking In Persons Report. A prominent component of the TIP Report ranking of countries's response to human trafficking is their involvement and encouragement of civil society and non-governmental efforts at combating human trafficking.

There have also been organizations that explicitly support the existence and rights of migrant sex workers, many of which are sex worker activist groups themselves. These groups primarily argue for the recognition of sex work as a legitimate form of work or for the rights and legal status of migrant workers to exist. Many of these NGOs argue for more open border and security policies that would not harm migrant sex workers and the risks that accompany illegal status. Such groups include the New Sex Worker Project, International Union of Sex Workers, and The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe.

The United States Department of State exerts significant influence on the migration and human trafficking policies of foreign government through the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons releases an annual Trafficking In Persons Report that rates all countries based on their response and action regarding human trafficking within and between their borders. Their ratings are based on whether or not a government is deemed compliant with U.S. minimum standards for response to human trafficking, which are articulated in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. According to the U.S. Department of State, countries are rated on the following standardsCentral to the U.S. Department of State understanding and discussion of human trafficking involves the international flow of migration. According to the Department of State, "Although not all trafficking involves migration, and not all migration is human trafficking, the vulnerabilities of migrants make them a tempting target for traffickers." Countries' responses towards migrant workers' conditions of vulnerability therefore play a pivotal role in their Trafficking in Persons Report ranking.

National governments respond to Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings and the potential consequence of sanctions in a variety of ways. These responses also differ in their effects on migrant sex workers. Many countries respond by placing more restrictive immigration standards or greater migration regulations, all for the purpose of seemingly improving state response to human trafficking risks that may accompany open borders. However, the effects of these new regulations have been mixed when it comes to the actual well-being of migrant sex workers. For example, South Korea, after their Tier 3 ranking in the 2001 TIP, launched an in-depth national survey to examine the conditions of their foreign sex workers. At the head of this new effort, however, was a government minister who had previously sough to abolish prostitution. The result was a national law that outlawed the role of third-party migration intermediaries who played an important role in facilitating the migration process of women into South Korea.

In 2003, Congress under the Bush Administration announced the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a commitment of $15 billion over five years (2003–2008) from United States to internationally fight the HIV/AIDS. In an effort to combat human trafficking and the supposed role of sex trafficking in spreading HIV/AIDS, the legislation explicitly opposes any efforts that do not conflate prostitution and sex trafficking:Within PEPFAR lies the controversial anti-prostitution pledge, a pledge NGOs and governments, with few exceptions, must sign declaring their opposition to prostitution or service provision to prostitutes. This pledge has been heavily criticized by NGOs working to fight HIV/AIDS, sex worker rights activists and organizations, and even national governments who feel a declaration of opposition towards prostitution would be counterproductive to eliminating HIV/AIDS among a vulnerable population. This pledge and its requirement of opposition to prostitution has affected the funding of many organizations working explicitly with migrant sex workers by eliminating many of their social services and increasing their risk of abuse and limited mobility.

Countries within the European Union have varied legal statuses for prostitution and sex work. Two European nations have served as representative examples of the two popularly debated legal responses to prostitution: Sweden's model of criminalizing the purchase of sex, but not the act of selling it; and the Netherlands' model of legalizing and regulating sex work. Many pro-sex work advocates argue that the Dutch model of legalization and regulation is the most beneficial for the labor standards and working conditions of sex workers, while many anti-sex work and anti-sex trafficking activists argue that the Swedish Model helps eliminate unfair criminalization of prostitutes instead of the janes, johns and pimps who exploit them. Criminalizing clients and pimps additionally avoids prosecuting prostitutes who are in reality victims of human trafficking.

However, many scholars argue that neither of these models have had dramatically different results in the status of sex workers or trafficking victims. Rather, both models have only deepened the dangers of sex work for vulnerable groups that engage in sex work, primarily socioeconomically disadvantaged migrant workers. Criminalization of buyers of sex work has created more dangerous situations for individuals who continue to engage in commercial sex. Often, they can no longer conduct transactions in public spaces because their clients fear arrest and legal action. As a result, sex work is less susceptible to outreach, and migrants who fear legal repercussions themselves for their legal statuses are unwilling to be involved in situations that may involve law enforcement or service provision.

Under the Dutch Model, these legal benefits and reduction of risk are not available to migrant sex workers who are largely illegal. Regulated and legalized sex work requires the registration of brothels, mandated health testing for sex workers, and various other regulations for indoor working spaces and the procurement of clients. As a result, illegal migrant workers who fear deportment over their legal status cannot participate in the formal paperwork associated with legal sex work. They continue to become marginalized from more privileged sex workers.

The United Arab Emirates's geographic location makes it an important stepping stone for migrants from the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia who wish to eventually work in Europe or the United States. The UAE's economic boom and aggressive development in the early to mid 2000s made it not only attractive to foreign migrants, but also dependent on them. In Dubai, migrants make up almost 90% of the population. While this migrant population is very diverse in terms of nation of origin, the population is divided into mainly two key demographics: poor, vulnerable laborers who come to Dubai through restrictive labor contacts; and rich, Western businessmen and financiers. Both populations contribute to Dubai and the greater UAE in very different yet very important ways. While the more privileged Western migrants contribute financial capital to the development of the city, the poor migrants contribute much of the physical labor necessary to build the city's physical structures.

Along with demand for migrant laborers was also the demand for migrant sex workers. Because of the diversity in the demographics of individuals who live and work in Dubai, a highly diverse and stratified commercial sex industry also exists to cater to these diversities in background, income, and class. For example, the spectrum of sex worker diversity ranges from migrants from Nigeria, Iran, Philippines, and Russia, with their skin tone corresponding to the price they command and the male clientele they see: the lighter the sex worker's skin color, the more Western the clientele and the higher the price. As a result, the UAE's migrant sex worker population is highly diverse and burgeoning. However, because the UAE is a Muslim country without legal prostitution, these sex workers remain largely underground, illegal, and in constant fear of law enforcement intervention and the possibility of deportation.

Because of the UAE's large migrant worker population, restrictive labor contracts, and lack of anti-trafficking partnerships with NGOs, the United States Department of State Trafficking In Persons Report gave UAE a series of Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings. As a result, the UAE allowed more local and international NGO presence to develop, including those working to end human trafficking and sex trafficking.

Canada has emerged as an important country for migrant sex work. Canada has seen a significant influx of migrant sex workers because of the notion that the West is seen as a mecca of opportunity. Furthermore, Canada is a rich nation and some women envision themselves becoming citizens one day. Many women from different parts of Asia, especially Thai women, started migrating to Canada because of the labor flow and migration policies. More women from Europe started traveling to Thailand for sex work thus, forcing women in their homelands to travel for work. Also, migration reforms in parts of Europe havemade it harder for people to stay for an extended period of time.

Different parts of Canada have different problems which cause women to deal with acts of violence. In particular, many women experience violence with this career which often does not get reported. In Toronto, many women did not report violence, but in Vancouver women were more likely to report acts of sexual assault.

Sex work and sex trafficking conflation is also a heavily debated legal topic. Several scholars argue that existing legal provisions aimed at combating human trafficking, such as the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, do not adequately account for the variety of sex worker conditions and contexts, voluntary or involuntary. For instance, Filipina hostesses who migrate to Japan to work as entertainers must give up their legal documents to their recruiters during the migration process. While the law considers the process of giving up a passport to a third party intermediary as a condition of human trafficking, several scholars, activists, and the sex workers themselves do not regard this to be human trafficking, particularly when individuals consent to this component of the migration process.

Migrant sex work

Migrant sex work is the work done by migrant workers in prostitution. Migrant sex work is significant because of its role as a dominant demographic of commercial sex workers internationally. Migrant sex work shares several similarities across various contexts, such as their migration from rural to urban areas or between developing to industrialized nations and the economic push and pull factors that help determine their migrant status. Migrant sex workers have also been at the center of complex discussions over the legality of sex work, the differentiation or conflation of sex work from sex trafficking, and responses from national governments and non-governmental organizations over the regulation of sex work and the provision of services for victims of sex trafficking.

The illegal nature of migrant sex work makes it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. However, social scientists have discovered significant trends regarding the identity of migrant sex workers. While migrants who work in agriculture or construction are largely male, migrants who engage in commercial sex work are largely female with ages ranging from the early teens to middle age. Migrant sex workers make up significant proportions of the sex worker population in many countries, with estimates ranging from 37% in the UK to 90% in Spain.

Migrant sex workers are diverse in terms of nationality of origin. In certain national contexts, such as in the United Arab Emirates, sex workers come from a diverse range of nations of origin, such as Russia, Nigeria, and Thailand. About 60% of sex workers in large Dutch cities, for instance, are women of color from developing nations. As a result, what distinguishes migrant sex workers from local sex workers are primarily their low socioeconomic status, primarily illegal immigration status, and poor language skills. This results in their frequent marginalization in the unregulated and dangerous sectors of the sex industry.

Low economic status and harsh living conditions in migrant sex workers' home country often serve as push factors for migration to more economically advantaged nations. Vast migration between third and first world countries in response to diminishing economic prospects at home has been prevalent since economic globalization widened the income gap between developed and developing nations. As a result, the number of international migrants doubled between 1960 and 2005. This international migration has increasingly become feminized, with females making up 50% of all international migrants.

Migrants enter sex work for a variety of reasons. Female migrants largely migrate for jobs in the care sector, such as domestic work, childcare, and sex work, as opposed to males who engage in more physically demanding labor, such as construction and agriculture. Some migrants may have originally intended to work in commercial sex while others found themselves turning to commercial sex after alternate labor means failed or proved to be less lucrative. Others may engage in sex work as a result of situations involving the need to pay off debts incurred during migration or fees to a wide variety of middlemen who may help secure papers, travel passage, and places of work.

For women who engage in rural to urban migration in developing nations with growing free-trade zones and importation of foreign financial capital and tourism, sex work is often more lucrative than alternative forms of labor, such as working in manufacturing or in factories subcontracting to foreign corporations. Women can choose to engage in commercial sex over these forms of labor, or use sex work to supplement other labor activities, such as domestic work.

Several scholars have noted the growing number of academic studies, news media coverage, and government and NGO reports on migrant sex workers, victims of sex trafficking, and the overlap between these two groups. As the perception of an international sex trafficking pandemic grows, there have been a large number of attempts to count the number of individuals who engage in some sort of migration and sex work, either voluntarily or coerced. However, scholars and activists have often criticized the methodologies of these studies and the motivations behind them.

Because prostitution can be an extremely political topic that represents differing political interests, the method of data collection and the use of collected data can vary in reliability. While more pro-sex work academics, organizations, and activists make an explicit demarcation between sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, many other groups consider prostitution to inherently lack a voluntary component. Many anti-sex work activists consider any form of migration for the purpose of commercial sex to be a form of human trafficking. As a result, depending on the definition of human trafficking by the organization or data collector, the number of either migrant sex workers or victims of sex trafficking can dramatically change depending on whether or not these two categories of individuals are conflated. Scholars, service providers, and practitioners who attempt to remain apolitical and outside the feminist views on sex trafficking and sex work regarding prostitution still often remark how the legal definitions of human trafficking are still too vague for them to efficiently and neutrally define and count victims. As a result, who is considered to be a migrant sex worker or victim of sex trafficking can widely vary.

The illegal nature of either the migration, sex work, or both components of migrant sex work make it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. Scholars Guri Tyldum and Anette Brunovski call sex workers "hidden populations" which they define as "A group of individuals for whom the size and boundaries are unknown,and for whom no sampling frame exists." The reasons why a sampling frame does not exist lies in the illegal and stigmatized nature of sex work. In order to protect their identity from law enforcement and family members, sex workers are often unwilling to participate in studies and surveys that may compromise their privacy and identity.

Migrant sex work is also incredibly diverse due to the large number of countries and migration contexts that are involved. There is no statistically generalizable portrait of migrant sex workers' day-to-day lives, living and working conditions, and relationships with other sex workers, clients, or third party intermediaries. Studies are unlikely to capture the sheer diversity in migrant sex worker experiences, especially when many of them come from selective samples, such as from a sex worker service provider or even shelter for human trafficking victims., As a result, many scholars caution against accepting any survey or study of sex workers as generalizable.

Because of their illegal and vulnerable economic status, some migrant sex workers may find themselves in situations where coercion and forced sex work may be present. Under international legal definitions of human trafficking, forced and coercive forms of sex work are considered to be instances of involuntary sex trafficking. However, many scholars caution against categorizing sex workers as either completely voluntary or completely involuntary. They often argue that sex work, like other forms of labor, can span a spectrum between the two extremes, with most circumstances falling in the middle through various labor rights violations. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of migrant sex workers can make them susceptible to exploitative or coercive labor practices that can resemble or be human trafficking.

Whether or not human trafficking and migrant sex work should be considered the same concept has been a contentious debate among feminist activists, government officials, scholars, and religious organizations for the past 15 years. This debate currently dominates much of the public discussion surrounding human trafficking and sex work. On one side of the debate are anti-prostitution activists who conflate migrant sex work and human trafficking because they do not believe in voluntary prostitution or because they view any migration for the purpose of sex work as human trafficking. This perspective has largely dominated mainstream governmental and NGO perspectives toward human trafficking across international contexts. On the other side of the debate are pro-sex work academics and activists who argue for the separation of voluntary migrant sex work from involuntary human trafficking and a greater focus on labor and migration rights instead of trafficking. This group works for the recognition of the right of prostitutes to pursue sex work as a legitimate form of work, more flexible and open borders for migrants, and a greater focus on the spectrum of coercive labor conditions.

Issues surrounding the definition of human trafficking in relation to sex work and migration situations have contributed to a highly contentious debate and has played a prominent role in structuring how governments have responded to migrant sex workers in terms of viewing them as unwilling victims of a crime or as criminals themselves.

Many migrant sex workers migrate illegally or become illegal migrants after leaving previously legal statuses and jobs for sex work. Illegal migrant status can heavily restrict sex worker access to legal alternatives to sex work, legal sex work venues, and government-provided social services. The consequences are that migrant sex workers are unable to turn to law enforcement during sexual assaults and rapes or access services available to sex workers with appropriate legal status and citizenship. The possibility of facing deportation and anti-immigration sentiments are critical ways in which migrant sex workers are marginalized. Migrant workers who initially migrate under legal means can become illegal migrants in violation of their visas if they decide to enter sex work.

Migrant sex workers who have legal status largely do not exist for two reasons. First, governments with legal sex industries typically do not allow foreign nationals to participate legally. New Zealand and Australia are two examples that prohibit foreign individuals with various visa statuses from participating in sex work, making individuals who choose to do so anyway illegal under immigration law. Second, governments that do not have legal sex industries typically allow the entrance of foreign nationals who are currently working as prostitutes or have a history of prostitution.

The legal status of sex work varies in various different national contexts around the world. Scholar Janie Chuang identifies the following four regulatory models for prostitution:

Proponents of legalizing prostitution often argue that legalization will provide regulation and benefits to an industry that suffers from negative externalities as a direct result of its illegal status, such as the inability of sex workers to seek legal action towards violent customers or exploitative labor conditions. Proponents for partial criminalization argue that making the act of buying sex, as opposed to selling sex, illegal will eliminate unequal penalties that are traditionally felt by the sex worker, especially when the sex worker is not voluntarily participating in commercial sex.

However, legalization of sex work does not mean all sex workers benefit. Even in situations where sex work is decriminalized and legalized, such as in Denmark, the migrant sex worker population is often negatively affected. In the Netherlands, when sex work is legalized, the legal benefits are largely accrued only by sex workers who have legal status or Dutch citizenship. As a result, the illegal migrant sex worker population that comprises 50%-60% of the overall sex worker population does not have access to licensed and regulated establishments and find themselves pushed into illegal and potentially dangerous sectors of sex work.

National governments have responded to migrant sex work similarly to the way they have responded to mass migration. Anti-immigration sentiments have flared in many receiving countries of mass migration, such as the United States. and various European countries, such as France. Along with these negative sentiments are negative attitudes directed at migrants who engage in sex work, with concerns over sex work's relationship with transnational organized crime, sexually transmitted diseases, and lower moral standards. States have responded by tightening their borders and deporting migrant sex workers.

State response may differ based on anti-human trafficking attitudes that often prevail. Some states are sympathetic to migrant sex workers who are considered to be victims of human trafficking and not voluntary sex workers. Some governments, such as that of the United States, provide legal and health services to individuals who engage in commercial sex if these individuals are proven and officially certified by law enforcement to be victims of human trafficking.

Response from non-governmental organizations have largely been centered on anti-trafficking activism and service provision that may also include migrant sex workers. Much of NGO response to migrant sex work has been on increasing awareness of human trafficking problems. Anti-trafficking NGOs have played a role in providing health services and contraceptives. Sex worker outreach organizations also exist in the areas of public and global health. NGOs also largely target migrant sex workers for their high risk of attracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases. They offer services such as providing contraception in the form of condoms, engaging sex workers in educational classes concerning sexual and other forms of physical health, and providing HIV and other STD testing.

In some contexts, such as the United States, NGOs have played a role in facilitating illegal migrant access to legal status and eventually permanent residency or citizenship. However, these legal benefits are often only available for individuals who can prove their involvement in commercial sex work was involuntary and a form of human trafficking victimhood. On the other hand, some NGO-run campaigns encourage migrant sex workers to return to their nations of origin.

The existence of anti-human trafficking NGOs has also been spurred by the United States Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons' Trafficking In Persons Report. A prominent component of the TIP Report ranking of countries's response to human trafficking is their involvement and encouragement of civil society and non-governmental efforts at combating human trafficking.

There have also been organizations that explicitly support the existence and rights of migrant sex workers, many of which are sex worker activist groups themselves. These groups primarily argue for the recognition of sex work as a legitimate form of work or for the rights and legal status of migrant workers to exist. Many of these NGOs argue for more open border and security policies that would not harm migrant sex workers and the risks that accompany illegal status. Such groups include the New Sex Worker Project, International Union of Sex Workers, and The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe.

The United States Department of State exerts significant influence on the migration and human trafficking policies of foreign government through the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons releases an annual Trafficking In Persons Report that rates all countries based on their response and action regarding human trafficking within and between their borders. Their ratings are based on whether or not a government is deemed compliant with U.S. minimum standards for response to human trafficking, which are articulated in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. According to the U.S. Department of State, countries are rated on the following standardsCentral to the U.S. Department of State understanding and discussion of human trafficking involves the international flow of migration. According to the Department of State, "Although not all trafficking involves migration, and not all migration is human trafficking, the vulnerabilities of migrants make them a tempting target for traffickers." Countries' responses towards migrant workers' conditions of vulnerability therefore play a pivotal role in their Trafficking in Persons Report ranking.

National governments respond to Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings and the potential consequence of sanctions in a variety of ways. These responses also differ in their effects on migrant sex workers. Many countries respond by placing more restrictive immigration standards or greater migration regulations, all for the purpose of seemingly improving state response to human trafficking risks that may accompany open borders. However, the effects of these new regulations have been mixed when it comes to the actual well-being of migrant sex workers. For example, South Korea, after their Tier 3 ranking in the 2001 TIP, launched an in-depth national survey to examine the conditions of their foreign sex workers. At the head of this new effort, however, was a government minister who had previously sough to abolish prostitution. The result was a national law that outlawed the role of third-party migration intermediaries who played an important role in facilitating the migration process of women into South Korea.

In 2003, Congress under the Bush Administration announced the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a commitment of $15 billion over five years (2003–2008) from United States to internationally fight the HIV/AIDS. In an effort to combat human trafficking and the supposed role of sex trafficking in spreading HIV/AIDS, the legislation explicitly opposes any efforts that do not conflate prostitution and sex trafficking:Within PEPFAR lies the controversial anti-prostitution pledge, a pledge NGOs and governments, with few exceptions, must sign declaring their opposition to prostitution or service provision to prostitutes. This pledge has been heavily criticized by NGOs working to fight HIV/AIDS, sex worker rights activists and organizations, and even national governments who feel a declaration of opposition towards prostitution would be counterproductive to eliminating HIV/AIDS among a vulnerable population. This pledge and its requirement of opposition to prostitution has affected the funding of many organizations working explicitly with migrant sex workers by eliminating many of their social services and increasing their risk of abuse and limited mobility.

Countries within the European Union have varied legal statuses for prostitution and sex work. Two European nations have served as representative examples of the two popularly debated legal responses to prostitution: Sweden's model of criminalizing the purchase of sex, but not the act of selling it; and the Netherlands' model of legalizing and regulating sex work. Many pro-sex work advocates argue that the Dutch model of legalization and regulation is the most beneficial for the labor standards and working conditions of sex workers, while many anti-sex work and anti-sex trafficking activists argue that the Swedish Model helps eliminate unfair criminalization of prostitutes instead of the janes, johns and pimps who exploit them. Criminalizing clients and pimps additionally avoids prosecuting prostitutes who are in reality victims of human trafficking.

However, many scholars argue that neither of these models have had dramatically different results in the status of sex workers or trafficking victims. Rather, both models have only deepened the dangers of sex work for vulnerable groups that engage in sex work, primarily socioeconomically disadvantaged migrant workers. Criminalization of buyers of sex work has created more dangerous situations for individuals who continue to engage in commercial sex. Often, they can no longer conduct transactions in public spaces because their clients fear arrest and legal action. As a result, sex work is less susceptible to outreach, and migrants who fear legal repercussions themselves for their legal statuses are unwilling to be involved in situations that may involve law enforcement or service provision.

Under the Dutch Model, these legal benefits and reduction of risk are not available to migrant sex workers who are largely illegal. Regulated and legalized sex work requires the registration of brothels, mandated health testing for sex workers, and various other regulations for indoor working spaces and the procurement of clients. As a result, illegal migrant workers who fear deportment over their legal status cannot participate in the formal paperwork associated with legal sex work. They continue to become marginalized from more privileged sex workers.

The United Arab Emirates's geographic location makes it an important stepping stone for migrants from the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia who wish to eventually work in Europe or the United States. The UAE's economic boom and aggressive development in the early to mid 2000s made it not only attractive to foreign migrants, but also dependent on them. In Dubai, migrants make up almost 90% of the population. While this migrant population is very diverse in terms of nation of origin, the population is divided into mainly two key demographics: poor, vulnerable laborers who come to Dubai through restrictive labor contacts; and rich, Western businessmen and financiers. Both populations contribute to Dubai and the greater UAE in very different yet very important ways. While the more privileged Western migrants contribute financial capital to the development of the city, the poor migrants contribute much of the physical labor necessary to build the city's physical structures.

Along with demand for migrant laborers was also the demand for migrant sex workers. Because of the diversity in the demographics of individuals who live and work in Dubai, a highly diverse and stratified commercial sex industry also exists to cater to these diversities in background, income, and class. For example, the spectrum of sex worker diversity ranges from migrants from Nigeria, Iran, Philippines, and Russia, with their skin tone corresponding to the price they command and the male clientele they see: the lighter the sex worker's skin color, the more Western the clientele and the higher the price. As a result, the UAE's migrant sex worker population is highly diverse and burgeoning. However, because the UAE is a Muslim country without legal prostitution, these sex workers remain largely underground, illegal, and in constant fear of law enforcement intervention and the possibility of deportation.

Because of the UAE's large migrant worker population, restrictive labor contracts, and lack of anti-trafficking partnerships with NGOs, the United States Department of State Trafficking In Persons Report gave UAE a series of Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings. As a result, the UAE allowed more local and international NGO presence to develop, including those working to end human trafficking and sex trafficking.

Canada has emerged as an important country for migrant sex work. Canada has seen a significant influx of migrant sex workers because of the notion that the West is seen as a mecca of opportunity. Furthermore, Canada is a rich nation and some women envision themselves becoming citizens one day. Many women from different parts of Asia, especially Thai women, started migrating to Canada because of the labor flow and migration policies. More women from Europe started traveling to Thailand for sex work thus, forcing women in their homelands to travel for work. Also, migration reforms in parts of Europe havemade it harder for people to stay for an extended period of time.

