Human Trafficking affects people worldwide. The International Labor Organization says that about 40,300,000 people are victims of human trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of those 40.3 million are in the United States.
Human Trafficking Defined
According to the National Institute of Justice “The U.S. Government defines human trafficking as sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.”
By such definition, human smuggling and prostitution are not fully classified as human trafficking. Since human smuggling has the person being smuggled in, to pay a large amount of money to get into the place they are being smuggled into.
Prostitution has some cases that would be classified as human trafficking, which is called, “Forced Prostitution,” where a person is forced to work as a prostitute against their own will.
However, other cases of prostitution are not counted as human trafficking, which is called, “Voluntary Prostitution,” where a person chooses to work as a prostitute to gain money for themselves without having to follow someone else’s rules.
Two True Stories
These two girls telling their stories are only a fraction of millions of girls, boys, women, men, and babies that are or have been victims of human trafficking.
By Athena Xayyachack
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