Just what is human trafficking?

Even though act of human trafficking has been going on for decades, it has only been a few years (2000) since the United Nations Trafficking Protocol (the Palermo Protocol of 2000, an international legal agreement attached to the United Nations) was established containing the first internationally agreed upon definition of human trafficking with the knowing that it is the force, fraud, and coercion in one person to the next that defines the essence of this crime.

People often tell me they think human trafficking is moving people from one country to another, and while that is a part of what the act really is, the heart of the problem is the mental and emotional movement of an individual by another. The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) (created as a result of the UN Protocol) leaves out what to me is the most significant aspect of the definition and therefore helps it be more challenging to prove a case in court against alleged traffickers.

innocentsatrisk.org of the U.N. Trafficking Protocol defines human trafficking as: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other styles of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over someone else, for the intended purpose of exploitation.

The US-TVPA is weak and really should include in it the terminology in keeping with the U.N. Protocol since it further distinguishes that traffickers use deception, and abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability, when seeking their victims. Traffickers search for the vulnerable knowing how to deceive and manipulate them – the worst form of abduction – by causing one to lose rely upon those they should trust the most. It requires a lifetime to “re-program” someone who has been manipulated in this manner.

Human trafficking should be placed near the top of the set of crucial social issues.

In current human trafficking advocacy circles, traditional methods of trafficking have already been the focus and prohibit real discovery into the reality of what is causing modern-day slavery. Poverty, homelessness, runaways, broken families, senior high school drop-out rates, pornography (mass media): each are stand-alone social issues that merit our time and attention. Each brings using them a different group of issues that demand attention from those people who are whole inside our society. Yet whenever we look at human trafficking, we see these issues wrapped up into the one almost just like a domino effect. Each of these issues is a contributing factor to those areas fueling human trafficking. And, I dare say, each of these issues are due to one giant controlling the United States and manipulating our every move – greed. Traffickers not only search for vulnerable and at-risk youth, they target the male population to enlist them as buyers.