Different parts of Canada have different problems which cause women to deal with acts of violence. In particular, many women experience violence with this career which often does not get reported. In Toronto, many women did not report violence, but in Vancouver women were more likely to report acts of sexual assault.

The problems against anti-trafficking raids are related to the problem of the trafficking concept itself, as raids' purpose of fighting sex trafficking may be conflated with fighting prostitution. The Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA) gives state and local law enforcement funding to prosecute customers of commercial sex, therefore some law enforcement agencies make no distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. One study interviewed women who have experienced law enforcement operations as sex workers and found that during these raids meant to combat human trafficking, none of the women were ever identified as trafficking victims, and only one woman was asked whether she was coerced into sex work. The conflation of trafficking with prostitution, then, does not serve to adequately identify trafficking and help the victims. Raids are also problematic in that the women involved were most likely unclear about who was conducting the raid, what the purpose of the raid was, and what the outcomes of the raid would be.

Human trafficking

Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, especially women and children, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), forced labour alone (one component of human trafficking) generates an estimated $150 billion in profits per annum as of 2014. In 2012, the ILO estimated that 21 million victims are trapped in modern-day slavery. Of these, 14.2 million (68%) were exploited for labour, 4.5 million (22%) were sexually exploited, and 2.2 million (10%) were exploited in state-imposed forced labour. The International Labour Organization has reported that child workers, minorities, and irregular migrants are at considerable risk of more extreme forms of exploitation. Statistics shows that over half of the world’s 215 million young workers are observed to be in hazardous sectors, including forced sex work and forced street begging. Ethnic minorities and highly marginalized groups of people are highly estimated to work in some of the most exploitative and damaging sectors, such as leather tanning, mining, and stone quarry work.

Human trafficking is thought to be one of the fastest-growing activities of trans-national criminal organizations.

Human trafficking is condemned as a violation of human rights by international conventions. In addition, human trafficking is subject to a directive in the European Union. According to a report by the U.S. State Department, Belarus, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan remain among the worst countries when it comes to providing protection against human trafficking and forced labour.

Although human trafficking can occur at local or domestic levels, it has international implications, as recognized by the United Nations in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (also referred to as the "Trafficking Protocol" or the "Palermo Protocol"), an international agreement under the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (CTOC) which entered into force on 25 December 2003. The protocol is one of three which supplement the CTOC. The "Trafficking Protocol" is the first global, legally binding instrument on trafficking in over half a century, and the only one with an agreed-upon definition of trafficking in persons. One of its purposes is to facilitate international cooperation in investigating and prosecuting such trafficking. Another is to protect and assist human trafficking's victims with full respect for their rights as established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The "Trafficking Protocol", which had 117 signatories and as of November, 2018 173 parties, defines human trafficking as:
In 2014, the International Labour Organization estimated $150 billion in annual profit is generated from forced labour alone.

The average cost of a human trafficking victim today is USD $90 whereas the average slave in 1800 America cost the equivalent of USD $40,000.

Human trafficking differs from people smuggling, which involves a person voluntarily requesting or hiring another individual to covertly transport them across an international border, usually because the smuggled person would be denied entry into a country by legal channels. Though illegal, there may be no deception or coercion involved. After entry into the country and arrival at their ultimate destination, the smuggled person is usually free to find their own way. According to the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), people smuggling is a violation of national immigration laws of the destination country, and does not require violations of the rights of the smuggled person. Human trafficking, on the other hand, is a crime against a person because of the violation of the victim's rights through coercion and exploitation.

While smuggling requires travel, trafficking does not. Trafficked people are held against their will through acts of coercion, and forced to work for or provide services to the trafficker or others. The work or services may include anything from bonded or forced labour to commercial sexual exploitation. The arrangement may be structured as a work contract, but with no or low payment, or on terms which are highly exploitative. Sometimes the arrangement is structured as debt bondage, with the victim not being permitted or able to pay off the debt.

Bonded labour, or debt bondage, is probably the least known form of labour trafficking today, and yet is the most widely used method of enslaving people. Victims become "bonded" when their labour, the labour which they themselves hired and the tangible goods they have bought are demanded as a means of repayment for a loan or service whose terms and conditions have not been defined, or where the value of the victims' services is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt. Generally, the value of their work is greater than the original sum of money "borrowed".

Forced labour is a situation in which victims are forced to work against their own will under the threat of violence or some other form of punishment; their freedom is restricted and a degree of ownership is exerted. Men are at risk of being trafficked for unskilled work, which globally generates 31 billion USD according to the International Labour Organization. Forms of forced labour can include domestic servitude, agricultural labour, sweatshop factory laboir, janitorial, food service and other service industry labour, and begging. Some of the products that can be produced by forced labour are: clothing, cocoa, bricks, coffee, cotton, and gold.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the single largest global provider of services to victims of trafficking, reports receiving an increasing number of cases in which victims were subjected to forced labour. A 2012 study observes that "… 2010 was particularly notable as the first year in which IOM assisted more victims of labour trafficking than those who had been trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation." The IOMs' main focus is "to provide secure, reliable, flexible and cost-effective serviced for persons who require international migration assistance. To enhance the humane and orderly management of migration and the effective respect for the human rights of migrations in accordance with international law. To offer advice, research, technical cooperation and operational assistance to States, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders, in order to build national capacities and facilitate international, regional and bilateral cooperation on migration matters..."

Child labour is a form of work that may be hazardous to the physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development of children and can interfere with their education. According to the International Labour Organization, the global number of children involved in child labour has fallen during the past decade it has declined by one third, from 246 million in 2000 to 168 million children in 2012. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest incidence of child labour, while the largest numbers of child-workers are found in Asia and the Pacific.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has further assisted many non-governmental organizations in their fight against human trafficking. The 2006 armed conflict in Lebanon, which saw 300,000 domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and the Philippines jobless and targets of traffickers, led to an emergency information campaign with NGO Caritas Migrant to raise human-trafficking awareness. Additionally, an April 2006 report, Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns, helped to identify 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries for human trafficking. To date, it is the second most frequently downloaded UNODC report. Continuing into 2007, UNODC supported initiatives like the Community Vigilance project along the border between India and Nepal, as well as provided subsidy for NGO trafficking prevention campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) was conceived to promote the global fight on human trafficking, on the basis of international agreements reached at the UN. UN.GIFT was launched in March 2007 by UNODC with a grant made on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. It is managed in cooperation with the International Labour Organization (ILO); the International Organization for Migration (IOM); the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF); the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
UNODC efforts to motivate action launched the Blue Heart Campaign Against Human Trafficking on 6 March 2009, which Mexico launched its own national version of in April 2010. The campaign encourages people to show solidarity with human trafficking victims by wearing the blue heart, similar to how wearing the red ribbon promotes transnational HIV/AIDS awareness. On 4 November 2010, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Trafficking in Persons to provide humanitarian, legal and financial aid to victims of human trafficking with the aim of increasing the number of those rescued and supported, and broadening the extent of assistance they receive.

In December 2012, UNODC published the new edition of the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. The Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2012 has revealed that 27 per cent of all victims of human trafficking officially detected globally between 2007 and 2010 are children, up 7 per cent from the period 2003 to 2006.

The Global Report recorded victims of 136 different nationalities detected in 118 countries between 2007 and 2010, during which period, 460 different flows were identified. Around half of all trafficking took place within the same region with 27 per cent occurring within national borders. One exception is the Middle East, where most detected victims are East and South Asians. Trafficking victims from East Asia have been detected in more than 60 countries, making them the most geographically dispersed group around the world. There are significant regional differences in the detected forms of exploitation. Countries in Africa and in Asia generally intercept more cases of trafficking for forced labour, while sexual exploitation is somewhat more frequently found in Europe and in the Americas. Additionally, trafficking for organ removal was detected in 16 countries around the world.The Report raises concerns about low conviction rates 16 per cent of reporting countries did not record a single conviction for trafficking in persons between 2007 and 2010. As of February 2018, 173 countries have ratified the United Nations Trafficking in Persons Protocol, of which UNODC is the guardian. Significant progress has been made in terms of legislation: as of 2012, 83 per cent of countries had a law criminalizing trafficking in persons in accordance with the Protocol.In 2002, Derek Ellerman and Katherine Chon founded a non-government organization called Polaris Project to combat human trafficking. In 2007, Polaris instituted the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) where callers can report tips and receive information on human trafficking. Polaris' website and hotline informs the public about where cases of suspected human trafficking have occurred within the United States. The website records calls on a map.

In 2007, the U.S. Senate designated 11 January as a National Day of Human Trafficking Awareness in an effort to raise consciousness about this global, national and local issue. In 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, President Barack Obama proclaimed January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Along with these initiatives libraries across the United States are beginning to contribute to human trafficking awareness. Slowly, libraries are turning into educational centers for those who are not aware of this issue. They are collaborating with other organizations to train staff members to spot human trafficking victims and find ways to help them.

In 2014, DARPA funded the Memex program with the explicit goal of combating human trafficking via domain-specific search. The advanced search capacity, including its ability to reach into the dark web has already allowed for prosecution of human trafficking cases, although they can be difficult to prosecute due to the fraudulent tactics of the human traffickers.

Due to its size and the access to its large airport, Atlanta, Georgia is known as the core of trafficking in the United States. A 2014 study by Urban Institute showed that some traffickers, or "pimps", in Atlanta grossed over $32,000 in one week.

In 2015, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline received reports of more than 5,000 potential human trafficking cases in the U.S. Children comprise up to one-third of all victims, while women make up more than half.
The Hotline can communicate with different people no matter their language. It serves in more than 200 language. Human trafficking is a big business and it is a major problem in South Florida and one of the hotspots of this crime is on Miami Beach. Police in the city say they arrested 3 dozen suspected human traffickers in 2017. That’s believed to be the most in the South Florida area and investigators say in addition to focusing on arresting traffickers they’re focusing on providing help to victims.

On 3 May 2005, the Committee of Ministers adopted the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (CETS No. 197). The Convention was opened for signature in Warsaw on 16 May 2005 on the occasion of the 3rd Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe. On 24 October 2007, the Convention received its tenth ratification thereby triggering the process whereby it entered into force on 1 February 2008. As of June 2017, the Convention has been ratified by 47 states (including Belarus, a non-Council of Europe state), with Russia being the only state to not have ratified (nor signed).

While other international instruments already exist in this field, the Council of Europe Convention, the first European treaty in this field, is a comprehensive treaty focusing mainly on the protection of victims of trafficking and the safeguard of their rights. It also aims to prevent trafficking and to prosecute traffickers. In addition, the Convention provides for the setting up of an effective and independent monitoring mechanism capable of controlling the implementation of the obligations contained in the Convention.

The Convention is not restricted to Council of Europe member states; non-member states and the European Union also have the possibility of becoming Party to the Convention. In 2013 Belarus became the first non-Council of Europe member state to accede to the Convention.

The Convention established a Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) which monitors the implementation of the Convention through country reports. As of 1 March 2013, GRETA has published 17 country reports.

Complementary protection against sex trafficking of children is ensured through the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (signed in Lanzarote, 25 October 2007). The Convention entered into force on 1 July 2010. As of September 2018, the Convention has been ratified by 44 states, with another 3 states having signed but not yet ratified.

In addition, the European Court of Human Rights of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg has passed judgments concerning trafficking in human beings which violated obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights: Siliadin v. France, judgment of 26 July 2005, and Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, judgment of 7 January 2010.

In 2003, the OSCE established an anti-trafficking mechanism aimed at raising public awareness of the problem and building the political will within participating states to tackle it effectively.

The OSCE actions against human trafficking are coordinated by the Office of the Special Representative for Combating the Traffic of Human Beings. In January 2010, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro became the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings. Dr. Giammarinaro (Italy) has been a judge at the Criminal Court of Rome since 1991. She served from 2006 until 2009 in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security in Brussels, where she was responsible for work to combat human trafficking and sexual exploitation of children, as well as for penal aspects of illegal immigration within the unit dealing with the fight against organized crime. During this time, she co-ordinated the Group of Experts on Trafficking in Human Beings of the European Commission. From 2001 to 2006 she was a judge for preliminary investigation in the Criminal Court of Rome. Prior to that, from 1996 she was Head of the Legislative Office and Adviser to the Minister for Equal Opportunities. From 2006 to December 2009 the office was headed by Eva Biaudet, a former Member of Parliament and Minister of Health and Social Services in her native Finland.

The activities of the Office of the Special Representative range from training law enforcement agencies to tackle human trafficking to promoting policies aimed at rooting out corruption and organised crime. The Special Representative also visits countries and can, on their request, support the formation and implementation of their anti-trafficking policies. In other cases the Special Representative provides advice regarding implementation of the decisions on human trafficking, and assists governments, ministers and officials to achieve their stated goals of tackling human trafficking.

In India, the trafficking in persons for commercial sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced marriages and domestic servitude is considered an organized crime. The Government of India applies the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, active from 3 February 2013, as well as Section 370 and 370A IPC, which defines human trafficking and "provides stringent punishment for human trafficking; trafficking of children for exploitation in any form including physical exploitation; or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery, servitude or the forced removal of organs." Additionally, a Regional Task Force implements the SAARC Convention on the prevention of Trafficking in Women and Children.

Shri R.P.N. Singh, India's Minister of State for Home Affairs, launched a government web portal, the Anti Human Trafficking Portal, on 20 February 2014. The official statement explained that the objective of the on-line resource is for the "sharing of information across all stakeholders, States/UTs[Union Territories] and civil society organizations for effective implementation of Anti Human Trafficking measures." The key aims of the portal are:Also on 20 February, the Indian government announced the implementation of a Comprehensive Scheme that involves the establishment of Integrated Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) in 335 vulnerable police districts throughout India, as well as capacity building that includes training for police, prosecutors and judiciary. As of the announcement, 225 Integrated AHTUs had been made operational, while 100 more AHTUs were proposed for the forthcoming financial year.

The '3P Anti-trafficking Policy Index' measured the effectiveness of government policies to fight human trafficking based on an evaluation of policy requirements prescribed by the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).

The policy level was evaluated using a five-point scale, where a score of five indicates the best policy practice, while score 1 is the worst. This scale was used to analyze the main three anti-trafficking policy areas: (i) prosecuting (criminalizing) traffickers, (ii) protecting victims, and (iii) preventing the crime of human trafficking. Each sub-index of prosecution, protection and prevention was aggregated to the overall index with an unweighted sum, with the overall index ranging from a score of 3 (worst) to 15 (best). It is available for up to 177 countries annually for 2000 to 2015 (the 2015 report, published in 2016, is the last as of 26.11.2018).

In 2015, three countries demonstrated the highest possible rankings in policies for all three dimensions (overall score 15). These countries were Austria, Spain and the United Kingdom. There were four countries with a near perfect score of 14 (Belgium, Philippines, Armenia, and South Korea). Four more scored 13 points, including the USA. The worst score, the minimum possible, is 3. In addition to North Korea, Libya, Syria, Eritrea and the BES Islands scored 3 with both Iran and Russia scoring only 4 (along with Kiribati, Yemen, and Equatorial Guinea). For more information view the Human Trafficking Research and Measurement website.

In 2014, for the first time in history major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim, met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by the year 2020. The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī (also known as Amma), Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)

One of the organizations taking the most active part in the anti-trafficking is the United Nations. In early 2016 the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations held an interactive discussion entitled "Responding to Current Challenges in Trafficking in Human Beings".

One of the current efforts being done to combat human trafficking is an app called TraffickCam. This app was created by the Exchange Initiative and researchers at Washington University. TraffckCam was launched on June 20, 2016 and enables anyone to take photos of their hotel rooms, which then gets uploaded to a large database of hotel images. Since human trafficking victims are often found in hotel rooms for online advertisements, law enforcement and investigators can use these photos to help find and prosecute traffickers.

Anti-trafficking awareness and fundraising campaigns constitute a significant portion of anti-trafficking initiatives. The 24 Hour Race is one such initiative that focuses on increasing awareness among high school students in Asia. The Blue Campaign is another anti-trafficking initiative that works with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to combat human trafficking and bring freedom to exploited victims.

"Trafficking in Persons Report" released in June 2016 states that "refugees and migrants; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) individuals; religious minorities; people with disabilities; and those who are stateless" are the most at-risk for human trafficking. Governments best protect victims from being exploited when the needs of vulnerable populations are understood. Additionally, in its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, the United Nations notes that women and children are particularly at risk for human trafficking and revictimization. The Protocol requires State Parties not only to enact measures that prevent human trafficking but also to address the factors that exacerbate women and children's vulnerability, including "poverty, underdevelopment and lack of equal opportunity."

Trafficking of children involves the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation. Commercial sexual exploitation of children can take many forms, including forcing a child into prostitution or other forms of sexual activity or child pornography. Child exploitation may also involve forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, the removal of organs, illicit international adoption, trafficking for early marriage, recruitment as child soldiers, for use in begging or as athletes (such as child camel jockeys or football players).

IOM statistics indicate that a significant minority (35%) of trafficked persons it assisted in 2011 were less than 18 years of age, which is roughly consistent with estimates from previous years. It was reported in 2010 that Thailand and Brazil were considered to have the worst child sex trafficking records.

Traffickers in children may take advantage of the parents' extreme poverty. Parents may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income, or they may be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children. They may sell their children into labour, sex trafficking, or illegal adoptions.

The adoption process, legal and illegal, when abused can sometimes result in cases of trafficking of babies and pregnant women from developing countries to the West. In David M. Smolin's 2005 papers on child trafficking and adoption scandals between India and the United States, he presents the systemic vulnerabilities in the inter-country adoption system that makes adoption scandals predictable.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child at Article 34, states, "States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse". In the European Union, commercial sexual exploitation of children is subject to a directive "Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011" on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography.

The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (or Hague Adoption Convention) is an international convention dealing with international adoption, that aims at preventing child laundering, child trafficking, and other abuses related to international adoption.

The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict seeks to prevent forceful recruitment (e.g. by guerrilla forces) of children for use in armed conflicts.

The International Labour Organization claims that sex trafficking affects 4.5 million people worldwide. Most victims find themselves in coercive or abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation was formerly thought of as the organized movement of people, usually women, between countries and within countries for sex work with the use of physical coercion, deception and bondage through forced debt. However, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (US), does not require movement for the offence. The issue becomes contentious when the element of coercion is removed from the definition to incorporate facilitation of consensual involvement in prostitution. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 incorporated trafficking for sexual exploitation but did not require those committing the offence to use coercion, deception or force, so that it also includes any person who enters the UK to carry out sex work with consent as having been "trafficked." In addition, any minor involved in a commercial sex act in the US while under the age of 18 qualifies as a trafficking victim, even if no force, fraud or coercion is involved, under the definition of "Severe Forms of Trafficking in Persons" in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

Sexual trafficking includes coercing a migrant into a sexual act as a condition of allowing or arranging the migration. Sexual trafficking uses physical or sexual coercion, deception, abuse of power and bondage incurred through forced debt. Trafficked women and children, for instance, are often promised work in the domestic or service industry, but instead are sometimes taken to brothels where they are required to undertake sex work, while their passports and other identification papers are confiscated. They may be beaten or locked up and promised their freedom only after earning – through prostitution – their purchase price, as well as their travel and visa costs.

A forced marriage is a marriage where one or both participants are married without their freely given consent. "Servile marriage" is defined as a marriage involving a person being sold, transferred or inherited into that marriage. According to ECPAT, "Child trafficking for forced marriage is simply another manifestation of trafficking and is not restricted to particular nationalities or countries".

A forced marriage qualifies as a form of human trafficking in certain situations. If a woman is sent abroad, forced into the marriage and then repeatedly compelled to engage in sexual conduct with her new husband, then her experience is that of "sex trafficking". If the bride is treated as a domestic servant by her new husband and/or his family, then this is a form of "labour trafficking".

Labour trafficking is the movement of persons for the purpose of forced labour and services. It may involve bonded labour, involuntary servitude, domestic servitude, and child labour. Labour trafficking happens most often within the domain of domestic work, agriculture, construction, manufacturing and entertainment; and
migrant workers and indigenous people are especially at risk of becoming victims. People smuggling operations are also known to traffic people for the exploitation of their labour, for example, as transporters.

Trafficking in organs is a form of human trafficking. It can take different forms. In some cases, the victim is compelled into giving up an organ. In other cases, the victim agrees to sell an organ in exchange of money/goods, but is not paid (or paid less). Finally, the victim may have the organ removed without the victim's knowledge (usually when the victim is treated for another medical problem/illness real or orchestrated problem/illness). Migrant workers, homeless persons, and illiterate persons are particularly vulnerable to this form of exploitation. Trafficking of organs is an organized crime, involving several offenders:Trafficking for organ trade often seeks kidneys. Trafficking in organs is a lucrative trade because in many countries the waiting lists for patients who need transplants are very long.

There are many different estimates of how large the human trafficking and sex trafficking industries are. According to scholar Kevin Bales, author of Disposable People (2004), estimates that as many as 27 million people are in "modern-day slavery" across the globe. In 2008, the U.S. Department of State estimates that 2 million children are exploited by the global commercial sex trade. In the same year, a study classified 12.3 million individuals worldwide as "forced laborers, bonded laborers or sex-trafficking victims." Approximately 1.39 million of these individuals worked as commercial sex slaves, with women and girls comprising 98% of that 1.36 million.

The enactment of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000 by the United States Congress and its subsequent re-authorizations established the Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which engages with foreign governments to fight human trafficking and publishes a Trafficking in Persons Report annually. The Trafficking in Persons Report evaluates each country's progress in anti-trafficking and places each country onto one of three tiers based on their governments' efforts to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking as prescribed by the TVPA. However, questions have been raised by critical anti-trafficking scholars about the basis of this tier system, its heavy focus on compliance with state department protocols, and its failure to consider "risk" and the likely prevalence of trafficking when rating the efforts of diverse countries.

In particular, there were three main components of the TVPA, commonly called the three P's:

PROTECTION: The TVPA increased the US Government's efforts to protect trafficked foreign national victims including, but not limited to:
Victims of trafficking, many of whom were previously ineligible for government assistance, were provided assistance; and a non-immigrant status for victims of trafficking if they cooperated in the investigation and prosecution of traffickers (T-Visas, as well as providing other mechanisms to ensure the continued presence of victims to assist in such investigations and prosecutions).

PROSECUTION: The TVPA authorized the US Government to strengthen efforts to prosecute traffickers including, but not limited to: Creating a series of new crimes on trafficking, forced labour, and document servitude that supplemented existing limited crimes related to slavery and involuntary servitude; and recognizing that modern-day slavery takes place in the context of fraud and coercion, as well as force, and is based on new clear definitions for both trafficking into sexual exploitation and labour exploitation: Sex trafficking was defined as, "a commercial sex act that 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". Labour trafficking was defined as, "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labour or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery".

PREVENTION: The TVPA allowed for increased prevention measures including: Authorizing the US Government to assist foreign countries with their efforts to combat trafficking, as well as address trafficking within the United States, including through research and awareness-raising; and providing foreign countries with assistance in drafting laws to prosecute trafficking, creating programs for trafficking victims, and assistance with implementing effective means of investigation.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later identified a fourth P, "partnership", in 2009 to serve as a, "pathway to progress in the effort against modern-day slavery."

A complex set of factors fuel sex trafficking, including poverty, unemployment, social norms that discriminate against women, commercial demand for sex, institutional challenges, and globalization.

