What Is The Difference Between Human Trafficking And Sex Trafficking?

So what is the difference between human trafficking and sex trafficking? There is a lot of talk in the media and in community circles about human trafficking. However when you drill down into it with people, they are fuzzy on the definitions and the conditions of what exactly it means to be “trafficked.” I was talking to an ex-police officer the other day and he wanted to know the difference between human trafficking and the prostitute or street workers he saw some 20 years ago.

Let’s start by saying that there is a difference between human trafficking and human trafficking for sexual exploitation. One is an overarching term for the condition, the other is a subset of the condition.

Human trafficking is the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of forced labor, 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, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another.

Human trafficking impacts people of all backgrounds, and people are trafficked for a variety of purposes. Men are often trafficked into hard labor jobs, while children are trafficked into labor positions in textile, agriculture and fishing industries. Women and girls are typically trafficked into the commercial sex industry, i.e. prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation.

Both genders have been seen as trafficked in about equal proportions world wide until a recent UN report. Because of the unrest in the middle east, children now account for about 30% of people trafficked. of the remaining 70%, 38% are men pressed into forced labor.

For example of the 2 million people working in the mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 60% of them are adults, 80% of which are men of the remaining 40% which are children as young as 4, 90% of that group is made up of boys. They mine cobalt and it pays $1.30 a day. This mineral, which is now considered more precious than gold, is then sold to Chinese and Indian mining companies to go into the battery for the smart phone or laptop that  you are watching or read this on.

My next post will be on ‘What Is Sex Trafficking’.

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