What is Modern Slavery?
Over the past 15 years, “trafficking in
persons” and “human trafficking” have been used as umbrella terms for
activities involved when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled
service.
The United States
Forced Labor
Also known as involuntary servitude, forced
labor may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more
vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination,
corruption, political conflict, or even cultural acceptance of the practice.
Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be forced into
labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labor,
especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited
as well.
Sex Trafficking
When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived
into prostitution – or maintained in prostitution through coercion – that
person is a victim of trafficking. All of those involved in recruiting,
transporting, harboring, receiving, or obtaining the person for that purpose
have committed a trafficking crime. Sex trafficking can also occur within debt
bondage, as women and girls are forced to continue in prostitution through the
use of unlawful “debt” purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment,
or even their crude “sale,” which exploiters insist they must pay off before
they can be free.
It is critical to understand that a person’s
initial consent to participate in prostitution is not legally determinative; if
an individual is thereafter held in service through psychological manipulation
or physical force, that person is a trafficking victim and should receive the
benefits outlined in the United Nations’ Palermo Protocol and applicable laws.
Bonded Labor
One form of coercion is the use of a bond, or
debt. Often referred to as “bonded labor” or “debt bondage,” the practice has
long been prohibited under U.S.
Debt Bondage Among Migrant
Laborers
Abuses of contracts and hazardous conditions
of employment for migrant laborers do not necessarily constitute human
trafficking. However, the burden of illegal costs and debts on these laborers
in the source country, often with the support of labor agencies and employers
in the destination country, can contribute to a situation of debt bondage. This
is often exacerbated when the worker’s status in the country is tied to the
employer in the context of employment-based temporary work programs and there
is no effective redress for abuse.
Involuntary Domestic Servitude
A unique form of forced labor is the
involuntary servitude of domestic workers, whose workplace is informal,
connected to their off-duty living quarters, and not often shared with other
workers. Such an environment, which often socially isolates domestic workers,
is conducive to nonconsensual exploitation since authorities cannot inspect
private property as easily as formal workplaces. Investigators and service
providers report many cases of untreated illnesses and, tragically, widespread
sexual abuse, which in some cases may be symptoms of a situation of involuntary
servitude. Ongoing international efforts seek to ensure that not only that
administrative remedies are enforced but also that criminal penalties are
enacted against those who hold others in involuntary domestic servitude.
Forced Child Labor
Most international organizations and national
laws recognize that children may legally engage in certain forms of work. There
is a growing consensus, however, that the worst forms of child labor should be
eradicated. The sale and trafficking of children and their entrapment in bonded
and forced labor are among these worst forms of child labor. A child can be a
victim of human trafficking regardless of the location of that exploitation.
Indicators of forced labor of a child include situations in which the child
appears to be in the custody of a non-family member who has the child perform
work that financially benefits someone outside the child’s family and does not
offer the child the option of leaving. Anti-trafficking responses should
supplement, not replace, traditional actions against child labor, such as
remediation and education. However, when children are enslaved, their abusers
should not escape criminal punishment by virtue of longstanding patters of
limited responses to child labor practices rather than more effective law
enforcement action.
Child Soldiers
Child soldiering can be a manifestation of
human trafficking where it involves the unlawful recruitment or use of
children—through force, fraud, or coercion—as combatants, or for labor or
sexual exploitation by armed forces. Perpetrators may be government forces,
paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly
abducted to be used as combatants. Others are made unlawfully to work as
porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls can be
forced to marry or have sex with male combatants. Both male and female child
soldiers are often sexually abused and are at high risk of contracting sexually
transmitted diseases.
Child Sex Trafficking
According to UNICEF, as many as two million
children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade.
International covenants and protocols obligate criminalization of the
commercial sexual exploitation of children. The use of children in the
commercial sex trade is prohibited under both U.S.
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