Poverty and lack of educational and economic opportunities in one's hometown may lead women to voluntarily migrate and then be involuntarily trafficked into sex work. As globalization opened up national borders to greater exchange of goods and capital, labour migration also increased. Less wealthy countries have fewer options for livable wages. The economic impact of globalization pushes people to make conscious decisions to migrate and be vulnerable to trafficking. Gender inequalities that hinder women from participating in the formal sector also push women into informal sectors.

Long waiting lists for organs in the United States and Europe created a thriving international black market. Traffickers harvest organs, particularly kidneys, to sell for large profit and often without properly caring for or compensating the victims. Victims often come from poor, rural communities and see few other options than to sell organs illegally. Wealthy countries' inability to meet organ demand within their own borders perpetuates trafficking. By reforming their internal donation system, Iran achieved a surplus of legal donors and provides an instructive model for eliminating both organ trafficking and -shortage.

Globalization and the rise of Internet technology has also facilitated sex trafficking. Online classified sites and social networks such as Craigslist have been under intense scrutiny for being used by johns and traffickers in facilitating sex trafficking and sex work in general. Traffickers use explicit sites and underground sites (e.g. Craigslist, Backpage, MySpace) to market, recruit, sell, and exploit women. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are suspected for similar uses. For example, Randal G. Jennings was convicted of sex trafficking five underage girls by forcing them to advertise on Craigslist and driving them to meet the customers. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, online classified ads reduce the risks of finding prospective customers. Studies have identified the Internet as the single biggest facilitator of commercial sex trade, although it is difficult to ascertain which women advertised are sex trafficking victims. Traffickers and pimps use the Internet to recruit minors, since Internet and social networking sites usage have significantly increased especially among children.

Organized criminals can generate up to several thousand dollars per day from one trafficked girl, and the Internet has further increased profitability of sex trafficking and child trafficking. With faster access to a wider clientele, more sexual encounters can be scheduled. Victims and clients, according to a New York City report on sex trafficking in minors, increasingly use the Internet to meet customers. Because of protests, Craigslist has since closed its adult services section. According to authorities, Backpage is now the main source for advertising trafficking victims. Investigators also frequently browse online classified ads to identify potential underage girls who are trafficked.

While globalization fostered new technologies that may exacerbate sex trafficking, technology can also be used to assist law enforcement and anti-trafficking efforts. A study was done on online classified ads surrounding the Super Bowl. A number of reports have noticed increase in sex trafficking during previous years of the Super Bowl. For the 2011 Super Bowl held in Dallas, Texas, the Backpage for Dallas area experienced a 136% increase on the number of posts in the Adult section on Super Bowl Sunday; in contrast, Sundays typically have the lowest number of posts. Researchers analyzed the most salient terms in these online ads, which suggested that many escorts were traveling across state lines to Dallas specifically for the Super Bowl, and found that the self-reported ages were higher than usual. Twitter was another social networking platform studied for detecting sex trafficking. Digital tools can be used to narrow the pool of sex trafficking cases, albeit imperfectly and with uncertainty.

However, there has been no evidence found actually linking the Super Bowl or any other sporting event to increased trafficking or prostitution.

Corrupt and inadequately trained police officers can be complicit in sex trafficking and/or commit violence against sex workers, including sex trafficked victims. Human traffickers often incorporate abuse of the legal system into their control tactics by making threats of deportation or by turning victims into the authorities, possibly resulting in the incarceration of the victims.

Anti-trafficking agendas from different groups can also be in conflict. In the movement for sex workers rights, sex workers establish unions and organizations, which seek to eliminate trafficking. However, law enforcement also seek to eliminate trafficking and to prosecute trafficking, and their work may infringe on sex workers' rights and agency. For example, the sex workers union DMSC (Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee) in Kolkata, India, has "self-regulatory boards" (SRBs) that patrol the red light districts and assist girls who are underage or trafficked. The union opposes police intervention and interferes with police efforts to bring minor girls out of brothels, on the grounds that police action might have an adverse impact on non-trafficked sex workers, especially because police officers in many places are corrupt and violent in their operations. Critics argue that since sex trafficking is an economic and violent crime, it calls for law enforcement to intervene and prevent violence against victims.

Criminalization of sex work also may foster the underground market for sex work and enable sex trafficking.

Difficult political situations such as civil war and social conflict are push factors for migration and trafficking. A study reported that larger countries, the richest and the poorest countries, and countries with restricted press freedom are likely to engage in more sex trafficking. Specifically, being in a transitional economy made a country nineteen times more likely to be ranked in the highest trafficking category, and gender inequalities in a country's labour market also correlated with higher trafficking rates.

An annual US State Department report in June 2013 cited Russia and China as among the worst offenders in combatting forced labour and sex trafficking, raising the possibility of US sanctions being leveraged against these countries. In 1997 alone as many as 175,000 young women from Russia, as well as the former Soviet Union, were sold as commodities in the sex markets of the developed countries in Europe and the Americas.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada declared the laws which effectively prohibited prostitution illegal. It delayed the implementation of this ruling for one year to give the parliament time to enact replacement laws, if it so desired.

Abolitionists who seek an end to sex trafficking explain the nature of sex trafficking as an economic supply and demand model. In this model, male demand for prostitutes leads to a market of sex work, which, in turn, fosters sex trafficking, the illegal trade and coercion of people into sex work, and pimps and traffickers become 'distributors' who supply people to be sexually exploited. The demand for sex trafficking can also be facilitated by some pimps' and traffickers' desire for women whom they can exploit as workers because they do not require wages, safe working circumstances, and agency in choosing customers.

Sex trafficking victims face threats of violence from many sources, including customers, pimps, brothel owners, madams, traffickers, and corrupt local law enforcement officials. Raids as an anti-sex trafficking measure have the potential to help, and also to protect sex trafficked victims. Because of their potentially complicated legal status and their potential language barriers, the arrest or fear of arrest creates stress and other emotional trauma for trafficking victims. Victims may also experience physical violence from law enforcement during raids. The challenges facing victims often continue of course, after their experience of "rescue" or removal from coercive sexual exploitation. In addition to coping with their past traumatic experiences, former trafficking victims often experience social alienation in the host and home countries. Stigmatization, social exclusion, and intolerance often make it difficult for former victims to integrate into their host community, or to reintegrate into their former community. Accordingly, one of the central aims of protection assistance, is the promotion of (re)integration. Too often however, governments and large institutional donors offer little funding to support the provision of assistance and social services to former trafficking victims. As the victims are also pushed into drug trafficking, many of them face criminal sanctions also.

The use of coercion by perpetrators and traffickers involves the use of extreme control. Perpetrators expose the victim to high amounts of psychological stress induced by threats, fear, and physical and emotional violence. Tactics of coercion are reportedly used in three phases of trafficking: recruitment, initiation, and indoctrination. During the initiation phase, traffickers use foot-in-the-door techniques of persuasion to lead their victims into various trafficking industries. This manipulation creates an environment where the victim becomes completely dependent upon the authority of the trafficker. Traffickers take advantage of family dysfunction, homelessness, and history of childhood abuse to psychologically manipulate women and children into the trafficking industry.

One form of psychological coercion particularly common in cases of sex trafficking and forced prostitution is Stockholm syndrome. Many women entering into the sex trafficking industry are minors whom have already experienced prior sexual abuse. Traffickers take advantage of young girls by luring them into the business through force and coercion, but more often through false promises of love, security, and protection. This form of coercion works to recruit and initiate the victim into the life of a sex worker, while also reinforcing a "trauma bond", also known as Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response where the victim becomes attached to his or her perpetrator.

The goal of a trafficker is to turn a human being into a slave. To do this, perpetrators employ tactics that can lead to the psychological consequence of learned helplessness for the victims, where they sense that they no longer have any autonomy or control over their lives. Traffickers may hold their victims captive, expose them to large amounts of alcohol or use drugs, keep them in isolation, or withhold food or sleep. During this time the victim often begins to feel the onset of depression, guilt and self-blame, anger and rage, and sleep disturbances, PTSD, numbing, and extreme stress. Under these pressures, the victim can fall into the hopeless mental state of learned helplessness.

For victims of specifically trafficked for the purpose of forced prostitution and sexual slavery, initiation into the trade is almost always characterized by violence. Traffickers hunt down their victims and employ practices of sexual abuse, torture, brainwashing, repeated rape and physical assault until the victim submits to his or her fate as a sexual slave. Victims experience verbal threats, social isolation, and intimidation before they accept their role as a prostitute.

For those enslaved in situations of forced labor, learned helplessness can also manifest itself through the trauma of living as a slave. Reports indicate that captivity for the person and financial gain of their owners adds additional psychological trauma. Victims are often cut off from all forms of social connection, as isolation allows the perpetrator to destroy the victim's sense of self and increase his or her dependence on the perpetrator.

Human trafficking victims may experience complex trauma as a result of repeated cases of intimate relationship trauma over long periods of time including, but not limited to, sexual abuse, domestic violence, forced prostitution, or gang rape. Complex trauma involves multifaceted conditions of depression, anxiety, self-hatred, dissociation, substance abuse, self-destructive behaviors, medical and somatic concerns, despair, and revictimization. Psychology researchers report that, although similar to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Complex trauma is more expansive in diagnosis because of the effects of prolonged trauma.

Victims of sex trafficking often get "branded" by their traffickers or pimps. These tattoos usually consist of bar codes or the trafficker's name or rules. Even if a victim escapes their trafficker's control or gets rescued, these tattoos are painful reminders of their past and results in emotional distress. To get these tattoos removed or covered-up can cost hundreds of dollars.

Psychological reviews have shown that the chronic stress experienced by many victims of human trafficking can compromise the immune system. Several studies found that chronic stressors (like trauma or loss) suppressed cellular and humoral immunity. Victims may develop STDs and HIV/AIDS. Perpetrators frequently use substance abuse as a means to control their victims, which leads to compromised health, self-destructive behavior, and long-term physical harm. Furthermore, victims have reported treatment similar to torture, where their bodies are broken and beaten into submission.

Children are especially vulnerable to these developmental and psychological consequences of trafficking due to their age. In order to gain complete control of the child, traffickers often destroy physical and mental health of the children through persistent physical and emotional abuse. Victims experience severe trauma on a daily basis that devastates the healthy development of self-concept, self-worth, biological integrity, and cognitive functioning. Children who grow up in constant environments of exploitation frequently exhibit antisocial behavior, over-sexualized behavior, self-harm, aggression, distrust of adults, dissociative disorders, substance abuse, complex trauma, and attention deficit disorders. Stockholm syndrome is also a common problem for girls while they are trafficked, which can hinder them from both trying to escape, and moving forward in psychological recovery programs.

Although 98% of the sex trade is composed of women and girls there is an effort to gather empirical evidence about the psychological impact of abuse common in sex trafficking upon young boys. Boys often will experience forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, but also additional stressors of social stigma of homosexuality associated with sexual abuse for boys, and externalization of blame, increased anger, and desire for revenge.

Sex trafficking increases the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. The HIV/AIDS pandemic can be both a cause and a consequence of sex trafficking. On one hand, child-prostitutes are sought by customers because they are perceived as being less likely to be HIV positive, and this demand leads to child sex trafficking. On the other hand, trafficking leads to the proliferation of HIV, because victims, being vulnerable and often young/inexperienced, cannot protect themselves properly, and get infected.

According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO), every year the human trafficking industry generates 32 billion USD, half of which ($15.5 billion) is made in industrialized countries, and a third of which ($9.7 billion) is made in Asia. A 2011 paper published in "Human Rights Review", "Sex Trafficking: Trends, Challenges and Limitations of International Law", notes that, since 2000, the number of sex-trafficking victims has risen while costs associated with trafficking have declined: "Coupled with the fact that trafficked sex slaves are the single most profitable type of slave, costing on average $1,895 each but generating $29,210 annually, [there are] stark predictions about the likely growth in commercial sex slavery in the future." Sex trafficking victims rarely get a share of the money that they make through coerced sex work, which further keeps them oppressed., profits from human trafficking were about around 150 billion USD each year ranking it along with drug trafficking as one of the most profitable transnational crimes.

Both the public debate on human trafficking and the actions undertaken by the anti-human traffickers have been criticized by Zbigniew Dumienski, a former research analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. The criticism touches upon statistics and data on human trafficking, the concept itself, and anti-trafficking measures.

According to a former Wall Street Journal columnist, figures used in human trafficking estimates rarely have identifiable sources or transparent methodologies behind them and in most (if not all) instances, they are mere guesses. Dumienski and Laura Agustin argue that this is a result of the fact that it is impossible to produce reliable statistics on a phenomenon happening in the shadow economy. According to a UNESCO Bangkok researcher, statistics on human trafficking may be unreliable due to overrepresentation of sex trafficking. As an example, he cites flaws in Thai statistics, who discount men from their official numbers because by law they cannot be considered trafficking victims due to their gender.

A 2012 article in the International Communication Gazette examined the effect of two communication theories (agenda-building and agenda-setting) on media coverage on human trafficking in the United States and Britain. The article analyzed four newspapers including the Guardian and the Washington Post and categorized the content into various categories. Overall, the article found that sex trafficking was the most reported form of human trafficking by the newspapers that were analyzed (p. 154). Many of the other stories on trafficking were non-specific.

According to Zbigniew Dumienski, the very concept of human trafficking is murky and misleading. It has been argued that while human trafficking is commonly seen as a monolithic crime, in reality it may be an act of illegal migration that involves various different actions: some of them may be criminal or abusive, but others often involve consent and are legal. Laura Agustin argues that not everything that might seem abusive or coercive is considered as such by the migrant. For instance, she states that: 'would-be travellers commonly seek help from intermediaries who sell information, services and documents. When travellers cannot afford to buy these outright, they go into debt'. Dumienski says that while these debts might indeed be on very harsh conditions, they are usually incurred on a voluntary basis. Furthermore, anti-humantrafficking actors often conflate clandestine migratory movements with forms of exploitation covered in human trafficking definitions, ignoring the fact that a migratory movement is not a requirement for human trafficking victimization.

The critics of the current approaches to trafficking say that a lot of the violence and exploitation faced by illegal migrants derives precisely from the fact that their migration and their work are illegal and not primarily because of trafficking.

The international Save the Children organization also stated: "The issue, however, gets mired in controversy and confusion when prostitution too is considered as a violation of the basic human rights of both adult women and minors, and equal to sexual exploitation per se…trafficking and prostitution become conflated with each other…On account of the historical conflation of trafficking and prostitution both legally and in popular understanding, an overwhelming degree of effort and interventions of anti-trafficking groups are concentrated on trafficking into prostitution."

Claudia Aradau of Open University claims that NGOs involved in anti-sex trafficking often employ "politics of pity," which promotes that all trafficked victims are completely guiltless, fully coerced into sex work, and experience the same degrees of physical suffering. One critic identifies two strategies that gain pity: denunciation attributing all violence and suffering to the perpetrator and sentiment exclusively depicting the suffering of the women. NGOs' use of images of unidentifiable women suffering physically help display sex trafficking scenarios as all the same. She points out that not all trafficking victims have been abducted, abused physically, and repeatedly raped, unlike popular portrayals. A study of the relationships between individuals who are defined as sex-trafficking victims by virtue of having a procurer (especially minors) concluded that assumptions about victimization and human trafficking do not do justice to the complex and often mutual relationships that exist between sex workers and their third parties.

Groups like Amnesty International have been critical of insufficient or ineffective government measures to tackle human trafficking. Criticism includes a lack of understanding of human trafficking issues, poor identification of victims and a lack of resources for the key pillars of anti-trafficking identification, protection, prosecution and prevention. For example, Amnesty International has called the UK government's new anti-trafficking measures "not fit for purpose."

In the UK, human trafficking cases are processed by the same officials to simultaneously determine the refugee and trafficking victim statuses of a person. However, criteria for qualifying as a refugee and a trafficking victim differ and they have different needs for staying in a country. A person may need assistance as a trafficking victim but his/her circumstances may not necessarily meet the threshold for asylum. In which case, not being granted refugee status affects their status as a trafficked victim and thus their ability to receive help. Reviews of the statistics from the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a tool created by the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (CoE Convention) to help states effectively identify and care for trafficking victims, found that positive decisions for non-European Union citizens were much lower than that of EU and UK citizens. According to data on the NRM decisions from April 2009 to April 2011, an average of 82.8% of UK and EU citizens were conclusively accepted as victims while an average of only 45.9% of non-EU citizens were granted the same status. High refusal rates of non-EU people point to possible stereotypes and biases about regions and countries of origin which may hinder anti-trafficking efforts, since the asylum system is linked to the trafficking victim protection system.

Laura Agustin has suggested that, in some cases, "anti-traffickers" ascribe victim status to immigrants who have made conscious and rational decisions to cross the borders knowing they will be selling sex and who do not consider themselves to be victims. There have been instances in which the alleged victims of trafficking have actually refused to be rescued or run away from the anti-trafficking shelters.

In a 2013 lawsuit, the Court of Appeal gave guidance to prosecuting authorities on the prosecution of victims of human trafficking, and held that the convictions of three Vietnamese children and one Ugandan woman ought to be quashed as the proceedings amounted to an abuse of the court's process. The case was reported by the BBC and one of the victims was interviewed by Channel 4.

In the U.S., services and protections for trafficked victims are related to cooperation with law enforcement. Legal procedures that involve prosecution and specifically, raids, are thus the most common anti-trafficking measures. Raids are conducted by law enforcement and by private actors and many organizations (sometimes in cooperation with law enforcement). Law enforcement perceive some benefits from raids, including the ability to locate and identify witnesses for legal processes, to dismantle "criminal networks", and to rescue victims from abuse.

The problems against anti-trafficking raids are related to the problem of the trafficking concept itself, as raids' purpose of fighting sex trafficking may be conflated with fighting prostitution. The Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA) gives state and local law enforcement funding to prosecute customers of commercial sex, therefore some law enforcement agencies make no distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. One study interviewed women who have experienced law enforcement operations as sex workers and found that during these raids meant to combat human trafficking, none of the women were ever identified as trafficking victims, and only one woman was asked whether she was coerced into sex work. The conflation of trafficking with prostitution, then, does not serve to adequately identify trafficking and help the victims. Raids are also problematic in that the women involved were most likely unclear about who was conducting the raid, what the purpose of the raid was, and what the outcomes of the raid would be.

Law enforcement personnel agree that raids can intimidate trafficked persons and render subsequent law enforcement actions unsuccessful.
Social workers and attorneys involved in anti-sex trafficking have negative opinions about raids. Service providers report a lack of uniform procedure for identifying trafficking victims after raids. The 26 interviewed service providers stated that local police never referred trafficked persons to them after raids. Law enforcement also often use interrogation methods that intimidate rather than assist potential trafficking victims. Additionally, sex workers sometimes face violence from the police during raids and arrests and in rehabilitation centers.

As raids occur to brothels that may house sex workers as well as sex trafficked victims, raids affect sex workers in general. As clients avoid brothel areas that are raided but do not stop paying for sex, voluntary sex workers will have to interact with customers underground. Underground interactions means that sex workers take greater risks, where as otherwise they would be cooperating with other sex workers and with sex worker organizations to report violence and protect each other. One example of this is with HIV prevention. Sex workers collectives monitor condom use, promote HIV testing, and cares for and monitor the health of HIV positive sex workers. Raids disrupt communal HIV care and prevention efforts, and if HIV positive sex workers are rescued and removed from their community, their treatments are disrupted, furthering the spread of AIDS.

Scholars Aziza Ahmed and Meena Seshu suggest reforms in law enforcement procedures so that raids are last resort, not violent, and are transparent in its purposes and processes. Furthermore, they suggest that since any trafficking victims will probably be in contact with other sex workers first, working with sex workers may be an alternative to the raid and rescue model.

Critics argue that End Demand programs are ineffective in that prostitution is not reduced, "John schools" have little effect on deterrence and portray prostitutes negatively, and conflicts in interest arise between law enforcement and NGO service providers. A study found that Sweden's legal experiment (criminalizing clients of prostitution and providing services to prostitutes who want to exit the industry in order to combat trafficking) did not reduce the number of prostitutes, but instead increased exploitation of sex workers because of the higher risk nature of their work. No proper citation given for this study. The conclusion is strongly disputed. Other studies indicate that the policy is successful.The same study reported that johns' inclination to buy sex did not change as a result of john schools, and the programs targeted johns who are poor and colored immigrants. Some john schools also intimidate johns into not purchasing sex again by depicting prostitutes as drug addicts, HIV positive, violent, and dangerous, which further marginalizes sex workers. John schools require program fees, and police's involvement in NGOs who provide these programs create conflicts of interest especially with money involved.

There are different feminist perspectives on sex trafficking. The third-wave feminist perspective of sex trafficking seeks to harmonize the dominant and liberal feminist views of sex trafficking. The dominant feminist view focuses on "sexualized domination", which includes issues of pornography, female sex labor in a patriarchal world, rape, and sexual harassment. Dominant feminism emphasizes sex trafficking as forced prostitution and considers the act exploitative. Liberal feminism sees all agents as capable of reason and choice. Liberal feminists support sex workers rights, and argue that women who voluntarily chose sex work are autonomous. The liberal feminist perspective finds sex trafficking problematic where it overrides consent of individuals.

Third-wave feminism harmonizes the thoughts that while individuals have rights, overarching inequalities hinder women's capabilities. Third-wave feminism also considers that women who are trafficked and face oppression do not all face the same kinds of oppression. For example, third-wave feminist proponent Shelley Cavalieri identifies oppression and privilege in the intersections of race, class, and gender. Women from low socioeconomic class, generally from the Global South, face inequalities that differ from those of other sex trafficking victims. Therefore, it advocates for catering to individual trafficking victim because sex trafficking is not monolithic, and therefore there is not a one-size-fits-all intervention. This also means allowing individual victims to tell their unique experiences rather than essentializing all trafficking experiences. Lastly, third-wave feminism promotes increasing women's agency both generally and individually, so that they have the opportunity to act on their own behalf.

Third-wave feminist perspective of sex trafficking is loosely related to Amartya Sen's and Martha Nussbaum's visions of the human capabilities approach to development. It advocates for creating viable alternatives for sex trafficking victims. Nussbaum articulated four concepts to increase trafficking victims' capabilities: education for victims and their children, microcredit and increased employment options, labor unions for low-income women in general, and social groups that connect women to one another.

According to modern Feminists, women and girls are more prone to trafficking also because of social norms that marginalize their value and status in society. By this perspective females face considerable gender discrimination both at home and in school. Stereotypes that women belong at home in the private sphere and that women are less valuable because they do not and are not allowed to contribute to formal employment and monetary gains the same way men do further marginalize women's status relative to men. Some religious beliefs also lead people to believe that the birth of girls are a result of bad karma, further cementing the belief that girls are not as valuable as boys. It is generally regarded by feminists that various social norms contribute to women's inferior position and lack of agency and knowledge, thus making them vulnerable to exploitation such as sex trafficking.

As of 2016, Singapore acceded to the United Nations Trafficking in Persons Protocol and affirmed on 28 September 2015 the commitment to combat people trafficking, especially women and children.

Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, including sexual slavery. A victim is forced, in one of a variety of ways, into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s) and then used by said trafficker(s) to give sexual services to customers. There are three types of activities defined as sex trafficking crimes: acquisition, transportation and exploitation; this includes child sex tourism (CST), domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) or other kinds of commercial sexual exploitation of children, and prostitution. Sex trafficking is one of the biggest criminal businesses and it has been described as "the fastest growing criminal industry in the world."

Sex trafficking

According to the International Labour Organization, there are 20.9 million people subjected to forced labour, and 22% (4.5 million) who are victims of forced sexual exploitation. However, due to the covertness of sex trafficking, obtaining accurate, reliable statistics is difficult for researchers. The global commercial profits for sexual slavery are estimated to be $99B according to this same source. In 2005, the figure was given as $9B for the total human trafficking industry.

Most victims find themselves in coercive or abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous. Locations where this practice occurs span the globe and reflect an intricate web between nations, making it very difficult to construct viable solutions to this human rights problem.

There are a number of misconceptions about sex trafficking. Sex trafficking and human trafficking are not to be confused with human smuggling. Human trafficking for sexual or other labor may involve transporting victims across international borders, but to meet the definition of trafficking, there needs only to be exploitation of an individual after they have been coerced or deceived, so it does not necessarily involve transportation across national borders. Human trafficking and sex trafficking are often used as synonyms. However, trafficking for non-sexual exploitation may be even more prevalent than trafficking for sexual exploitation, though accurate estimates of trafficking rates are extremely difficult to obtain. Sex trafficking tends to receive more attention from aid organizations and donors due to the greater public outrage that forced sexual labor evokes compared to forced non-sexual labor and thus incidents of sex trafficking are more frequently reported.

Sex trafficking is also commonly conflated with non-coerced sex work criminalized as prostitution. This misconception stems primarily from two sources: academic anti-prostitution scholars and prostitution abolitionist activists. A minority of feminist scholars argue that all prostitution is coerced due to the prevalence of Compulsory heterosexuality and social and economic pressures stemming from Neoliberalism and patriarchy. These arguments are often at odds with the views of sex workers who work independently, or consensually with third parties such as brothels and club owners, who see the higher remuneration and flexibility of sexual labor as preferable to poorer paying and inflexible mainstream employment where they are subject to sexual harassment and assault by male employers and colleagues. A number of activist organizations seeking to provide services to trafficking victims, lobby for anti-trafficking legislation, and generally raise awareness about sex-trafficking also advocate for the criminalization of sex work that is consensual. Some anti-sex trafficking programs and initiatives have been criticised for giving non-trafficked sex workers incentives to identify as victims of trafficking, to gain access to resources such as shelters. Law enforcement agencies have been criticised for providing similar incentives, because they threaten them with jail time if they admit they are working by choice, while those who claim they are trafficking victims get training workshops instead of jail time. Such policies, though beneficial to actual trafficking victims, inflate reported rates of trafficking.

In 2000, countries adopted a definition set forth by the United Nations. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, is also referred to as the Palermo Protocol. The Palermo Protocol created this definition. 147 of the 192 member states of the UN ratified the Palermo Protocol when it was published in 2000; as of September 2017, 171 states are parties. Article 3 of the Palermo Protocol states the definition as:

Article 5 of the Palermo Protocol then requires the member states to criminalize trafficking based on the definition outlined in Article 3; however, many member states' domestic laws reflect a narrower definition than Article 3. Although these nations claim to be obliging Article 5, the narrow laws lead to a smaller portion of people being persecuted for sex trafficking.

The UN established various anti-trafficking tools, including a Global Report on Trafficking in Persons and an Inter-Agency Coordination Group Against Trafficking in Persons. The Global Report on Trafficking in Person provides new information based on data gathered from 155 countries. It offers first global assessment of the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. The UN General Assembly passed several resolutions on measuring to eliminate human trafficking. In 2010 the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons was adopted. Various other organizations have engaged in global efforts against sex trafficking. "The UN Protocol's is the bedrock of the international initiatives against human sex trafficking." This protocol defines certain elements of sex trafficking: "action", which describes the recruitment and transportation of victims, "means", which includes coercion, fraud, or abuse of power, and "purpose", which includes exploitation such as prostitution, forced labor or slavery, and the removal of organs. The UN requires member states to establish the trafficking of humans as a criminal offense.

After members of Prostitutes Anonymous who were survivors of modern domestic sex trafficking spent 13 years doing TV, radio, public appearances, news interviews, etc. and calling out that this country needed to "'do something' about it" an internationally recognized definition for sex trafficking was finally established with the Trafficking Act of 2000. It was during the same year the Palermo Protocol was enacted, the United States passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) to clarify the previous confusion and discrepancies in regards to the criminalizing guidelines of human trafficking. Through this act, sex trafficking crimes were defined as a situation where in which a "commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age." If the victim is a child under the age of 18 no force, fraud, or coercion needs to be proven based on this legislation. Susan Tiefenbrun, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law who has written extensively on human trafficking, conducted research on the victims addressed in this act and discovered that each year more than two million women throughout the world are bought and sold for sexual exploitation. In order to clarify previous legal inconsistencies in regards to youth and trafficking, the United States took legal measures to define more varieties of exploitive situations in relation to children. The two terms they defined and focused on were "commercial sexual exploitation of children" and "domestic minor sex trafficking." Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is defined as "encompassing several forms of exploitation, including pornography, prostitution, child sex tourism, and child marriage." Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is a term that represents a subset of CSEC situations that have "the exchange of sex with a child under the age of 18, who is a United States (US) citizen or permanent resident, for a gain of cash, goods, or anything of value."

According to ECPAT USA, the average age of entry into street prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old. In today's culture, pimps and prostitutes are being glamorized in the media (Frundt). This is extremely dangerous as it constructs a falsified reality of what the sex trafficking industry is really like. In the United States, sex traffickers and pimps often find their victims in malls. Sometimes vulnerable looking girls will be abducted while walking to their cars if they look distracted and are alone, and other times the pimps will go up to a victim and convince them to leave with them, often offering a job of some kind and money. Emotional and physical coercion is used in order for the victim to trust the pimp and build a relationship. A lot of times, the victims are tricked into thinking they will have freedom in the work they are promised along with a large sum of money. However, what ends up happening is they become a sex slave. After the victim has agreed to the pimp's offer, they are forced into not leaving by forcing addictive drugs, with-holding money and physical/sexual abuse. It is very common in the United States for pimps to own a business or store, especially nail salons and massage parlors. It is also very common for sex slavery businesses to be conducted near U.S. military bases, because of the business soldiers bring.

In pimp-controlled trafficking, the victim is controlled by a single trafficker, sometimes called a pimp. The victim can be controlled by the trafficker physically, psychologically, and/or emotionally. In order to obtain control over their victims, traffickers will use force, drugs, emotional tactics as well as financial means. In certain circumstances, they will even resort to various forms of violence, such as gang rape and mental and physical abuse. Traffickers sometimes use offers of marriage, threats, intimidation, brainwashing and kidnapping as means of obtaining victims.

A common process is for the trafficker to first gain the trust of the victim, called the grooming stage. They seek to make the victim dependent on them. The trafficker may express love and admiration, make lofty promises such as making the victim a star, offer them a job or an education or buy them a ticket to a new location. The main types of work offered are in the catering and hotel industry, in bars and clubs, modeling contracts, or au pair work. Once the victim is comfortable, the pimp moves to the seasoning stage, where they will ask the victim to perform sexual acts for the pimp, which the victim may do because they believe it is the only way to keep the trafficker's affection. The requests progress from there and it can be difficult for the victim to escape.

Another tactic is for traffickers to kidnap their victims, and then drug them or secure them so they cannot escape. Traffickers may seek out potential victims who are traveling alone, are separated from their group, or seem like they have low self-esteem. They may go to places likes malls where they are more likely to find girls without parents.

Traffickers are using social media at an increasing rate to find victims, research potential victims, control their victims and advertise their victims. Traffickers often target people who post things that indicate that they are depressed, have low self-esteem or are angry with their parents. Traffickers also use social media posts to establish patterns and track the locations of potential victims.

After the victim has joined the offender, various techniques are used to restrict the victim's access to communication with home, such as imposing physical punishment unless the victim complies with the trafficker's demands and making threats of harm and even death to the victim and their family. Sometimes, the victims will succumb to the Stockholm Syndrome because their captors will pretend to "love" and "need" them, even going so far as promise marriage and future stability. This is particularly effective with younger victims, because they are more inexperienced and therefore easily manipulated.

In India, those who traffic young girls into prostitution are often women who have been trafficked themselves. As adults they use personal relationships and trust in their villages of origin to recruit additional girls. Also, some (migrating) prostitutes (See: migrant sex work) can become victims of human trafficking because the women know they will be working as prostitutes; however, they are given an inaccurate description by their "boss" of the circumstances. Therefore, they consequently get exploited due to their misconception of what conditions to expect of their sex work in the new destination country.

Gang-controlled sex trafficking and Pimp-controlled sex trafficking run their operations in very similar ways. The largest difference between the two is that gang-controlled trafficking is run by a large group of people whereas pimp-controlled trafficking is run by only one person. In general, gang members are expected or forced to participate in tasks that involve illegal and violent activity. Some of these criminal behaviors may include: distributing drugs, robbery, trafficking drugs, extortion, and murder. One money making source that many people do not necessarily associate with gangs is human sex trafficking. Gangs are now turning to sex trafficking as it is seen as safer and more lucrative than drug trafficking.

The gangs can make larger amounts of money quicker by selling other people's bodies, and are less likely to get caught. In certain circumstances, gangs may team up with other gangs in the area, and work together as a sex ring. There are a number of different reasons that gangs make this decision. One reason is that it enables them to increase profits by trading different girls, women, boys or men. This gives their client, also known as a john, a greater variety of options to choose from. Clients are often willing to pay a larger price for a sexual experience with someone new. Another reason that gangs will share females is because this makes it more difficult for law enforcement to keep track of the victims, ultimately preventing them from making a positive identification.

When people think or talk about sex trafficking a very common question people will ask is, “where do they find people to traffic?”. In many cases, gang members will scope girls out at malls, skip parties, online and through social media. In addition, they often will seek out female runaways from their neighborhood. Many of the girls they look for have been physically or sexually abused, have low self-esteem, struggle with drug and alcohol dependency, or are seeking a home/family environment.

In order for the gang to sex traffic an individual, the first thing they need to do is gain that person's trust. They shower the victim with praise and attention, making her feel important and desired. This is referred to as the Romeo Method. It consists of different manipulation techniques. A member will take her to a fancy restaurant, flounder her with lavish gifts, and take her to parties where they are provided with endless supplies of drugs and alcohol. They also learn their weaknesses at the same time, find his or her vulnerabilities and once they find that soft spot they can use it against them.

Gang members often wear certain types of clothing or colors to prove their commitment or loyalty to the gang. It is also very common to represent your gang by branding your body with tattoos. Unfortunately, many victims of sex trafficking are being branded as well. By forcing a tattoo onto their victims they are essentially marking their territory and officially displaying ownership of that person. In the short film, Unbranded: Sex Trafficking Tattoo Removal, Vice Media dives deep into the recovery stages of a young girl who was trafficked for three years. During her time of being exploited, she was forced to receive a tattoo by her trafficker.

In familial trafficking, the victim is controlled by family members who allow them to be sexually exploited in exchange for something of value, such as drugs or money. For example, a mother may allow a boyfriend to abuse a child in exchange for housing. Usually, it begins with one family member and spreads from there. Familial trafficking may be difficult to detect because these children often have a larger degree of freedom and may still attend school and after-school functions. These children may not understand that they are being trafficked or may not have a way out. Familial trafficking is considered by some to be the most prevalent form of human sex trafficking within the United States.

This form of trafficking is also extremely common outside of the United States. Many families from impoverished areas (India, Thailand, Philippines, etc.) find themselves in situations where debt or tradition calls for the selling of a loved one, most commonly female. In Thailand there is a tradition known as "bhun kun," which establishes the youngest daughter as financially responsible for her parents as they grow old. Author Kara Siddharth interviewed a Thai victim who stated that, though she hated the men she was with, “she was proud to fulfill her duty to her parents in the form of tiny payments that the brothel owner sent to her father after her trafficking debts were repaid”. This is just one of the many countries whose lower class turn to this form of income. Many children are sold to repay debts, or merely to put food on the table for their family for a month.

A forced marriage is a marriage where one or both participants are married without their freely given consent.
"Servile marriage" is defined as a marriage involving a person being sold, transferred or inherited into that marriage. According to ECPAT, "Child trafficking for forced marriage is simply another manifestation of trafficking and is not restricted to particular nationalities or countries".

A forced marriage qualifies as a form of human trafficking in certain situations. If a woman is sent abroad, forced into the marriage and then repeatedly compelled to engage in sexual conduct with her new husband, then her experience is that of "sex trafficking". If the bride is treated as a domestic servant by her new husband and/or his family, then this is a form of "labor trafficking".

Approximately 140 million girls under the age of 18, which is about 39,000 a day, will be forced into early marriages between 2011 and 2020. Forced marriage, which is identified by the United Nations as a “contemporary form of slavery,” occurs without full consent of the man or woman, and is associated with threats by family members or the bride/groom. Forced marriage occurs not only in foreign countries but in the US as well. The service providers in the United States cannot successfully respond to forced marriage cases because they lack clarity and a true definition of what a forced marriage is.

In survival sex, the victim is not necessarily controlled by another person but feels they have to perform sexual acts in order to obtain basic commodities to survive. In addition to money, persons engaging in survival sex may trade sexual favors for food, shelter, or drugs. The most reported cases are the youth that perform sexual acts for shelter or a place to sleep. Within the youth experiences of survival sex, 8.1% of females, males, and transgender are victims. Those who perform the trafficking include immediate family, boyfriends, employers, and strangers. Those who are at a higher risk of survival sex include runaways, homeless, foster kids, and orphans.

There is not one simple factor that perpetuates sex trafficking, rather a complex, interconnected web of political, socioeconomic, governmental, and societal factors. The causes of sex trafficking which have been identified lie at the intersections of these factors. There are three types of causes which have been identified: gender hierarchies, migration for work (pull factors), and neoliberal globalization (push factors).

Many scholars critique the power hierarchies based on gender, race, and class which underlie economic systems as perpetuators of women's vulnerability to sex trafficking. Copley argues that women in underdeveloped countries are powerless due to these hierarchies of power. Matusek also argues this point, noting that globalization spreads power hierarchies while spreading economic policy. Ideas of gender are thus perpetuated though globalization, leaving women vulnerable. Matusek cites masculinity as privileged with power and control in these hierarchies. Femininity, she notes, is associated with submissive and passive qualities. Femininity's lack of power leaves women to be used by men and consequently be seen as disposable. This view of women is perpetuated through the globalization of power hierarchies, which Matusek argues justifies and normalizes violence and power against women. This normalization of violence and power is a key player in the existence and continuation of sex trafficking. Vesna Nikovic-Ristanovic also cites this normalization of violence and power as a cause of sex trafficking.

Nikovic-Ristanovic analyzes the role of perceived femininity in women's vulnerability to sex trafficking, by specifically looking at the links between militarism and female sexuality. Nikovic-Ristanovic cites a connection between war rapes and forced prostitution and sex trafficking. The way women's bodies are used in war relate to the normalization of violence and power against women. Nikovic-Ristanovic argues that military presence, even in times of peace, promote ideas of gender which render women vulnerable. These ideas concern hegemonic masculinity, which Nikovic-Ristanovic defines as the hyper sexuality of men and the submissiveness or passivity of women and girls. Nikovic-Ristanovic notes that the global acceptance of this definition justifies exploitation and violence against women since women are viewed as sex objects for the fulfillment of male's sexual desire. This Western ideal of heteronormative sexuality, Nikovic-Ristanovic argues, is also perpetuated through media and advertisements, in which women are encouraged to appear sexually attractive for men.

Kim Anh Duong argues that social narratives about women which arise from power hierarchies, coupled with women's economic realities, render women vulnerable to exploitation and sex trafficking. Duong identifies the prevailing narrative of women as the disadvantaged victim. She cites powerlessness as the result of this narrative, which is further perpetuated by social and economic realities which result from development process which leave women dependent on men. This overall powerlessness, according to Duong, makes women easy targets of exploitation and violence.

Susan Tiefenbrun, like Duong, notes women's lower status of power and consequential dependence on men. Tiefenbrun, unlike Duong, cites cultural norms as the cause of this vulnerability. She argues that cultural norms deprive women of access to and time for receiving an education or learning skills to improve employment opportunities. This lack of education and access to employment results in women's dependence on men. Tiefenbrun argues that women's dependence renders them more vulnerable to traffickers.

Another school of thought attributes women's migration for work in a context of strict immigration controls as the primary factor in women's vulnerability in becoming trafficked for sex. There has been an increase in women migrating within and across borders. Duong cites a demand for women migrant workers which encourages migration. The globalization of neoliberalism has shifted the global economy's focus to export production. Duong notes that there is a demand for women in export production because employers are able to pay them the lowest wages. Another reason for the demand of women workers is that there is a demand for care work. Since care work is gendered as women's work, Duong argues that women are encouraged to migrate in order to fill this demand. Janie Chuang is one scholar who notes the strict border controls which leave women who migrate for work in informal labor sectors, such as for care work, with little opportunity for legal migration. Chuang notes that women are thus more vulnerable to being taken advantage of by sex traffickers who provide opportunities for illegal migration. Strict immigration laws are also cited by Tiefenbrun as a key factor in individuals entering sex trafficking because women will agree to debt bondages and sex traffickers’ incentives in order to flee their social and economic realities.

One cause for women's migration that is widely agreed upon by scholars is the economic pressure upon women due to neoliberal globalization. Siddharth Kara argues that globalization and the spread of Western Capitalism drive inequality and rural poverty, which are the material causes for sex trafficking. Dong-Hoon Seol points out unequal development between countries as an effect of the globalization of neoliberalism. He argues that the growing disparity of wealth between developed and underdeveloped countries leads to migration of women from underdeveloped countries.

Duong cites structural adjustment programs (SAPs), an aspect of development policies in the globalization of neoliberalism, as a cause for women's poverty, unemployment, and low wages which promote migration. SAPs affect men and women differently, she argues, because men and women experience poverty differently. This is known as the feminization of poverty. Much of women's time is spent doing unpaid labor such as housework and care work, leading to an overall lower income. Duong further argues that women are placed at a greater disadvantage due to their lack of access to land and other resources. Matusek also argues that the unequal distribution of resources and power lead to both push and pull factors of migration. According to Matusek, women are pushed to migrate on account of a lack of education and employment opportunities.

Other scholars focus on the demand for sex itself as a cause of sex trafficking. The pull factor comes from globalization creating a market around sex. Matusek cites the commodification aspect of capitalism as the cause for the industrialization of sex. The pull factor comes from globalization creating a market around sex. Seol also cites the globalization of the commodification aspect of capitalism as a cause of sex trafficking.

Anyone is permitted to contact The National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1(888)-373-7888. The hotline is beneficial since providers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist victims and provide information for those who are at risk. There are a variety of ways in order to help prevent trafficking. One must be aware of the indicators to identify victims: abnormal behavior, poor physical health, lack of control, and work and living conditions. However, these signs may only be shown through a number of people - there may be more severe, serious indicators of sex trafficking. If you are a huge supporter in anti-trafficking, you can host events in the community to raise awareness of how people are targeted and who.

One of the main causes of sex trafficking is the lack of knowledge, especially in young girls. It is extremely important to educate the youth in possible prevention methods. As social media can be a large form of “recruiting” victims, it can also be a useful tool in preventing sex trafficking (Kempadoo). Since teenagers are constantly going through Twitter and Instagram, posting possible prevention methods and information on the topic is a great way to inform your peers. It is also a fast way of posting potential dangerous/suspicious areas to avoid. One of the most common forms of abduction/coercion are in parking lots, especially if it's dark outside and not many people around. It is important to always be looking at your surroundings if you are in this position. One of the most common ways that young girls get abducted if they are walking to their car while they are looking at their phone, looking for their keys, or just distracted by something. A common tactic of the attacker will follow a girl to her car and waits to see if she doesn't leave right away. If she is on her phone it is an easy way to get in the passenger seat and oftentimes the victim will be held at gunpoint until they drive to the demanded location. Small but crucial safety tips like these should be taught in school and at home in order for children to be more cautious and aware of their surroundings when they could be in danger. For women who started as either strippers or escorts, it is extremely important to be informed of the serious danger of getting into sex-trafficking. It starts off as voluntary, but once the pimps have a relationship and they like the victim trusts them, that is when it goes downhill. Once the pimps know the girl trusts them, is when all emotions are turned off and starts treating them as slaves. Again, informing the masses is key to preventing sex-trafficking.

There is no single profile for victims of human trafficking. Most are women, though it is not uncommon for males to be trafficked as well. Victims are captured then exploited all around the world, representing a diverse range of ages and backgrounds, including ethnic and socioeconomic. However, there is a set group of traits associated with a higher risk of becoming trafficked for sexual exploitation. Persons at risk include homeless and runaway youth, foreign nationals (especially those of lower socioeconomic status), and those who have experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, violent trauma, neglect, poor academic success, and inadequate social skills. Also, a study of a group of female sex workers in Canada found that 64 percent of them had been in the child welfare system as children (this includes foster and group homes). This research conducted by Kendra Nixon illustrates how children in or leaving foster care are at a higher risk of becoming a sex worker.

In the United States, research has illustrated how these qualities hold true for victims, even though none can be labeled as a direct cause. For example, more than 50 percent of domestic minor sex trafficking victims have a history of homelessness. Familial disruptions such as divorce or the death of a parent place minors at a higher risk of entering the industry, but home life in general influences children's risk. In a study of trafficked youth in Arizona, 20 to 40 percent of female victims identified with experiencing abuse of some form (sexual or physical) at home before entering into the industry as a sex slave. Of the males interviewed, a smaller proportion, 0 to 30 percent, reported former abuse in the home.

Children are at risk because of their vulnerable characteristics; naïve outlook, size, and tendency to be easily intimidated". The International Labor Organization estimates that of the 20.9 million people who are trafficked in the world (for all types of work) 5.5 million are children.

Children do not need to be forced into sexual exploitation according to the Victims Protection Law to be considered victims of Sex Trafficking. Under this act a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18, however the exploitation of children under the age of 14 carries a harsher punishment, though this is rarely enforced. The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 100,000 children who fall under the age of 18 are trafficked daily in the United States, and only 150 child trafficking cases have been brought to court. Many children who are trafficked are also at higher risk of turning to prostitution, a crime that many of them face criminal charges for, even under the age of 18.

The main motive of a woman (in some cases, an underage girl) to accept an offer from a trafficker is better financial opportunities for herself or her family. A study on the origin countries of trafficking confirms that most trafficking victims are not the poorest in their countries of origin, and sex trafficking victims are likely to be women from countries with some freedom to travel alone and some economic freedom.

There are numerous fake businesses that sound realistic that convince people to apply for the job. Some places have a reputation for holding an illegal business in order to attract their victims.

Sex trafficked people face similar health consequences to women exploited for labor purposes, people who have experienced domestic violence, and migrant women. Many of the sex workers contract sexual transmitted infections (STIs). In a study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, "only one of 23 trafficked women interviewed felt well-informed about sexually transmitted infections or HIV before leaving home." Without knowledge about this aspect of their health, trafficked women may not take the necessary preventative steps and contract these infections and have poor health seeking behavior in the future. The mental health implications range from depression to anxiety to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the abuse and violence victims face from their pimps or "Johns". With such a mindset many individuals develop alcohol or drug addictions and abusive habits. Also, traffickers commonly coerce or force their sex workers to use alcohol or drugs when they are in childhood or adolescence. Many victims use these substances as a coping mechanism or escape which further promotes the rate of addiction in this population. In a 30-year longitudinal study conducted by J. Potterat "et al.", it was determined that the average lifespan for women engaged in prostitution in Colorado Springs was 34 years.

Sex trafficking of women and children is the second most common type of trafficking for export in Africa. In Ghana, "connection men" or traffickers are witnessed regularly at border crossings and transport individuals via fake visas. Women are most commonly trafficked to Belgium, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, the Netherlands, Nigeria, and the United States. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States are also common destination countries for trafficked Nigerian women. In Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army traffics individuals to Sudan to sell them as sex slaves. The Nigerian syndicates dominate sex trades in multiple territories. The syndicates recruit women from South Africa and send them to Europe and Asia, where they are forced into prostitution, drug smuggling, or domestic violence. Law enforcement reported that sex traffickers force drug use to persuade these unwilling women.

The key hubs for both source transportation and destination of the sub-region of Asia include India, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. India is a major hub for trafficked Bangladeshi and Nepali women. In India itself, there are an estimated 3 million sex workers, 40% of whom are trafficked children, mostly girls from ethnic minorities and lower castes. In Thailand, 800,000 children under the age of 16 were involved in prostitution in 2004. Also, according to UNICEF and the International Labour Organization there are 40,000 child prostitutes in Sri Lanka. Thailand and India are in the top five countries with the highest rates of child prostitution. The 2014 Global Slavery Index (GSI) says that there are about 36 million victims of trafficking in the world, and nearly two-thirds of the people are from Asia. Pakistan, Thailand, China, India, and Bangladesh are in the top 10 for countries with the largest number of trafficking victims around the world. India is at the top of the list with 14 million victims, China comes in second with 3.2 million victims, and Pakistan comes in at third with 2.1 million victims. Cambodia is also a transit, source, and a destination country for trafficking. 36% of trafficked victims in Asia are children, while 64% are adults.

Europe has the highest number of sex slaves per capita in the world. In general, countries who are members of the European Union are destinations for individuals to be sex trafficked whereas the Balkans and Eastern Europe are source and transit countries. Transit countries are picked for their geographical location. This is because the locations the traffickers pick usually have a weak border control, the distance from the destination countries, corrupt official, or the organized crime groups are in on the sex trafficking. In 1997 alone as many as 175,000 young women from Russia, as well as the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, were sold as commodities in the sex markets of the developed countries in Europe and the Americas The European Union reported that from 2010–13 30,146 individuals were identified and registered as human trafficking victims. Of those registered, 69 percent of the victims were sexually exploited and more than 1,000 were children. Although many sex trafficked individuals are from outside of Europe, two-thirds of the 30,146 victims were EU citizens. Despite this high proportion of domestic sex slaves, the most common ethnicities of women who are trafficked to the United Kingdom are Chinese, Brazilian, and Thai. Moldova is a known country in Europe for women, children and men to be subjected to sex trafficking. Girls from Moldova become sex slaves starting at the age of 14. On average, they have sex with 12 to 15 men per day. The national Bureau of Statistics in Moldova says that in 2008 there were almost 25,000 victims of trafficking. When the women from Moldova are being trafficked for sex, they are most likely to be sent to countries such as, Russia, Cyprus, Turkey, and other Middle Western and Eastern European countries. This is because, in Russia, it is said that the government is well aware about people being sex trafficked and maybe even promote it. 85 percent of the victims leave their country to find a better job to support their family, but they are tricked into becoming a sex slave and are forced to become a prostitute. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) asked victims what country they came from and sixty one percent of the victims came from Moldova, 19 percent came from Romania, and the rest came from Albania, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine. More than 60 percent of the victims had a secondary school education or better, and 21 was the age average.

Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Iranian girls between the ages of 13 and 17 are targeted by traffickers for sale abroad; younger girls may be forced into domestic service until their traffickers consider them old enough to be subjected to child sex trafficking. An increase in the transport of girls from and through Iran en route to other Gulf States for sexual exploitation has been reported from 2009-2015; during the reporting period, Iranian trafficking networks subjected Iranian girls to sex trafficking in brothels in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Organized criminal groups kidnap or purchase and force Iranian and immigrant children to work as beggars and street vendors in cities, including Tehran. These children, who may be as young as 3, are coerced through physical and sexual abuse and drug addiction; reportedly many are purchased for as little as $150. Dozens of girls from Iran are brought to Pakistan to be sold as sex slaves every day. Most of these women have already been raped within the first 24 hours of their departure. It was also said in the Tehran newspapers that senior figures from the government have been involved in buying, selling, and abusing young women and children. Runaway girls in Iran are sought out for by the traffickers because it is incredibly easy to put them in the sex trafficking market since they have no home. There are about 84,000 women and girls in prostitution in Tehran. Most of them are on the streets, while others are in the 250 brothels.

The trafficking of women into prostitution in Israel began in the early 1990s. An estimate of three thousand women were being trafficked in the 1990s and early 2000s. Many of the women came from “post-Soviet states particularly Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and many more.” The women ended up in brothels where they worked seven days a week and served up to 30 clients a day. The traffickers used physical violence and threats to dissuade the women from leaving, they also confined women behind locked doors and barred windows. Throughout the 1990s the Israeli authorities failed to view sex trafficking as a problem, they simply viewed it as prostitution. They failed to interfere with brothel operations. If a case was filed the trafficker would have had a plea bargain with light punishment. The women who were being trafficked on the other hand were classified as illegal alien or criminals since they entered Israel illegally, so authorities concentrated on catching the women rather than the traffickers. Usually the victims of trafficking are vulnerable because they live in poverty, or they are not educated. Trafficking affects the mental health of the victim as well as physical health. Israel has become a country of destination for women who had been trafficked from surrounding countries.

Israel was ranked Tier 1 in the 2016 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report. Tier 1 is the highest ranking given to a government that has acknowledged human trafficking and has made efforts to solve the problem. Israel has tried to improve and protect the victims affected by sex trafficking. Israel has been providing victims of human sex trafficking with shelter and protection against the sex traffickers. These have been some of many steps taken to lower the number of women who have been affected by the traffickers. Although many say that the shelters that they provide are not sufficient for the victims, it has been seen that the number of women affected has declined since 2006. The anti-trafficking law of 2006 describes penalties of up to 16 years of imprisonment for trafficking an adult, 20 years for trafficking a child, 16 years for slavery and up to seven years for forced labor.

There are many public health initiatives that are being implemented to identify victims of sex trafficking. There are few professionals that are likely to encounter victims of sex trafficking, but healthcare providers are a unique group because they are more likely to come into contact with individuals that are still in captivity. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center provides guidelines to aid healthcare providers in identifying victims of sex trafficking. They provide general guidelines to indicate human trafficking (i.e. inconsistent/scripted history, unwillingness to answer questions about illness or injury, etc.), but also includes indicators to hone in on sex trafficking. In addition, this network has created a framework for sex trafficking protocols in healthcare settings once a victim is suspected or identified. The goal of the protocol is to provide those interacting with the patient step-by-step instructions on how to proceed once a potential trafficking victim has been identified. Additionally, an initiative known as the HEAL Trafficking and Hope for Justice Protocol Toolkit is being made accessible to healthcare providers. The goal of the toolkit is to provide a uniform medical response to trafficking. The toolkit combines known policies and procedures with tenets of trauma informed care. The toolkit is intended for the use of different healthcare providers such as community health workers, social workers, mental health counselors, nurses, and many others.
A second initiative was taken on by the Centers for Disease Control. They have started to implement new fields of data collection through International Classification of Diseases (ICD) in order to better identify and categorize cases of sex trafficking. The new fields are ICD-10-CM codes. These are further categorized into T codes and Z codes. The T codes are further subcategorized into specific diagnoses that are used to indicate suspected and confirmed cases of trafficking. In addition, Z codes are also further categorized, but will be used for examination or observation of trafficking victims for other reasons.

Approximately 87.8% of trafficking victims have come in contact with a healthcare professional either during of after their time of exploitation and labor. On February 26, 2018, the Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP) under the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services passed the SOAR to Health and Wellness Act of 2018. SOAR which is an acronym which stands for Stop, Observe, Ask, and Respond is a training program which aims to properly equip professionals with the necessary resources and methods to identify victims of human trafficking. The training aids to help others recognize key indicators and characteristics of human trafficking as well as aid in key communication techniques that are effective for everyone involved. Response tactics can be key to identifying victims without causing harm and putting them in increased danger. The trainings also provide key communities with the support and resources they may need to bring attention to a crime which may be heavily impacting that area. The training can either be taken online or in person and can be personalized based the role of the professional. SOAR is available to anyone who who may be interested in learning how to identify victims or situations of human trafficking in a healthcare setting. The training can either be taken online or in person and can be personalized based the role of the professional. SOAR is available to anyone who who may be interested in learning how to identify victims or situations of human trafficking in a healthcare setting. Trainings are available for social workers, medical and public health professionals, and even educators.

Physicians against the trafficking of humans (PATH) is a program of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) that was started in 2014 with efforts to encourage medical professionals including physicians, residents, and medical students to become more aware of human trafficking. The initiative was initially brought into discussion by Dr. Gayatri Devi in 2012, the president of AMWA at the time. She identified human sex trafficking as a key issue to be addressed. This discussion then progressed into forming a Human Trafficking Committee to handle the issue. PATH has since been creating content for hospitals and other medical facilities to use in order to educate professionals and students on the identification and advocacy for human trafficking. PATH has also been featured in many media outlets such as Politico and TEDx.

There are three main tactics social workers use to aid in the recovery of sex trafficking survivors: ecological, strengths-based, and victim-centered. Using the ecological approach, the social worker evaluates their client's current environment and goals for reintegration into the community. By examining how justice systems, legal, and medical services impact their client, they can help them look into areas of future employment, gaining legal status, and reuniting with family. The strengths-based approach aims to create a bond of trust between the social worker and their client to build confidence as well as autonomy and leadership skills. Lastly, when using the victim-centered approach, social workers develop services and plans for the future specifically catered to their client's individual needs. These services are developed through a survivor's lens, which allows social workers to easily meet the needs of their clients. All three methods have proven to be effective in the recovery of sex trafficking survivors.

There are many control tactics used by sex traffickers in order to control their victims, such as threats, physical and sexual assault, confiscating legitimate travel and immigration documents, and threats against the victim's family. The University of Minnesota Duluth published the Power and Control Wheel to help target domestic abuse intervention. The wheel identifies eight different mechanisms of power and control used on victims including: intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, denying, blaming, and minimizing, sexual abuse, physical abuse, using privilege, economic abuse, coercion and threats. The wheel was developed to be used in counseling and education groups for victims of sex trafficking. It breaks down the tactics used against victims so the cycle of violence may become visible and stopped.
Another mechanism used to understand control is the BITE Model created by Steven Hassan. The BITE Model describes four categories of coercion used on sex trafficking victims: behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. He says that it is essential to understand the loss of identity victims experience in order to help them get out or recover from sex trafficking.

International pressure to address trafficking in women and children became a growing part of the social Reform movement in the United States and Europe during the late nineteenth century. International legislation against the trafficking of women and children began with the conclusion of an international convention in 1901, and the International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic in 1904. (The latter was revised in 1910.) The first formal international research into the issue was funded by American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, through the American Bureau of Social Hygiene. The League of Nations, formed in 1919, took over as the international coordinator of legislation intended to end the trafficking of women and children. An international Conference on White Slave Traffic was held in 1921, attended by the 34 countries that ratified the 1901 and 1904 conventions. Another convention against trafficking was ratified by League members in 1922, and like the 1904 international convention, this one required ratifying countries to submit annual reports on their progress in tackling the problem. Compliance with this requirement was not complete, although it gradually improved: in 1924, approximately 34 percent of the member countries submitted reports as required: this rose to 46 percent in 1929, 52 percent in 1933, and 61 percent in 1934. The 1921 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children was sponsored by the League of Nations. In 1923, a committee from the bureau was tasked with investigating trafficking in 28 countries, interviewing approximately 5,000 informants and analyzing information over two years before issuing its final report. This was the first formal report on trafficking in women and children to be issued by an official body.

Efforts to combat sex trafficking are often linked to efforts against prostitution; however, this is often problematic in regards to legal recourse of sex trafficking victims. While prostitutes are nominally working by choice, sex trafficking victims do so under duress. Recognizing this, many states have passed legislation that allows sex trafficking victims amnesty under prostitution laws, however many fail to do so due to legal illiteracy and institutional prejudices. As such, sex trafficking victims often risk legal persecution when alerting authorities to their situation.

Jane Addams was one of the most notable reformers during the Progressive Era, and refined the still early concepts of white slavery and sex work in her book "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil". She, among others, fought to classify all people coerced into prostitution as victims of sexual slavery, and believed that all sex work was sexual exploitation of women by more powerful men. Addams also believed that abolishing white slavery would bring more women into the suffrage movement. Alex Smolak, a physician, has studied many of the health risks faced by women in white slavery during the Progressive era. She says in her article titled “White Slavery, Whorehouse Riots, Venereal Disease, and Saving Women..." that “The Progressive Era was a time when society was rapidly changing, with influences stemming from urbanization, industrialization, commercialization, immigration, and civilizing morality, all interacting with one another to fuel both prostitution and the anti-prostitution movement.” Along with “The U.S. White Slave act of 1910”, the “International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade” was ratified by 13 nations, including the United States in 1904. Throughout the next 45 years the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children was adopted by the League of Nations and the term white slavery was replaced by trafficking, the word used commonly today.
The first formal international research into the scope of the problem was funded by American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, through the American Bureau of Social Hygiene.

The first international protocol dealing with sex slavery was the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and Exploitation of Prostitution of Others. This convention followed the abolitionist idea of sex trafficking as incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person. Serving as a model for future legislation, the 1949 UN Convention was not ratified by every country, but came into force in 1951. These early efforts led to the 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, mentioned above. These instruments contain the elements of the current international law on trafficking in humans.

In 2011, the United Nations reported that girl victims made up two-thirds of all trafficked children. Girls constituted 15 to 20 percent of the total number of all detected victims, whereas boys comprised about 10 percent. The UN report was based on official data supplied by 132 countries.

In 2013, a resolution to create the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons was adopted by the United Nations. The first World Day against Trafficking in Persons took place July 30, 2014, and the day is now observed every July 30.

Current international treaties include the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages, entered into force in 1964.

In 1910, the U.S. Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (better known as the Mann Act), which made it a felony to transport women across state borders for the purpose of "prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose". Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking particularly where it was trafficking for the purposes of prostitution, but the ambiguity of "immorality" effectively criminalized interracial marriage and banned single women from crossing state borders for morally wrong acts. In 1914, of the women arrested for crossing state borders under this act, 70 percent were charged with voluntary prostitution. Once the idea of a sex slave shifted from a white woman to an enslaved woman from countries in poverty, the US began passing immigration acts to curtail aliens from entering the country in order to address this issue. (The government had other unrelated motives for the new immigration policies.) Several acts such as the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924 reduced the number of emigrants from Europe and Asia from entering the United States. Following the increased restrictions of the 1920s (which were significantly relaxed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965), human trafficking was not considered a major issue until the 1990s.

The Commercial Sex Act makes it illegal to recruit, entice, obtain, provide, move or harbor a person or to benefit from such activities knowing that the person will be caused to engage in commercial sex acts where the person is under 18 or where force, fraud or coercion exists.

Under the George W. Bush Administration, fighting sex slavery worldwide and domestically became a priority with an average of $100 million spent per year, which substantially outnumbers the amount spent by other countries. Before President Bush took office, Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). The TVPA strengthened services to victims of violence, law enforcement's ability to reduce violence against women and children, and education against human trafficking. Also specified in the TVPA was a mandate to collect funds for the treatment of sex trafficking victims that provided them with shelter, food, education, and financial grants. Internationally, the TVPA set standards that governments of other countries must follow in order to receive aid from the U.S. to fight human trafficking. Once George W. Bush took office in 2001, restricting sex trafficking became one of his primary humanitarian efforts. The Attorney General under President Bush, John Ashcroft, strongly enforced the TVPA. The Act was subsequently renewed in 2004, 2006, and 2008. It established two stipulations an applicant has to meet in order to receive the benefits of a T-Visa. First, a trafficked victim must prove/admit to being trafficked and second must submit to prosecution of his or her trafficker. In 2011, Congress failed to re-authorize the Act. The State Department publishes an annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which examines the progress that the U.S. and other countries have made in destroying human trafficking businesses, arresting the kingpins, and rescuing the victims.

Complementary protection is ensured through the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (signed in Lanzarote, 25 October 2007). The Convention entered into force on 1 July 2010. As of September 2018, the Convention has been ratified by 44 states, with another 3 states having signed but not yet ratified. The goal of the Convention is to provide the framework for an independent and effective monitoring system that holds the member states accountable for addressing human trafficking and providing protecting to victims. To monitor the implementation of this act, the Council of Europe established the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA). The Convention address the structure and purpose of GRETA and holds the group accountable to publish reports evaluating the measures taken by the states who have signed the Convention.

Actions taken to combat human trafficking vary from government to government. Some government actions include:Raising awareness can take three forms. First, governments can raise awareness among potential victims, particularly in countries where human traffickers are active. Second, they can raise awareness amongst the police, social welfare workers and immigration officers to equip them to deal appropriately with the problem. And finally, in countries where prostitution is legal or semi-legal, they can raise awareness amongst the clients of prostitution so that they can watch for signs of human trafficking victims. Methods to raise general awareness often include television programs, documentary films, internet communications, and posters.

Many countries have come under criticism for inaction, or ineffective action. Criticisms include the failure of governments to properly identify and protect trafficking victims, enactment of immigration policies which potentially re-victimize trafficking victims, and insufficient action in helping prevent vulnerable populations from becoming trafficking victims. A particular criticism has been the reluctance of some countries to tackle trafficking for purposes other than sex.

Studies of sex work and anti-sex trafficking efforts, intended to combat sex trafficking or provide support to victims, have raised concerns over the unintended effects of certain national and international policies, law enforcement strategies, and activist efforts on both sex-trafficked individuals and non-trafficked sex workers. For example, The United States' Tier 2 assessment of Japan on its 2004 TIP Report encouraged the Japanese government to add additional constraints to its procedures and policies for obtaining an entertainer visa, sometimes used by migrant workers seeking employment at businesses within the sex industry. However, these regulations provided opportunities for some third-party facilitators of these visas to exploit migrants while also limiting migrants' ability to leave employers with poor working conditions or overly restrictive practices, such as holding their passports or limiting their ability to leave the premises of the business. Practices of law enforcement officers in some countries have also been criticized for incentivizing non-trafficked sex workers to declare themselves to be trafficking victims and enter aid and rehabilitation programs in order to avoid prison sentences for prostitution charges.

Many NGOs work on the issue of sex trafficking. One major NGO is the International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a U.S.-based non-profit human rights organization that combats human trafficking in developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. IJM states that it is a "human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression." It is a faith-based organization since its purported goal is to "restore to victims of oppression the things that God intends for them: their lives, their liberty, their dignity, the fruits of their labor." The IJM receives over $900,000 from the US government. The organization has two methods for rescuing victims: brothel raids in cooperation with local police, and "buy bust" operations in which undercover agencies pretend to purchase sex services from an underage girl. After the raid and rescue, the women are sent to rehabilitation programs run by NGOs (such as churches) or the government.

There are also national non-governmental organizations working on the issue of human trafficking, including sex trafficking. In Kenya, for example, Awareness Against Human Trafficking (HAART) works on ending all human trafficking in the country. HAART has also participated in the UNANIMA International Stop the Demand campaign.

In India, J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam has opened a school called School for Justice. Here, survivors of sex trafficking are educated to become lawyers. The entire program is expected to take five to six years for each girl to complete. The women will graduate with law degrees, with a special focus on commercial sexual exploitation cases. JWT hopes that one day they may become prosecutors, or even judges, empowered to combat the criminals who once exploited and abused them.

NGOs often have the best of intentions when combating sex-trafficking. NGOs are often funded by the West and are implemented in countries that have a very different culture. Research shows that employees of the Western NGOs are slow to adapt to the culture of the community they are providing services to. This often leads to a disconnect between the NGO and the community. Employees of NGOs hold the responsibility of relaying the narrative of sex-trafficked people. This can create a hierarchical structure that makes the voice of Western NGOs as more legitimate than the voice of the people they are serving. Thus, reinforcing the essentialized notion of third-world women as backwards and other.

Japan is a popular place for sex-trafficking. Japan has a long history with the trade of women for sex. For a good part of the countries history, sex work was legal in Japan. This makes it difficult for the government to decipher between legal sex work and illegal prostitution. This is where NGOs step in to assist the government. NGOs provide services in countries where the government policies are failing to combat a specific issue. However, in Japan it is difficult for NGOs focused on issues with women to receive local funding. This weak political support makes the work for NGOs in Japan much more difficult. Japan's lack of support for women's rights shows why the role of NGOs is so important in that country.

Public information campaigns are defined as a “...government-directed and sponsored effort to communicate to the public or a segment of the public in order to achieve a policy result”.

In the past ten years, Spain has seen a surge of sex trafficking. In light of this crisis, social movements, organizations and government institutions have enacted policies like the Second National Plan against Sex Trafficking and Anti-Trafficking laws. Campaigns to fight against sex trafficking in Spain between 2008-2017 have been examined by researchers. Their research showed that that many campaigns focus on the narrative of the victim as vulnerable and weak, rather than focusing on the actual crime of sex trafficking and the economic system that allows it to flourish. According to the research these narratives disempower sex trafficked people through repeated language of vulnerability and innocence. The researchers explain that the lack of information provided in these campaigns hinders their success. Campaigns will throw out huge numbers of women exploited into sex work but gives no context to the system that allows sex trafficking to flourish.

In 1994, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women was established to combat trafficking in women on any grounds. It is an alliance of more than 100 non-governmental organizations from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. The Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation was created by celebrity humanitarians Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher in 2009 in their efforts to fight human trafficking (specifically focusing on sex trafficking of children) in the U.S. In September 2010, the pair announced the launch of their "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" campaign to combat child sex trafficking alongside other Hollywood stars and technology companies such as Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" is based on the idea that high-profile men speaking out against child sex trafficking can help reduce the demand for young girls in the commercial sex trade. The popular TV channel MTV started a campaign to combat sex trafficking. The initiative called MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) is a multimedia initiative produced by MTV EXIT Foundation (formerly known as the MTV Europe Foundation) to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking.

Another campaign is the A21 Campaign, Abolishing Injustice in the 21st Century, which focuses on addressing human trafficking through a holistic approach. They provide potential victims with the education and valuable information on how to best reduce their likelihood of being trafficked through strategies that reduce their vulnerability. The organization also provides safe environments for victims and runs restoration programs in their aftercare facilities. In addition, they provide legal council and representation to victims so they can prosecute their traffickers. Another key component of the campaign is to help influence legislation in order to enact more comprehensive laws that place more traffickers in prison.

The Not for Sale (organization) Campaign works in the United States, Peru, the Netherlands, Romania, Thailand, South Africa, and India to help victims of human trafficking. In 2013 alone, they provided 4,500 services to 2,062 individuals. The vast majority of victims who received assistance were from the Netherlands and the number of victims served increased by 42 percent from 2012. The campaign allocates the majority of their funds to providing victims health and nutritional care and education. Not for Sale provides a safe shelter for victims and empowers them with life skills and job training. This helps trafficked individuals re-enter into the workforce through a dignified form of work. In the organization's 2013 Annual Impact Report, it was determined that 75 percent of the victims had been sexually exploited.

While globalization fostered new technologies that may exacerbate sex trafficking, technology can also be used to assist law enforcement and anti-trafficking efforts. A study was done on online classified ads surrounding the Super Bowl. A number of reports have noticed increase in sex trafficking during previous years of the Super Bowl. For the 2011 Super Bowl held in Dallas, Texas, the Backpage website for the Dallas area experienced a 136 percent increase on the number of posts in the Adult section that Sunday. Typically, Sundays were known to be the day of the week with the lowest amount of posts in the Adult section. Researchers analyzed the most salient terms in these online ads and found that most commonly used words suggested that many escorts were traveling across state lines to Dallas specifically for the Super Bowl. Also, the self-reported ages were higher than usual which conveys that an older population of sex workers were drawn to the event, but since these are self-reported the data is not reliable. Despite a lot of media hype about a supposed spike in sex trafficking surrounding the Super Bowl, academics and anti-trafficking campaigners have said this is largely a myth. They say that while the commercial sex market does grow modestly during large events, sex trafficking is a year-round problem. Twitter was another social networking platform studied for detecting sex trafficking. Digital tools can be used to narrow the pool of sex trafficking cases, albeit imperfectly and with uncertainty.

The term "End Demand" refers to anti-sex trafficking strategies that focus on the "Johns", the sex buyers. A common strategy is to make it a crime to buy sex, whether consensual or not. End Demand is very popular in some countries, including the United States and Canada. In the 1990s, for example, specific media attention was paid to sex trafficking of women outside the United States. The feminist reaction to this at the time was to not just call for social services for trafficked people but also for harsher punishments for Johns. Proponents of the End Demand strategy support initiatives such as "John's schools" to "rehabilitate" the Johns, increased arrests of johns, and public shaming (e.g. billboards and websites that publicly name johns who were caught). John's Schools were pioneered in San Francisco in 1995 and now used in many cities across the U.S. as well as other countries such as the UK and Canada. Some compare John's Schools programs to driver's safety courses, because first offenders can pay a fee to attend class(es) on the harms of prostitution, and upon completion, the charges against the john will be dropped. Another initiative in line with the End Demand strategy is the cross-country tour "Ignite the Road to Justice," launched by the 2011 Miss Canada, Tara Teng. Teng's initiative circulates a petition to end the demand for commercial sex that drives prostitution and sex trafficking. End Demand efforts also include large-scale public awareness campaigns. Campaigns were started in Sweden, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Atlanta, Georgia. Massachusetts and Rhode Island also had legislative efforts that criminalized prostitution and increased end demand efforts by targeting Johns.

The Atlanta campaign ran from 2006 to 2008 and was titled "Dear John". It ran ads in local media reaching out to potential Johns to discourage them from buying sex. The ads mimicked a break-up letter to John.

Critics of the Dear John campaign focus on the ‘male demand’ aspect of the campaign and find that this style of campaign reinforces gendered, racialized and sexualized assumptions about Johns and trafficked women. The historical discourse in the U.S. concerning Johns is racially charged. An example of this racialized nature is associated with the temptations of Thai massage parlors. Despite these objections, lawmakers have found this messaging morally compelling. The campaign was run by locals of Atlanta. Advocates for the campaign informed citizens through media that young women were the ones being arrested while the Johns were not. Contextual analysis research has shown the essentialized nature of the campaign. The Dear John campaign posters define women in terms of there relationship to sex. They also only depict white girls in the images inferring that the only victims worth caring about are young white and innocent.

It is interesting to note that there are no images of Johns in the campaign posters. A plausible explanation for this would be an effort by the campaign to widen the scope of the messaging and to avoid racial stereotypes. Conversly, the racial stereotypes of trafficked girls is made clear. This excludes a majority of victims who do not identify with the image that the poster conveys. Lawmakers in Atlanta were fully behind the campaign as a statement to the public that they will not tolerate the purchasing of sex. These public statements are in stark contrast to the actual amount of funding that the city gave to organizations who provide housing and services for victims. The city did no research into the effectiveness of the campaign and therefore there is no data on its actual impact on the city. It is also important to note that the campaign ads were only in English and many people are not familiar with the Dear John reference. Lawmakers believe that the campaign was effective in bringing awareness to the issue and therefore shaped public opinion and policy.

The lack of conversation, advocacy, legal/social support services, and academic work around the sexual exploitation of men and boys can be traced to larger social discourses surrounding male sexuality, dominance, and behavior. Media representations of masculinity and sexual dominance contribute to the idea that men cannot be victims, especially in regards to sex-related crimes. The lack of public knowledge and attention to male victimhood and vulnerability is strongly reflected in the quality of services and strength of legal frameworks available to male victims of sex trafficking. Experts describe the "perceived agency and resilience in young males" to be a strong force in deterring male victims from seeking the support they need, and discouraging male-inclusive anti-trafficking service and support networks from forming in the first place. Within the spare support frameworks for male victims that do exist, the specific vulnerabilities of different populations in different areas around the world-- regarding nationality and migration status, sexual orientation, drug use, socio-economic status, health status, family structure, and more-- are often unaddressed, leaving crucial groups' needs unmet. The double stigma that surrounds male victims of sex trafficking, involving homosexuality and sex work more broadly-- makes it incredibly difficult for male victims to come forward and seek help, or even to self-organize. Some scholars report that male victims have also faced higher rates of police violence and brutality than female victims in regards to contact with law enforcement.

Laws regarding the purchase and sale of voluntary and involuntary sex vary greatly across the developed world. Their effects on sex trafficking are difficult to discern. Proponents of various forms of criminalization, legalization, or regulation of prostitution, may all argue their model decreases sex trafficking.

The Dutch model of legalization and regulation and the Swedish model of criminalizing purchasers and pimps but not prostitutes are often discussed. The difference of these models casts the prevention of trafficking against the rights of voluntary sex workers and purchasers. It is argued that a hybrid model of licensing sex workers and criminalizing the purchase of unlicensed sex would reduce trafficking without crushing civil rights.

Numerous international organizations have partnered to create an anti-human trafficking Giving Day to raise awareness and funds on July, 30th 2017. This is the day designated by the United Nations as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. The Giving Day is being hosted by Charidy.com, a crowdfunding platform for non-profits.

The General Assembly in 2010, adopted the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, encouraging Governments around the world to undergo drastic measures in order defeat human trafficking. The goal was to put the fight against human trafficking into the United Nation's programmes to strengthen positive development and security around the world. A main section of the plan is to place a United Nations Trust Fund for the women and children who fell victim of trafficking. The Trust Fund in the plan ensures to assist and protect the victims of trafficking through grants to certified NGOs. In the future, the goal is to make the victims a priority who are come were victims and had issues with migration. It also places a focus on the aid to victims who were trafficked by their perpetrator for the goal of sexual relations, organ removal, forced begging, forced criminality, and emerging exploitative reasons.

The General Assembly in the year 2013, gathered a meeting to go over the world's plan of action. Numerous states also declared July 30 as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. The came to the conclusion that day of remembrance and awareness was crucial to remember the victims, the right's they possess and their protection.

There are a number of misconceptions about sex trafficking. Sex trafficking and human trafficking are not to be confused with human smuggling. Human trafficking for sexual or other labor may involve transporting victims across international borders, but to meet the definition of trafficking, there needs only to be exploitation of an individual after they have been coerced or deceived, so it does not necessarily involve transportation across national borders. Human trafficking and sex trafficking are often used as synonyms. However, trafficking for non-sexual exploitation may be even more prevalent than trafficking for sexual exploitation, though accurate estimates of trafficking rates are extremely difficult to obtain. Sex trafficking tends to receive more attention from aid organizations and donors due to the greater public outrage that forced sexual labor evokes compared to forced non-sexual labor and thus incidents of sex trafficking are more frequently reported.

Sex trafficking

Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, including sexual slavery. A victim is forced, in one of a variety of ways, into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s) and then used by said trafficker(s) to give sexual services to customers. There are three types of activities defined as sex trafficking crimes: acquisition, transportation and exploitation; this includes child sex tourism (CST), domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) or other kinds of commercial sexual exploitation of children, and prostitution. Sex trafficking is one of the biggest criminal businesses and it has been described as "the fastest growing criminal industry in the world."

According to the International Labour Organization, there are 20.9 million people subjected to forced labour, and 22% (4.5 million) who are victims of forced sexual exploitation. However, due to the covertness of sex trafficking, obtaining accurate, reliable statistics is difficult for researchers. The global commercial profits for sexual slavery are estimated to be $99B according to this same source. In 2005, the figure was given as $9B for the total human trafficking industry.

Most victims find themselves in coercive or abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous. Locations where this practice occurs span the globe and reflect an intricate web between nations, making it very difficult to construct viable solutions to this human rights problem.

In 2000, countries adopted a definition set forth by the United Nations. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, is also referred to as the Palermo Protocol. The Palermo Protocol created this definition. 147 of the 192 member states of the UN ratified the Palermo Protocol when it was published in 2000; as of September 2017, 171 states are parties. Article 3 of the Palermo Protocol states the definition as:

Article 5 of the Palermo Protocol then requires the member states to criminalize trafficking based on the definition outlined in Article 3; however, many member states' domestic laws reflect a narrower definition than Article 3. Although these nations claim to be obliging Article 5, the narrow laws lead to a smaller portion of people being persecuted for sex trafficking.

The UN established various anti-trafficking tools, including a Global Report on Trafficking in Persons and an Inter-Agency Coordination Group Against Trafficking in Persons. The Global Report on Trafficking in Person provides new information based on data gathered from 155 countries. It offers first global assessment of the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. The UN General Assembly passed several resolutions on measuring to eliminate human trafficking. In 2010 the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons was adopted. Various other organizations have engaged in global efforts against sex trafficking. "The UN Protocol's is the bedrock of the international initiatives against human sex trafficking." This protocol defines certain elements of sex trafficking: "action", which describes the recruitment and transportation of victims, "means", which includes coercion, fraud, or abuse of power, and "purpose", which includes exploitation such as prostitution, forced labor or slavery, and the removal of organs. The UN requires member states to establish the trafficking of humans as a criminal offense.

In pimp-controlled trafficking, the victim is controlled by a single trafficker, sometimes called a pimp. The victim can be controlled by the trafficker physically, psychologically, and/or emotionally. In order to obtain control over their victims, traffickers will use force, drugs, emotional tactics as well as financial means. In certain circumstances, they will even resort to various forms of violence, such as gang rape and mental and physical abuse. Traffickers sometimes use offers of marriage, threats, intimidation, brainwashing and kidnapping as means of obtaining victims.

A common process is for the trafficker to first gain the trust of the victim, called the grooming stage. They seek to make the victim dependent on them. The trafficker may express love and admiration, make lofty promises such as making the victim a star, offer them a job or an education or buy them a ticket to a new location. The main types of work offered are in the catering and hotel industry, in bars and clubs, modeling contracts, or au pair work. Once the victim is comfortable, the pimp moves to the seasoning stage, where they will ask the victim to perform sexual acts for the pimp, which the victim may do because they believe it is the only way to keep the trafficker's affection. The requests progress from there and it can be difficult for the victim to escape.

Another tactic is for traffickers to kidnap their victims, and then drug them or secure them so they cannot escape. Traffickers may seek out potential victims who are traveling alone, are separated from their group, or seem like they have low self-esteem. They may go to places likes malls where they are more likely to find girls without parents.

Traffickers are using social media at an increasing rate to find victims, research potential victims, control their victims and advertise their victims. Traffickers often target people who post things that indicate that they are depressed, have low self-esteem or are angry with their parents. Traffickers also use social media posts to establish patterns and track the locations of potential victims.

After the victim has joined the offender, various techniques are used to restrict the victim's access to communication with home, such as imposing physical punishment unless the victim complies with the trafficker's demands and making threats of harm and even death to the victim and their family. Sometimes, the victims will succumb to the Stockholm Syndrome because their captors will pretend to "love" and "need" them, even going so far as promise marriage and future stability. This is particularly effective with younger victims, because they are more inexperienced and therefore easily manipulated.

In India, those who traffic young girls into prostitution are often women who have been trafficked themselves. As adults they use personal relationships and trust in their villages of origin to recruit additional girls. Also, some (migrating) prostitutes (See: migrant sex work) can become victims of human trafficking because the women know they will be working as prostitutes; however, they are given an inaccurate description by their "boss" of the circumstances. Therefore, they consequently get exploited due to their misconception of what conditions to expect of their sex work in the new destination country.

Gang-controlled sex trafficking and Pimp-controlled sex trafficking run their operations in very similar ways. The largest difference between the two is that gang-controlled trafficking is run by a large group of people whereas pimp-controlled trafficking is run by only one person. In general, gang members are expected or forced to participate in tasks that involve illegal and violent activity. Some of these criminal behaviors may include: distributing drugs, robbery, trafficking drugs, extortion, and murder. One money making source that many people do not necessarily associate with gangs is human sex trafficking. Gangs are now turning to sex trafficking as it is seen as safer and more lucrative than drug trafficking.

The gangs can make larger amounts of money quicker by selling other people's bodies, and are less likely to get caught. In certain circumstances, gangs may team up with other gangs in the area, and work together as a sex ring. There are a number of different reasons that gangs make this decision. One reason is that it enables them to increase profits by trading different girls, women, boys or men. This gives their client, also known as a john, a greater variety of options to choose from. Clients are often willing to pay a larger price for a sexual experience with someone new. Another reason that gangs will share females is because this makes it more difficult for law enforcement to keep track of the victims, ultimately preventing them from making a positive identification.

When people think or talk about sex trafficking a very common question people will ask is, “where do they find people to traffic?”. In many cases, gang members will scope girls out at malls, skip parties, online and through social media. In addition, they often will seek out female runaways from their neighborhood. Many of the girls they look for have been physically or sexually abused, have low self-esteem, struggle with drug and alcohol dependency, or are seeking a home/family environment.

In order for the gang to sex traffic an individual, the first thing they need to do is gain that person's trust. They shower the victim with praise and attention, making her feel important and desired. This is referred to as the Romeo Method. It consists of different manipulation techniques. A member will take her to a fancy restaurant, flounder her with lavish gifts, and take her to parties where they are provided with endless supplies of drugs and alcohol. They also learn their weaknesses at the same time, find his or her vulnerabilities and once they find that soft spot they can use it against them.

Gang members often wear certain types of clothing or colors to prove their commitment or loyalty to the gang. It is also very common to represent your gang by branding your body with tattoos. Unfortunately, many victims of sex trafficking are being branded as well. By forcing a tattoo onto their victims they are essentially marking their territory and officially displaying ownership of that person. In the short film, Unbranded: Sex Trafficking Tattoo Removal, Vice Media dives deep into the recovery stages of a young girl who was trafficked for three years. During her time of being exploited, she was forced to receive a tattoo by her trafficker.

In familial trafficking, the victim is controlled by family members who allow them to be sexually exploited in exchange for something of value, such as drugs or money. For example, a mother may allow a boyfriend to abuse a child in exchange for housing. Usually, it begins with one family member and spreads from there. Familial trafficking may be difficult to detect because these children often have a larger degree of freedom and may still attend school and after-school functions. These children may not understand that they are being trafficked or may not have a way out. Familial trafficking is considered by some to be the most prevalent form of human sex trafficking within the United States.

This form of trafficking is also extremely common outside of the United States. Many families from impoverished areas (India, Thailand, Philippines, etc.) find themselves in situations where debt or tradition calls for the selling of a loved one, most commonly female. In Thailand there is a tradition known as "bhun kun," which establishes the youngest daughter as financially responsible for her parents as they grow old. Author Kara Siddharth interviewed a Thai victim who stated that, though she hated the men she was with, “she was proud to fulfill her duty to her parents in the form of tiny payments that the brothel owner sent to her father after her trafficking debts were repaid”. This is just one of the many countries whose lower class turn to this form of income. Many children are sold to repay debts, or merely to put food on the table for their family for a month.

A forced marriage is a marriage where one or both participants are married without their freely given consent.
"Servile marriage" is defined as a marriage involving a person being sold, transferred or inherited into that marriage. According to ECPAT, "Child trafficking for forced marriage is simply another manifestation of trafficking and is not restricted to particular nationalities or countries".

A forced marriage qualifies as a form of human trafficking in certain situations. If a woman is sent abroad, forced into the marriage and then repeatedly compelled to engage in sexual conduct with her new husband, then her experience is that of "sex trafficking". If the bride is treated as a domestic servant by her new husband and/or his family, then this is a form of "labor trafficking".

Approximately 140 million girls under the age of 18, which is about 39,000 a day, will be forced into early marriages between 2011 and 2020. Forced marriage, which is identified by the United Nations as a “contemporary form of slavery,” occurs without full consent of the man or woman, and is associated with threats by family members or the bride/groom. Forced marriage occurs not only in foreign countries but in the US as well. The service providers in the United States cannot successfully respond to forced marriage cases because they lack clarity and a true definition of what a forced marriage is.

In survival sex, the victim is not necessarily controlled by another person but feels they have to perform sexual acts in order to obtain basic commodities to survive. In addition to money, persons engaging in survival sex may trade sexual favors for food, shelter, or drugs. The most reported cases are the youth that perform sexual acts for shelter or a place to sleep. Within the youth experiences of survival sex, 8.1% of females, males, and transgender are victims. Those who perform the trafficking include immediate family, boyfriends, employers, and strangers. Those who are at a higher risk of survival sex include runaways, homeless, foster kids, and orphans.

There is not one simple factor that perpetuates sex trafficking, rather a complex, interconnected web of political, socioeconomic, governmental, and societal factors. The causes of sex trafficking which have been identified lie at the intersections of these factors. There are three types of causes which have been identified: gender hierarchies, migration for work (pull factors), and neoliberal globalization (push factors).

Many scholars critique the power hierarchies based on gender, race, and class which underlie economic systems as perpetuators of women's vulnerability to sex trafficking. Copley argues that women in underdeveloped countries are powerless due to these hierarchies of power. Matusek also argues this point, noting that globalization spreads power hierarchies while spreading economic policy. Ideas of gender are thus perpetuated though globalization, leaving women vulnerable. Matusek cites masculinity as privileged with power and control in these hierarchies. Femininity, she notes, is associated with submissive and passive qualities. Femininity's lack of power leaves women to be used by men and consequently be seen as disposable. This view of women is perpetuated through the globalization of power hierarchies, which Matusek argues justifies and normalizes violence and power against women. This normalization of violence and power is a key player in the existence and continuation of sex trafficking. Vesna Nikovic-Ristanovic also cites this normalization of violence and power as a cause of sex trafficking.

Nikovic-Ristanovic analyzes the role of perceived femininity in women's vulnerability to sex trafficking, by specifically looking at the links between militarism and female sexuality. Nikovic-Ristanovic cites a connection between war rapes and forced prostitution and sex trafficking. The way women's bodies are used in war relate to the normalization of violence and power against women. Nikovic-Ristanovic argues that military presence, even in times of peace, promote ideas of gender which render women vulnerable. These ideas concern hegemonic masculinity, which Nikovic-Ristanovic defines as the hyper sexuality of men and the submissiveness or passivity of women and girls. Nikovic-Ristanovic notes that the global acceptance of this definition justifies exploitation and violence against women since women are viewed as sex objects for the fulfillment of male's sexual desire. This Western ideal of heteronormative sexuality, Nikovic-Ristanovic argues, is also perpetuated through media and advertisements, in which women are encouraged to appear sexually attractive for men.

Kim Anh Duong argues that social narratives about women which arise from power hierarchies, coupled with women's economic realities, render women vulnerable to exploitation and sex trafficking. Duong identifies the prevailing narrative of women as the disadvantaged victim. She cites powerlessness as the result of this narrative, which is further perpetuated by social and economic realities which result from development process which leave women dependent on men. This overall powerlessness, according to Duong, makes women easy targets of exploitation and violence.

Susan Tiefenbrun, like Duong, notes women's lower status of power and consequential dependence on men. Tiefenbrun, unlike Duong, cites cultural norms as the cause of this vulnerability. She argues that cultural norms deprive women of access to and time for receiving an education or learning skills to improve employment opportunities. This lack of education and access to employment results in women's dependence on men. Tiefenbrun argues that women's dependence renders them more vulnerable to traffickers.

One cause for women's migration that is widely agreed upon by scholars is the economic pressure upon women due to neoliberal globalization. Siddharth Kara argues that globalization and the spread of Western Capitalism drive inequality and rural poverty, which are the material causes for sex trafficking. Dong-Hoon Seol points out unequal development between countries as an effect of the globalization of neoliberalism. He argues that the growing disparity of wealth between developed and underdeveloped countries leads to migration of women from underdeveloped countries.

Duong cites structural adjustment programs (SAPs), an aspect of development policies in the globalization of neoliberalism, as a cause for women's poverty, unemployment, and low wages which promote migration. SAPs affect men and women differently, she argues, because men and women experience poverty differently. This is known as the feminization of poverty. Much of women's time is spent doing unpaid labor such as housework and care work, leading to an overall lower income. Duong further argues that women are placed at a greater disadvantage due to their lack of access to land and other resources. Matusek also argues that the unequal distribution of resources and power lead to both push and pull factors of migration. According to Matusek, women are pushed to migrate on account of a lack of education and employment opportunities.

Other scholars focus on the demand for sex itself as a cause of sex trafficking. The pull factor comes from globalization creating a market around sex. Matusek cites the commodification aspect of capitalism as the cause for the industrialization of sex. The pull factor comes from globalization creating a market around sex. Seol also cites the globalization of the commodification aspect of capitalism as a cause of sex trafficking.

Anyone is permitted to contact The National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1(888)-373-7888. The hotline is beneficial since providers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist victims and provide information for those who are at risk. There are a variety of ways in order to help prevent trafficking. One must be aware of the indicators to identify victims: abnormal behavior, poor physical health, lack of control, and work and living conditions. However, these signs may only be shown through a number of people - there may be more severe, serious indicators of sex trafficking. If you are a huge supporter in anti-trafficking, you can host events in the community to raise awareness of how people are targeted and who.

There is no single profile for victims of human trafficking. Most are women, though it is not uncommon for males to be trafficked as well. Victims are captured then exploited all around the world, representing a diverse range of ages and backgrounds, including ethnic and socioeconomic. However, there is a set group of traits associated with a higher risk of becoming trafficked for sexual exploitation. Persons at risk include homeless and runaway youth, foreign nationals (especially those of lower socioeconomic status), and those who have experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, violent trauma, neglect, poor academic success, and inadequate social skills. Also, a study of a group of female sex workers in Canada found that 64 percent of them had been in the child welfare system as children (this includes foster and group homes). This research conducted by Kendra Nixon illustrates how children in or leaving foster care are at a higher risk of becoming a sex worker.

In the United States, research has illustrated how these qualities hold true for victims, even though none can be labeled as a direct cause. For example, more than 50 percent of domestic minor sex trafficking victims have a history of homelessness. Familial disruptions such as divorce or the death of a parent place minors at a higher risk of entering the industry, but home life in general influences children's risk. In a study of trafficked youth in Arizona, 20 to 40 percent of female victims identified with experiencing abuse of some form (sexual or physical) at home before entering into the industry as a sex slave. Of the males interviewed, a smaller proportion, 0 to 30 percent, reported former abuse in the home.

Children are at risk because of their vulnerable characteristics; naïve outlook, size, and tendency to be easily intimidated". The International Labor Organization estimates that of the 20.9 million people who are trafficked in the world (for all types of work) 5.5 million are children.

Children do not need to be forced into sexual exploitation according to the Victims Protection Law to be considered victims of Sex Trafficking. Under this act a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18, however the exploitation of children under the age of 14 carries a harsher punishment, though this is rarely enforced. The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 100,000 children who fall under the age of 18 are trafficked daily in the United States, and only 150 child trafficking cases have been brought to court. Many children who are trafficked are also at higher risk of turning to prostitution, a crime that many of them face criminal charges for, even under the age of 18.

The main motive of a woman (in some cases, an underage girl) to accept an offer from a trafficker is better financial opportunities for herself or her family. A study on the origin countries of trafficking confirms that most trafficking victims are not the poorest in their countries of origin, and sex trafficking victims are likely to be women from countries with some freedom to travel alone and some economic freedom.

There are numerous fake businesses that sound realistic that convince people to apply for the job. Some places have a reputation for holding an illegal business in order to attract their victims.

Sex trafficking of women and children is the second most common type of trafficking for export in Africa. In Ghana, "connection men" or traffickers are witnessed regularly at border crossings and transport individuals via fake visas. Women are most commonly trafficked to Belgium, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, the Netherlands, Nigeria, and the United States. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States are also common destination countries for trafficked Nigerian women. In Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army traffics individuals to Sudan to sell them as sex slaves. The Nigerian syndicates dominate sex trades in multiple territories. The syndicates recruit women from South Africa and send them to Europe and Asia, where they are forced into prostitution, drug smuggling, or domestic violence. Law enforcement reported that sex traffickers force drug use to persuade these unwilling women.

Israel was ranked Tier 1 in the 2016 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report. Tier 1 is the highest ranking given to a government that has acknowledged human trafficking and has made efforts to solve the problem. Israel has tried to improve and protect the victims affected by sex trafficking. Israel has been providing victims of human sex trafficking with shelter and protection against the sex traffickers. These have been some of many steps taken to lower the number of women who have been affected by the traffickers. Although many say that the shelters that they provide are not sufficient for the victims, it has been seen that the number of women affected has declined since 2006. The anti-trafficking law of 2006 describes penalties of up to 16 years of imprisonment for trafficking an adult, 20 years for trafficking a child, 16 years for slavery and up to seven years for forced labor.

Physicians against the trafficking of humans (PATH) is a program of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) that was started in 2014 with efforts to encourage medical professionals including physicians, residents, and medical students to become more aware of human trafficking. The initiative was initially brought into discussion by Dr. Gayatri Devi in 2012, the president of AMWA at the time. She identified human sex trafficking as a key issue to be addressed. This discussion then progressed into forming a Human Trafficking Committee to handle the issue. PATH has since been creating content for hospitals and other medical facilities to use in order to educate professionals and students on the identification and advocacy for human trafficking. PATH has also been featured in many media outlets such as Politico and TEDx.

There are three main tactics social workers use to aid in the recovery of sex trafficking survivors: ecological, strengths-based, and victim-centered. Using the ecological approach, the social worker evaluates their client's current environment and goals for reintegration into the community. By examining how justice systems, legal, and medical services impact their client, they can help them look into areas of future employment, gaining legal status, and reuniting with family. The strengths-based approach aims to create a bond of trust between the social worker and their client to build confidence as well as autonomy and leadership skills. Lastly, when using the victim-centered approach, social workers develop services and plans for the future specifically catered to their client's individual needs. These services are developed through a survivor's lens, which allows social workers to easily meet the needs of their clients. All three methods have proven to be effective in the recovery of sex trafficking survivors.

There are many control tactics used by sex traffickers in order to control their victims, such as threats, physical and sexual assault, confiscating legitimate travel and immigration documents, and threats against the victim's family. The University of Minnesota Duluth published the Power and Control Wheel to help target domestic abuse intervention. The wheel identifies eight different mechanisms of power and control used on victims including: intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, denying, blaming, and minimizing, sexual abuse, physical abuse, using privilege, economic abuse, coercion and threats. The wheel was developed to be used in counseling and education groups for victims of sex trafficking. It breaks down the tactics used against victims so the cycle of violence may become visible and stopped.
Another mechanism used to understand control is the BITE Model created by Steven Hassan. The BITE Model describes four categories of coercion used on sex trafficking victims: behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. He says that it is essential to understand the loss of identity victims experience in order to help them get out or recover from sex trafficking.

Efforts to combat sex trafficking are often linked to efforts against prostitution; however, this is often problematic in regards to legal recourse of sex trafficking victims. While prostitutes are nominally working by choice, sex trafficking victims do so under duress. Recognizing this, many states have passed legislation that allows sex trafficking victims amnesty under prostitution laws, however many fail to do so due to legal illiteracy and institutional prejudices. As such, sex trafficking victims often risk legal persecution when alerting authorities to their situation.

The first international protocol dealing with sex slavery was the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and Exploitation of Prostitution of Others. This convention followed the abolitionist idea of sex trafficking as incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person. Serving as a model for future legislation, the 1949 UN Convention was not ratified by every country, but came into force in 1951. These early efforts led to the 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, mentioned above. These instruments contain the elements of the current international law on trafficking in humans.

In 2011, the United Nations reported that girl victims made up two-thirds of all trafficked children. Girls constituted 15 to 20 percent of the total number of all detected victims, whereas boys comprised about 10 percent. The UN report was based on official data supplied by 132 countries.

In 2013, a resolution to create the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons was adopted by the United Nations. The first World Day against Trafficking in Persons took place July 30, 2014, and the day is now observed every July 30.

Current international treaties include the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages, entered into force in 1964.

The Commercial Sex Act makes it illegal to recruit, entice, obtain, provide, move or harbor a person or to benefit from such activities knowing that the person will be caused to engage in commercial sex acts where the person is under 18 or where force, fraud or coercion exists.

Complementary protection is ensured through the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (signed in Lanzarote, 25 October 2007). The Convention entered into force on 1 July 2010. As of September 2018, the Convention has been ratified by 44 states, with another 3 states having signed but not yet ratified. The goal of the Convention is to provide the framework for an independent and effective monitoring system that holds the member states accountable for addressing human trafficking and providing protecting to victims. To monitor the implementation of this act, the Council of Europe established the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA). The Convention address the structure and purpose of GRETA and holds the group accountable to publish reports evaluating the measures taken by the states who have signed the Convention.

Actions taken to combat human trafficking vary from government to government. Some government actions include:Raising awareness can take three forms. First, governments can raise awareness among potential victims, particularly in countries where human traffickers are active. Second, they can raise awareness amongst the police, social welfare workers and immigration officers to equip them to deal appropriately with the problem. And finally, in countries where prostitution is legal or semi-legal, they can raise awareness amongst the clients of prostitution so that they can watch for signs of human trafficking victims. Methods to raise general awareness often include television programs, documentary films, internet communications, and posters.

Many countries have come under criticism for inaction, or ineffective action. Criticisms include the failure of governments to properly identify and protect trafficking victims, enactment of immigration policies which potentially re-victimize trafficking victims, and insufficient action in helping prevent vulnerable populations from becoming trafficking victims. A particular criticism has been the reluctance of some countries to tackle trafficking for purposes other than sex.

Studies of sex work and anti-sex trafficking efforts, intended to combat sex trafficking or provide support to victims, have raised concerns over the unintended effects of certain national and international policies, law enforcement strategies, and activist efforts on both sex-trafficked individuals and non-trafficked sex workers. For example, The United States' Tier 2 assessment of Japan on its 2004 TIP Report encouraged the Japanese government to add additional constraints to its procedures and policies for obtaining an entertainer visa, sometimes used by migrant workers seeking employment at businesses within the sex industry. However, these regulations provided opportunities for some third-party facilitators of these visas to exploit migrants while also limiting migrants' ability to leave employers with poor working conditions or overly restrictive practices, such as holding their passports or limiting their ability to leave the premises of the business. Practices of law enforcement officers in some countries have also been criticized for incentivizing non-trafficked sex workers to declare themselves to be trafficking victims and enter aid and rehabilitation programs in order to avoid prison sentences for prostitution charges.

Many NGOs work on the issue of sex trafficking. One major NGO is the International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a U.S.-based non-profit human rights organization that combats human trafficking in developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. IJM states that it is a "human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression." It is a faith-based organization since its purported goal is to "restore to victims of oppression the things that God intends for them: their lives, their liberty, their dignity, the fruits of their labor." The IJM receives over $900,000 from the US government. The organization has two methods for rescuing victims: brothel raids in cooperation with local police, and "buy bust" operations in which undercover agencies pretend to purchase sex services from an underage girl. After the raid and rescue, the women are sent to rehabilitation programs run by NGOs (such as churches) or the government.

There are also national non-governmental organizations working on the issue of human trafficking, including sex trafficking. In Kenya, for example, Awareness Against Human Trafficking (HAART) works on ending all human trafficking in the country. HAART has also participated in the UNANIMA International Stop the Demand campaign.

In India, J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam has opened a school called School for Justice. Here, survivors of sex trafficking are educated to become lawyers. The entire program is expected to take five to six years for each girl to complete. The women will graduate with law degrees, with a special focus on commercial sexual exploitation cases. JWT hopes that one day they may become prosecutors, or even judges, empowered to combat the criminals who once exploited and abused them.

NGOs often have the best of intentions when combating sex-trafficking. NGOs are often funded by the West and are implemented in countries that have a very different culture. Research shows that employees of the Western NGOs are slow to adapt to the culture of the community they are providing services to. This often leads to a disconnect between the NGO and the community. Employees of NGOs hold the responsibility of relaying the narrative of sex-trafficked people. This can create a hierarchical structure that makes the voice of Western NGOs as more legitimate than the voice of the people they are serving. Thus, reinforcing the essentialized notion of third-world women as backwards and other.

Japan is a popular place for sex-trafficking. Japan has a long history with the trade of women for sex. For a good part of the countries history, sex work was legal in Japan. This makes it difficult for the government to decipher between legal sex work and illegal prostitution. This is where NGOs step in to assist the government. NGOs provide services in countries where the government policies are failing to combat a specific issue. However, in Japan it is difficult for NGOs focused on issues with women to receive local funding. This weak political support makes the work for NGOs in Japan much more difficult. Japan's lack of support for women's rights shows why the role of NGOs is so important in that country.

Public information campaigns are defined as a “...government-directed and sponsored effort to communicate to the public or a segment of the public in order to achieve a policy result”.

In the past ten years, Spain has seen a surge of sex trafficking. In light of this crisis, social movements, organizations and government institutions have enacted policies like the Second National Plan against Sex Trafficking and Anti-Trafficking laws. Campaigns to fight against sex trafficking in Spain between 2008-2017 have been examined by researchers. Their research showed that that many campaigns focus on the narrative of the victim as vulnerable and weak, rather than focusing on the actual crime of sex trafficking and the economic system that allows it to flourish. According to the research these narratives disempower sex trafficked people through repeated language of vulnerability and innocence. The researchers explain that the lack of information provided in these campaigns hinders their success. Campaigns will throw out huge numbers of women exploited into sex work but gives no context to the system that allows sex trafficking to flourish.

In 1994, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women was established to combat trafficking in women on any grounds. It is an alliance of more than 100 non-governmental organizations from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. The Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation was created by celebrity humanitarians Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher in 2009 in their efforts to fight human trafficking (specifically focusing on sex trafficking of children) in the U.S. In September 2010, the pair announced the launch of their "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" campaign to combat child sex trafficking alongside other Hollywood stars and technology companies such as Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" is based on the idea that high-profile men speaking out against child sex trafficking can help reduce the demand for young girls in the commercial sex trade. The popular TV channel MTV started a campaign to combat sex trafficking. The initiative called MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) is a multimedia initiative produced by MTV EXIT Foundation (formerly known as the MTV Europe Foundation) to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking.

Another campaign is the A21 Campaign, Abolishing Injustice in the 21st Century, which focuses on addressing human trafficking through a holistic approach. They provide potential victims with the education and valuable information on how to best reduce their likelihood of being trafficked through strategies that reduce their vulnerability. The organization also provides safe environments for victims and runs restoration programs in their aftercare facilities. In addition, they provide legal council and representation to victims so they can prosecute their traffickers. Another key component of the campaign is to help influence legislation in order to enact more comprehensive laws that place more traffickers in prison.

The Not for Sale (organization) Campaign works in the United States, Peru, the Netherlands, Romania, Thailand, South Africa, and India to help victims of human trafficking. In 2013 alone, they provided 4,500 services to 2,062 individuals. The vast majority of victims who received assistance were from the Netherlands and the number of victims served increased by 42 percent from 2012. The campaign allocates the majority of their funds to providing victims health and nutritional care and education. Not for Sale provides a safe shelter for victims and empowers them with life skills and job training. This helps trafficked individuals re-enter into the workforce through a dignified form of work. In the organization's 2013 Annual Impact Report, it was determined that 75 percent of the victims had been sexually exploited.

The Atlanta campaign ran from 2006 to 2008 and was titled "Dear John". It ran ads in local media reaching out to potential Johns to discourage them from buying sex. The ads mimicked a break-up letter to John.

Critics of the Dear John campaign focus on the ‘male demand’ aspect of the campaign and find that this style of campaign reinforces gendered, racialized and sexualized assumptions about Johns and trafficked women. The historical discourse in the U.S. concerning Johns is racially charged. An example of this racialized nature is associated with the temptations of Thai massage parlors. Despite these objections, lawmakers have found this messaging morally compelling. The campaign was run by locals of Atlanta. Advocates for the campaign informed citizens through media that young women were the ones being arrested while the Johns were not. Contextual analysis research has shown the essentialized nature of the campaign. The Dear John campaign posters define women in terms of there relationship to sex. They also only depict white girls in the images inferring that the only victims worth caring about are young white and innocent.

It is interesting to note that there are no images of Johns in the campaign posters. A plausible explanation for this would be an effort by the campaign to widen the scope of the messaging and to avoid racial stereotypes. Conversly, the racial stereotypes of trafficked girls is made clear. This excludes a majority of victims who do not identify with the image that the poster conveys. Lawmakers in Atlanta were fully behind the campaign as a statement to the public that they will not tolerate the purchasing of sex. These public statements are in stark contrast to the actual amount of funding that the city gave to organizations who provide housing and services for victims. The city did no research into the effectiveness of the campaign and therefore there is no data on its actual impact on the city. It is also important to note that the campaign ads were only in English and many people are not familiar with the Dear John reference. Lawmakers believe that the campaign was effective in bringing awareness to the issue and therefore shaped public opinion and policy.

Laws regarding the purchase and sale of voluntary and involuntary sex vary greatly across the developed world. Their effects on sex trafficking are difficult to discern. Proponents of various forms of criminalization, legalization, or regulation of prostitution, may all argue their model decreases sex trafficking.

The Dutch model of legalization and regulation and the Swedish model of criminalizing purchasers and pimps but not prostitutes are often discussed. The difference of these models casts the prevention of trafficking against the rights of voluntary sex workers and purchasers. It is argued that a hybrid model of licensing sex workers and criminalizing the purchase of unlicensed sex would reduce trafficking without crushing civil rights.

Numerous international organizations have partnered to create an anti-human trafficking Giving Day to raise awareness and funds on July, 30th 2017. This is the day designated by the United Nations as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. The Giving Day is being hosted by Charidy.com, a crowdfunding platform for non-profits.

The General Assembly in 2010, adopted the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, encouraging Governments around the world to undergo drastic measures in order defeat human trafficking. The goal was to put the fight against human trafficking into the United Nation's programmes to strengthen positive development and security around the world. A main section of the plan is to place a United Nations Trust Fund for the women and children who fell victim of trafficking. The Trust Fund in the plan ensures to assist and protect the victims of trafficking through grants to certified NGOs. In the future, the goal is to make the victims a priority who are come were victims and had issues with migration. It also places a focus on the aid to victims who were trafficked by their perpetrator for the goal of sexual relations, organ removal, forced begging, forced criminality, and emerging exploitative reasons.

The General Assembly in the year 2013, gathered a meeting to go over the world's plan of action. Numerous states also declared July 30 as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. The came to the conclusion that day of remembrance and awareness was crucial to remember the victims, the right's they possess and their protection.

Sex trafficking

Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, including sexual slavery. A victim is forced, in one of a variety of ways, into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s) and then used by said trafficker(s) to give sexual services to customers. There are three types of activities defined as sex trafficking crimes: acquisition, transportation and exploitation; this includes child sex tourism (CST), domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) or other kinds of commercial sexual exploitation of children, and prostitution. Sex trafficking is one of the biggest criminal businesses and it has been described as "the fastest growing criminal industry in the world."

According to the International Labour Organization, there are 20.9 million people subjected to forced labour, and 22% (4.5 million) who are victims of forced sexual exploitation. However, due to the covertness of sex trafficking, obtaining accurate, reliable statistics is difficult for researchers. The global commercial profits for sexual slavery are estimated to be $99B according to this same source. In 2005, the figure was given as $9B for the total human trafficking industry.

Most victims find themselves in coercive or abusive situations from which escape is both difficult and dangerous. Locations where this practice occurs span the globe and reflect an intricate web between nations, making it very difficult to construct viable solutions to this human rights problem.

There are a number of misconceptions about sex trafficking. Sex trafficking and human trafficking are not to be confused with human smuggling. Human trafficking for sexual or other labor may involve transporting victims across international borders, but to meet the definition of trafficking, there needs only to be exploitation of an individual after they have been coerced or deceived, so it does not necessarily involve transportation across national borders. Human trafficking and sex trafficking are often used as synonyms. However, trafficking for non-sexual exploitation may be even more prevalent than trafficking for sexual exploitation, though accurate estimates of trafficking rates are extremely difficult to obtain. Sex trafficking tends to receive more attention from aid organizations and donors due to the greater public outrage that forced sexual labor evokes compared to forced non-sexual labor and thus incidents of sex trafficking are more frequently reported.

In 2000, countries adopted a definition set forth by the United Nations. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, is also referred to as the Palermo Protocol. The Palermo Protocol created this definition. 147 of the 192 member states of the UN ratified the Palermo Protocol when it was published in 2000; as of September 2017, 171 states are parties. Article 3 of the Palermo Protocol states the definition as:

Article 5 of the Palermo Protocol then requires the member states to criminalize trafficking based on the definition outlined in Article 3; however, many member states' domestic laws reflect a narrower definition than Article 3. Although these nations claim to be obliging Article 5, the narrow laws lead to a smaller portion of people being persecuted for sex trafficking.

The UN established various anti-trafficking tools, including a Global Report on Trafficking in Persons and an Inter-Agency Coordination Group Against Trafficking in Persons. The Global Report on Trafficking in Person provides new information based on data gathered from 155 countries. It offers first global assessment of the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. The UN General Assembly passed several resolutions on measuring to eliminate human trafficking. In 2010 the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons was adopted. Various other organizations have engaged in global efforts against sex trafficking. "The UN Protocol's is the bedrock of the international initiatives against human sex trafficking." This protocol defines certain elements of sex trafficking: "action", which describes the recruitment and transportation of victims, "means", which includes coercion, fraud, or abuse of power, and "purpose", which includes exploitation such as prostitution, forced labor or slavery, and the removal of organs. The UN requires member states to establish the trafficking of humans as a criminal offense.

In pimp-controlled trafficking, the victim is controlled by a single trafficker, sometimes called a pimp. The victim can be controlled by the trafficker physically, psychologically, and/or emotionally. In order to obtain control over their victims, traffickers will use force, drugs, emotional tactics as well as financial means. In certain circumstances, they will even resort to various forms of violence, such as gang rape and mental and physical abuse. Traffickers sometimes use offers of marriage, threats, intimidation, brainwashing and kidnapping as means of obtaining victims.

A common process is for the trafficker to first gain the trust of the victim, called the grooming stage. They seek to make the victim dependent on them. The trafficker may express love and admiration, make lofty promises such as making the victim a star, offer them a job or an education or buy them a ticket to a new location. The main types of work offered are in the catering and hotel industry, in bars and clubs, modeling contracts, or au pair work. Once the victim is comfortable, the pimp moves to the seasoning stage, where they will ask the victim to perform sexual acts for the pimp, which the victim may do because they believe it is the only way to keep the trafficker's affection. The requests progress from there and it can be difficult for the victim to escape.

Another tactic is for traffickers to kidnap their victims, and then drug them or secure them so they cannot escape. Traffickers may seek out potential victims who are traveling alone, are separated from their group, or seem like they have low self-esteem. They may go to places likes malls where they are more likely to find girls without parents.

Traffickers are using social media at an increasing rate to find victims, research potential victims, control their victims and advertise their victims. Traffickers often target people who post things that indicate that they are depressed, have low self-esteem or are angry with their parents. Traffickers also use social media posts to establish patterns and track the locations of potential victims.

After the victim has joined the offender, various techniques are used to restrict the victim's access to communication with home, such as imposing physical punishment unless the victim complies with the trafficker's demands and making threats of harm and even death to the victim and their family. Sometimes, the victims will succumb to the Stockholm Syndrome because their captors will pretend to "love" and "need" them, even going so far as promise marriage and future stability. This is particularly effective with younger victims, because they are more inexperienced and therefore easily manipulated.

In India, those who traffic young girls into prostitution are often women who have been trafficked themselves. As adults they use personal relationships and trust in their villages of origin to recruit additional girls. Also, some (migrating) prostitutes (See: migrant sex work) can become victims of human trafficking because the women know they will be working as prostitutes; however, they are given an inaccurate description by their "boss" of the circumstances. Therefore, they consequently get exploited due to their misconception of what conditions to expect of their sex work in the new destination country.

Gang-controlled sex trafficking and Pimp-controlled sex trafficking run their operations in very similar ways. The largest difference between the two is that gang-controlled trafficking is run by a large group of people whereas pimp-controlled trafficking is run by only one person. In general, gang members are expected or forced to participate in tasks that involve illegal and violent activity. Some of these criminal behaviors may include: distributing drugs, robbery, trafficking drugs, extortion, and murder. One money making source that many people do not necessarily associate with gangs is human sex trafficking. Gangs are now turning to sex trafficking as it is seen as safer and more lucrative than drug trafficking.

The gangs can make larger amounts of money quicker by selling other people's bodies, and are less likely to get caught. In certain circumstances, gangs may team up with other gangs in the area, and work together as a sex ring. There are a number of different reasons that gangs make this decision. One reason is that it enables them to increase profits by trading different girls, women, boys or men. This gives their client, also known as a john, a greater variety of options to choose from. Clients are often willing to pay a larger price for a sexual experience with someone new. Another reason that gangs will share females is because this makes it more difficult for law enforcement to keep track of the victims, ultimately preventing them from making a positive identification.

When people think or talk about sex trafficking a very common question people will ask is, “where do they find people to traffic?”. In many cases, gang members will scope girls out at malls, skip parties, online and through social media. In addition, they often will seek out female runaways from their neighborhood. Many of the girls they look for have been physically or sexually abused, have low self-esteem, struggle with drug and alcohol dependency, or are seeking a home/family environment.

In order for the gang to sex traffic an individual, the first thing they need to do is gain that person's trust. They shower the victim with praise and attention, making her feel important and desired. This is referred to as the Romeo Method. It consists of different manipulation techniques. A member will take her to a fancy restaurant, flounder her with lavish gifts, and take her to parties where they are provided with endless supplies of drugs and alcohol. They also learn their weaknesses at the same time, find his or her vulnerabilities and once they find that soft spot they can use it against them.

Gang members often wear certain types of clothing or colors to prove their commitment or loyalty to the gang. It is also very common to represent your gang by branding your body with tattoos. Unfortunately, many victims of sex trafficking are being branded as well. By forcing a tattoo onto their victims they are essentially marking their territory and officially displaying ownership of that person. In the short film, Unbranded: Sex Trafficking Tattoo Removal, Vice Media dives deep into the recovery stages of a young girl who was trafficked for three years. During her time of being exploited, she was forced to receive a tattoo by her trafficker.

In familial trafficking, the victim is controlled by family members who allow them to be sexually exploited in exchange for something of value, such as drugs or money. For example, a mother may allow a boyfriend to abuse a child in exchange for housing. Usually, it begins with one family member and spreads from there. Familial trafficking may be difficult to detect because these children often have a larger degree of freedom and may still attend school and after-school functions. These children may not understand that they are being trafficked or may not have a way out. Familial trafficking is considered by some to be the most prevalent form of human sex trafficking within the United States.

This form of trafficking is also extremely common outside of the United States. Many families from impoverished areas (India, Thailand, Philippines, etc.) find themselves in situations where debt or tradition calls for the selling of a loved one, most commonly female. In Thailand there is a tradition known as "bhun kun," which establishes the youngest daughter as financially responsible for her parents as they grow old. Author Kara Siddharth interviewed a Thai victim who stated that, though she hated the men she was with, “she was proud to fulfill her duty to her parents in the form of tiny payments that the brothel owner sent to her father after her trafficking debts were repaid”. This is just one of the many countries whose lower class turn to this form of income. Many children are sold to repay debts, or merely to put food on the table for their family for a month.

A forced marriage is a marriage where one or both participants are married without their freely given consent.
"Servile marriage" is defined as a marriage involving a person being sold, transferred or inherited into that marriage. According to ECPAT, "Child trafficking for forced marriage is simply another manifestation of trafficking and is not restricted to particular nationalities or countries".

A forced marriage qualifies as a form of human trafficking in certain situations. If a woman is sent abroad, forced into the marriage and then repeatedly compelled to engage in sexual conduct with her new husband, then her experience is that of "sex trafficking". If the bride is treated as a domestic servant by her new husband and/or his family, then this is a form of "labor trafficking".

Approximately 140 million girls under the age of 18, which is about 39,000 a day, will be forced into early marriages between 2011 and 2020. Forced marriage, which is identified by the United Nations as a “contemporary form of slavery,” occurs without full consent of the man or woman, and is associated with threats by family members or the bride/groom. Forced marriage occurs not only in foreign countries but in the US as well. The service providers in the United States cannot successfully respond to forced marriage cases because they lack clarity and a true definition of what a forced marriage is.

In survival sex, the victim is not necessarily controlled by another person but feels they have to perform sexual acts in order to obtain basic commodities to survive. In addition to money, persons engaging in survival sex may trade sexual favors for food, shelter, or drugs. The most reported cases are the youth that perform sexual acts for shelter or a place to sleep. Within the youth experiences of survival sex, 8.1% of females, males, and transgender are victims. Those who perform the trafficking include immediate family, boyfriends, employers, and strangers. Those who are at a higher risk of survival sex include runaways, homeless, foster kids, and orphans.

There is not one simple factor that perpetuates sex trafficking, rather a complex, interconnected web of political, socioeconomic, governmental, and societal factors. The causes of sex trafficking which have been identified lie at the intersections of these factors. There are three types of causes which have been identified: gender hierarchies, migration for work (pull factors), and neoliberal globalization (push factors).

Many scholars critique the power hierarchies based on gender, race, and class which underlie economic systems as perpetuators of women's vulnerability to sex trafficking. Copley argues that women in underdeveloped countries are powerless due to these hierarchies of power. Matusek also argues this point, noting that globalization spreads power hierarchies while spreading economic policy. Ideas of gender are thus perpetuated though globalization, leaving women vulnerable. Matusek cites masculinity as privileged with power and control in these hierarchies. Femininity, she notes, is associated with submissive and passive qualities. Femininity's lack of power leaves women to be used by men and consequently be seen as disposable. This view of women is perpetuated through the globalization of power hierarchies, which Matusek argues justifies and normalizes violence and power against women. This normalization of violence and power is a key player in the existence and continuation of sex trafficking. Vesna Nikovic-Ristanovic also cites this normalization of violence and power as a cause of sex trafficking.

Nikovic-Ristanovic analyzes the role of perceived femininity in women's vulnerability to sex trafficking, by specifically looking at the links between militarism and female sexuality. Nikovic-Ristanovic cites a connection between war rapes and forced prostitution and sex trafficking. The way women's bodies are used in war relate to the normalization of violence and power against women. Nikovic-Ristanovic argues that military presence, even in times of peace, promote ideas of gender which render women vulnerable. These ideas concern hegemonic masculinity, which Nikovic-Ristanovic defines as the hyper sexuality of men and the submissiveness or passivity of women and girls. Nikovic-Ristanovic notes that the global acceptance of this definition justifies exploitation and violence against women since women are viewed as sex objects for the fulfillment of male's sexual desire. This Western ideal of heteronormative sexuality, Nikovic-Ristanovic argues, is also perpetuated through media and advertisements, in which women are encouraged to appear sexually attractive for men.

Kim Anh Duong argues that social narratives about women which arise from power hierarchies, coupled with women's economic realities, render women vulnerable to exploitation and sex trafficking. Duong identifies the prevailing narrative of women as the disadvantaged victim. She cites powerlessness as the result of this narrative, which is further perpetuated by social and economic realities which result from development process which leave women dependent on men. This overall powerlessness, according to Duong, makes women easy targets of exploitation and violence.

Susan Tiefenbrun, like Duong, notes women's lower status of power and consequential dependence on men. Tiefenbrun, unlike Duong, cites cultural norms as the cause of this vulnerability. She argues that cultural norms deprive women of access to and time for receiving an education or learning skills to improve employment opportunities. This lack of education and access to employment results in women's dependence on men. Tiefenbrun argues that women's dependence renders them more vulnerable to traffickers.

One cause for women's migration that is widely agreed upon by scholars is the economic pressure upon women due to neoliberal globalization. Siddharth Kara argues that globalization and the spread of Western Capitalism drive inequality and rural poverty, which are the material causes for sex trafficking. Dong-Hoon Seol points out unequal development between countries as an effect of the globalization of neoliberalism. He argues that the growing disparity of wealth between developed and underdeveloped countries leads to migration of women from underdeveloped countries.

Duong cites structural adjustment programs (SAPs), an aspect of development policies in the globalization of neoliberalism, as a cause for women's poverty, unemployment, and low wages which promote migration. SAPs affect men and women differently, she argues, because men and women experience poverty differently. This is known as the feminization of poverty. Much of women's time is spent doing unpaid labor such as housework and care work, leading to an overall lower income. Duong further argues that women are placed at a greater disadvantage due to their lack of access to land and other resources. Matusek also argues that the unequal distribution of resources and power lead to both push and pull factors of migration. According to Matusek, women are pushed to migrate on account of a lack of education and employment opportunities.

Other scholars focus on the demand for sex itself as a cause of sex trafficking. The pull factor comes from globalization creating a market around sex. Matusek cites the commodification aspect of capitalism as the cause for the industrialization of sex. The pull factor comes from globalization creating a market around sex. Seol also cites the globalization of the commodification aspect of capitalism as a cause of sex trafficking.

Anyone is permitted to contact The National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1(888)-373-7888. The hotline is beneficial since providers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist victims and provide information for those who are at risk. There are a variety of ways in order to help prevent trafficking. One must be aware of the indicators to identify victims: abnormal behavior, poor physical health, lack of control, and work and living conditions. However, these signs may only be shown through a number of people - there may be more severe, serious indicators of sex trafficking. If you are a huge supporter in anti-trafficking, you can host events in the community to raise awareness of how people are targeted and who.

There is no single profile for victims of human trafficking. Most are women, though it is not uncommon for males to be trafficked as well. Victims are captured then exploited all around the world, representing a diverse range of ages and backgrounds, including ethnic and socioeconomic. However, there is a set group of traits associated with a higher risk of becoming trafficked for sexual exploitation. Persons at risk include homeless and runaway youth, foreign nationals (especially those of lower socioeconomic status), and those who have experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, violent trauma, neglect, poor academic success, and inadequate social skills. Also, a study of a group of female sex workers in Canada found that 64 percent of them had been in the child welfare system as children (this includes foster and group homes). This research conducted by Kendra Nixon illustrates how children in or leaving foster care are at a higher risk of becoming a sex worker.

In the United States, research has illustrated how these qualities hold true for victims, even though none can be labeled as a direct cause. For example, more than 50 percent of domestic minor sex trafficking victims have a history of homelessness. Familial disruptions such as divorce or the death of a parent place minors at a higher risk of entering the industry, but home life in general influences children's risk. In a study of trafficked youth in Arizona, 20 to 40 percent of female victims identified with experiencing abuse of some form (sexual or physical) at home before entering into the industry as a sex slave. Of the males interviewed, a smaller proportion, 0 to 30 percent, reported former abuse in the home.

Children are at risk because of their vulnerable characteristics; naïve outlook, size, and tendency to be easily intimidated". The International Labor Organization estimates that of the 20.9 million people who are trafficked in the world (for all types of work) 5.5 million are children.

Children do not need to be forced into sexual exploitation according to the Victims Protection Law to be considered victims of Sex Trafficking. Under this act a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18, however the exploitation of children under the age of 14 carries a harsher punishment, though this is rarely enforced. The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 100,000 children who fall under the age of 18 are trafficked daily in the United States, and only 150 child trafficking cases have been brought to court. Many children who are trafficked are also at higher risk of turning to prostitution, a crime that many of them face criminal charges for, even under the age of 18.

The main motive of a woman (in some cases, an underage girl) to accept an offer from a trafficker is better financial opportunities for herself or her family. A study on the origin countries of trafficking confirms that most trafficking victims are not the poorest in their countries of origin, and sex trafficking victims are likely to be women from countries with some freedom to travel alone and some economic freedom.

There are numerous fake businesses that sound realistic that convince people to apply for the job. Some places have a reputation for holding an illegal business in order to attract their victims.

Sex trafficking of women and children is the second most common type of trafficking for export in Africa. In Ghana, "connection men" or traffickers are witnessed regularly at border crossings and transport individuals via fake visas. Women are most commonly trafficked to Belgium, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, the Netherlands, Nigeria, and the United States. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States are also common destination countries for trafficked Nigerian women. In Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army traffics individuals to Sudan to sell them as sex slaves. The Nigerian syndicates dominate sex trades in multiple territories. The syndicates recruit women from South Africa and send them to Europe and Asia, where they are forced into prostitution, drug smuggling, or domestic violence. Law enforcement reported that sex traffickers force drug use to persuade these unwilling women.

Israel was ranked Tier 1 in the 2016 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report. Tier 1 is the highest ranking given to a government that has acknowledged human trafficking and has made efforts to solve the problem. Israel has tried to improve and protect the victims affected by sex trafficking. Israel has been providing victims of human sex trafficking with shelter and protection against the sex traffickers. These have been some of many steps taken to lower the number of women who have been affected by the traffickers. Although many say that the shelters that they provide are not sufficient for the victims, it has been seen that the number of women affected has declined since 2006. The anti-trafficking law of 2006 describes penalties of up to 16 years of imprisonment for trafficking an adult, 20 years for trafficking a child, 16 years for slavery and up to seven years for forced labor.

Physicians against the trafficking of humans (PATH) is a program of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) that was started in 2014 with efforts to encourage medical professionals including physicians, residents, and medical students to become more aware of human trafficking. The initiative was initially brought into discussion by Dr. Gayatri Devi in 2012, the president of AMWA at the time. She identified human sex trafficking as a key issue to be addressed. This discussion then progressed into forming a Human Trafficking Committee to handle the issue. PATH has since been creating content for hospitals and other medical facilities to use in order to educate professionals and students on the identification and advocacy for human trafficking. PATH has also been featured in many media outlets such as Politico and TEDx.

There are three main tactics social workers use to aid in the recovery of sex trafficking survivors: ecological, strengths-based, and victim-centered. Using the ecological approach, the social worker evaluates their client's current environment and goals for reintegration into the community. By examining how justice systems, legal, and medical services impact their client, they can help them look into areas of future employment, gaining legal status, and reuniting with family. The strengths-based approach aims to create a bond of trust between the social worker and their client to build confidence as well as autonomy and leadership skills. Lastly, when using the victim-centered approach, social workers develop services and plans for the future specifically catered to their client's individual needs. These services are developed through a survivor's lens, which allows social workers to easily meet the needs of their clients. All three methods have proven to be effective in the recovery of sex trafficking survivors.

There are many control tactics used by sex traffickers in order to control their victims, such as threats, physical and sexual assault, confiscating legitimate travel and immigration documents, and threats against the victim's family. The University of Minnesota Duluth published the Power and Control Wheel to help target domestic abuse intervention. The wheel identifies eight different mechanisms of power and control used on victims including: intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, denying, blaming, and minimizing, sexual abuse, physical abuse, using privilege, economic abuse, coercion and threats. The wheel was developed to be used in counseling and education groups for victims of sex trafficking. It breaks down the tactics used against victims so the cycle of violence may become visible and stopped.
Another mechanism used to understand control is the BITE Model created by Steven Hassan. The BITE Model describes four categories of coercion used on sex trafficking victims: behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. He says that it is essential to understand the loss of identity victims experience in order to help them get out or recover from sex trafficking.

Efforts to combat sex trafficking are often linked to efforts against prostitution; however, this is often problematic in regards to legal recourse of sex trafficking victims. While prostitutes are nominally working by choice, sex trafficking victims do so under duress. Recognizing this, many states have passed legislation that allows sex trafficking victims amnesty under prostitution laws, however many fail to do so due to legal illiteracy and institutional prejudices. As such, sex trafficking victims often risk legal persecution when alerting authorities to their situation.

The first international protocol dealing with sex slavery was the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and Exploitation of Prostitution of Others. This convention followed the abolitionist idea of sex trafficking as incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person. Serving as a model for future legislation, the 1949 UN Convention was not ratified by every country, but came into force in 1951. These early efforts led to the 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, mentioned above. These instruments contain the elements of the current international law on trafficking in humans.

In 2011, the United Nations reported that girl victims made up two-thirds of all trafficked children. Girls constituted 15 to 20 percent of the total number of all detected victims, whereas boys comprised about 10 percent. The UN report was based on official data supplied by 132 countries.

In 2013, a resolution to create the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons was adopted by the United Nations. The first World Day against Trafficking in Persons took place July 30, 2014, and the day is now observed every July 30.

Current international treaties include the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages, entered into force in 1964.

The Commercial Sex Act makes it illegal to recruit, entice, obtain, provide, move or harbor a person or to benefit from such activities knowing that the person will be caused to engage in commercial sex acts where the person is under 18 or where force, fraud or coercion exists.

Complementary protection is ensured through the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (signed in Lanzarote, 25 October 2007). The Convention entered into force on 1 July 2010. As of September 2018, the Convention has been ratified by 44 states, with another 3 states having signed but not yet ratified. The goal of the Convention is to provide the framework for an independent and effective monitoring system that holds the member states accountable for addressing human trafficking and providing protecting to victims. To monitor the implementation of this act, the Council of Europe established the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA). The Convention address the structure and purpose of GRETA and holds the group accountable to publish reports evaluating the measures taken by the states who have signed the Convention.

Actions taken to combat human trafficking vary from government to government. Some government actions include:Raising awareness can take three forms. First, governments can raise awareness among potential victims, particularly in countries where human traffickers are active. Second, they can raise awareness amongst the police, social welfare workers and immigration officers to equip them to deal appropriately with the problem. And finally, in countries where prostitution is legal or semi-legal, they can raise awareness amongst the clients of prostitution so that they can watch for signs of human trafficking victims. Methods to raise general awareness often include television programs, documentary films, internet communications, and posters.

Many countries have come under criticism for inaction, or ineffective action. Criticisms include the failure of governments to properly identify and protect trafficking victims, enactment of immigration policies which potentially re-victimize trafficking victims, and insufficient action in helping prevent vulnerable populations from becoming trafficking victims. A particular criticism has been the reluctance of some countries to tackle trafficking for purposes other than sex.

Studies of sex work and anti-sex trafficking efforts, intended to combat sex trafficking or provide support to victims, have raised concerns over the unintended effects of certain national and international policies, law enforcement strategies, and activist efforts on both sex-trafficked individuals and non-trafficked sex workers. For example, The United States' Tier 2 assessment of Japan on its 2004 TIP Report encouraged the Japanese government to add additional constraints to its procedures and policies for obtaining an entertainer visa, sometimes used by migrant workers seeking employment at businesses within the sex industry. However, these regulations provided opportunities for some third-party facilitators of these visas to exploit migrants while also limiting migrants' ability to leave employers with poor working conditions or overly restrictive practices, such as holding their passports or limiting their ability to leave the premises of the business. Practices of law enforcement officers in some countries have also been criticized for incentivizing non-trafficked sex workers to declare themselves to be trafficking victims and enter aid and rehabilitation programs in order to avoid prison sentences for prostitution charges.

Many NGOs work on the issue of sex trafficking. One major NGO is the International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a U.S.-based non-profit human rights organization that combats human trafficking in developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. IJM states that it is a "human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression." It is a faith-based organization since its purported goal is to "restore to victims of oppression the things that God intends for them: their lives, their liberty, their dignity, the fruits of their labor." The IJM receives over $900,000 from the US government. The organization has two methods for rescuing victims: brothel raids in cooperation with local police, and "buy bust" operations in which undercover agencies pretend to purchase sex services from an underage girl. After the raid and rescue, the women are sent to rehabilitation programs run by NGOs (such as churches) or the government.

There are also national non-governmental organizations working on the issue of human trafficking, including sex trafficking. In Kenya, for example, Awareness Against Human Trafficking (HAART) works on ending all human trafficking in the country. HAART has also participated in the UNANIMA International Stop the Demand campaign.

In India, J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam has opened a school called School for Justice. Here, survivors of sex trafficking are educated to become lawyers. The entire program is expected to take five to six years for each girl to complete. The women will graduate with law degrees, with a special focus on commercial sexual exploitation cases. JWT hopes that one day they may become prosecutors, or even judges, empowered to combat the criminals who once exploited and abused them.

NGOs often have the best of intentions when combating sex-trafficking. NGOs are often funded by the West and are implemented in countries that have a very different culture. Research shows that employees of the Western NGOs are slow to adapt to the culture of the community they are providing services to. This often leads to a disconnect between the NGO and the community. Employees of NGOs hold the responsibility of relaying the narrative of sex-trafficked people. This can create a hierarchical structure that makes the voice of Western NGOs as more legitimate than the voice of the people they are serving. Thus, reinforcing the essentialized notion of third-world women as backwards and other.

Japan is a popular place for sex-trafficking. Japan has a long history with the trade of women for sex. For a good part of the countries history, sex work was legal in Japan. This makes it difficult for the government to decipher between legal sex work and illegal prostitution. This is where NGOs step in to assist the government. NGOs provide services in countries where the government policies are failing to combat a specific issue. However, in Japan it is difficult for NGOs focused on issues with women to receive local funding. This weak political support makes the work for NGOs in Japan much more difficult. Japan's lack of support for women's rights shows why the role of NGOs is so important in that country.

Public information campaigns are defined as a “...government-directed and sponsored effort to communicate to the public or a segment of the public in order to achieve a policy result”.

In the past ten years, Spain has seen a surge of sex trafficking. In light of this crisis, social movements, organizations and government institutions have enacted policies like the Second National Plan against Sex Trafficking and Anti-Trafficking laws. Campaigns to fight against sex trafficking in Spain between 2008-2017 have been examined by researchers. Their research showed that that many campaigns focus on the narrative of the victim as vulnerable and weak, rather than focusing on the actual crime of sex trafficking and the economic system that allows it to flourish. According to the research these narratives disempower sex trafficked people through repeated language of vulnerability and innocence. The researchers explain that the lack of information provided in these campaigns hinders their success. Campaigns will throw out huge numbers of women exploited into sex work but gives no context to the system that allows sex trafficking to flourish.

In 1994, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women was established to combat trafficking in women on any grounds. It is an alliance of more than 100 non-governmental organizations from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. The Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation was created by celebrity humanitarians Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher in 2009 in their efforts to fight human trafficking (specifically focusing on sex trafficking of children) in the U.S. In September 2010, the pair announced the launch of their "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" campaign to combat child sex trafficking alongside other Hollywood stars and technology companies such as Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" is based on the idea that high-profile men speaking out against child sex trafficking can help reduce the demand for young girls in the commercial sex trade. The popular TV channel MTV started a campaign to combat sex trafficking. The initiative called MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) is a multimedia initiative produced by MTV EXIT Foundation (formerly known as the MTV Europe Foundation) to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking.

Another campaign is the A21 Campaign, Abolishing Injustice in the 21st Century, which focuses on addressing human trafficking through a holistic approach. They provide potential victims with the education and valuable information on how to best reduce their likelihood of being trafficked through strategies that reduce their vulnerability. The organization also provides safe environments for victims and runs restoration programs in their aftercare facilities. In addition, they provide legal council and representation to victims so they can prosecute their traffickers. Another key component of the campaign is to help influence legislation in order to enact more comprehensive laws that place more traffickers in prison.

The Not for Sale (organization) Campaign works in the United States, Peru, the Netherlands, Romania, Thailand, South Africa, and India to help victims of human trafficking. In 2013 alone, they provided 4,500 services to 2,062 individuals. The vast majority of victims who received assistance were from the Netherlands and the number of victims served increased by 42 percent from 2012. The campaign allocates the majority of their funds to providing victims health and nutritional care and education. Not for Sale provides a safe shelter for victims and empowers them with life skills and job training. This helps trafficked individuals re-enter into the workforce through a dignified form of work. In the organization's 2013 Annual Impact Report, it was determined that 75 percent of the victims had been sexually exploited.

The Atlanta campaign ran from 2006 to 2008 and was titled "Dear John". It ran ads in local media reaching out to potential Johns to discourage them from buying sex. The ads mimicked a break-up letter to John.

Critics of the Dear John campaign focus on the ‘male demand’ aspect of the campaign and find that this style of campaign reinforces gendered, racialized and sexualized assumptions about Johns and trafficked women. The historical discourse in the U.S. concerning Johns is racially charged. An example of this racialized nature is associated with the temptations of Thai massage parlors. Despite these objections, lawmakers have found this messaging morally compelling. The campaign was run by locals of Atlanta. Advocates for the campaign informed citizens through media that young women were the ones being arrested while the Johns were not. Contextual analysis research has shown the essentialized nature of the campaign. The Dear John campaign posters define women in terms of there relationship to sex. They also only depict white girls in the images inferring that the only victims worth caring about are young white and innocent.

It is interesting to note that there are no images of Johns in the campaign posters. A plausible explanation for this would be an effort by the campaign to widen the scope of the messaging and to avoid racial stereotypes. Conversly, the racial stereotypes of trafficked girls is made clear. This excludes a majority of victims who do not identify with the image that the poster conveys. Lawmakers in Atlanta were fully behind the campaign as a statement to the public that they will not tolerate the purchasing of sex. These public statements are in stark contrast to the actual amount of funding that the city gave to organizations who provide housing and services for victims. The city did no research into the effectiveness of the campaign and therefore there is no data on its actual impact on the city. It is also important to note that the campaign ads were only in English and many people are not familiar with the Dear John reference. Lawmakers believe that the campaign was effective in bringing awareness to the issue and therefore shaped public opinion and policy.

Laws regarding the purchase and sale of voluntary and involuntary sex vary greatly across the developed world. Their effects on sex trafficking are difficult to discern. Proponents of various forms of criminalization, legalization, or regulation of prostitution, may all argue their model decreases sex trafficking.

The Dutch model of legalization and regulation and the Swedish model of criminalizing purchasers and pimps but not prostitutes are often discussed. The difference of these models casts the prevention of trafficking against the rights of voluntary sex workers and purchasers. It is argued that a hybrid model of licensing sex workers and criminalizing the purchase of unlicensed sex would reduce trafficking without crushing civil rights.

Numerous international organizations have partnered to create an anti-human trafficking Giving Day to raise awareness and funds on July, 30th 2017. This is the day designated by the United Nations as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. The Giving Day is being hosted by Charidy.com, a crowdfunding platform for non-profits.

The General Assembly in 2010, adopted the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, encouraging Governments around the world to undergo drastic measures in order defeat human trafficking. The goal was to put the fight against human trafficking into the United Nation's programmes to strengthen positive development and security around the world. A main section of the plan is to place a United Nations Trust Fund for the women and children who fell victim of trafficking. The Trust Fund in the plan ensures to assist and protect the victims of trafficking through grants to certified NGOs. In the future, the goal is to make the victims a priority who are come were victims and had issues with migration. It also places a focus on the aid to victims who were trafficked by their perpetrator for the goal of sexual relations, organ removal, forced begging, forced criminality, and emerging exploitative reasons.

The General Assembly in the year 2013, gathered a meeting to go over the world's plan of action. Numerous states also declared July 30 as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. The came to the conclusion that day of remembrance and awareness was crucial to remember the victims, the right's they possess and their protection.