Human Trafficking and Sex Work: A Critical Assessment

Introduction

Human trafficking is a global problem that affects all countries, regardless of the social, political or economic circumstances that govern them. Human Trafficking, whether for forced labor or commercial sexual purposes, is a modern form of slavery and one of the most egregious human rights violations in history. Human trafficking preys on those whose safety net has deteriorated and who have few possibilities for self-sufficiency. Traffickers may entice victims into servitude with promises of financial and emotional security, but traffickers eventually force victims to perform work or services under threat of violence, coercion, or other forms of intimidation. Traffickers deprive their victims of their freedom and human dignity by subjecting them to protracted mental, emotional, and physical deprivation and torture.

Human trafficking is a multifaceted, complex and dynamic social phenomenon characterized by concealment. It is therefore difficult to speak with precision about the numbers in terms of estimating the scope of this phenomenon. The crime is generally influenced by various political as well as socio-economic factors. Oftentimes, victimization, causal factors, and policy response receive the most attention in human trafficking studies, while other aspects like the market system or supply and demand in human trafficking are given little focus (Obuah, 2006).

According to Hughes (2000), human trafficking is often regarded as a business that exists in the shadows. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that the business of human trafficking could generate profits of US$150 billion a year for traffickers (Human Rights First, 2017). Bales (2005) acknowledged that there are three basic underlying factors that foster human trafficking around the world, namely the availability of an endless supply of potential victims from the source countries; continuous demand for the victim’s service in the destination countries; and organized criminal network which controls the element of supply and demand to traffic and exploits human being to generate huge profits for themselves.

A recent study estimates that at least 12 million people worldwide are trapped in conditions of forced labour. Around a fifth of these are being exploited as a result of human trafficking (ILO, 2005). These forms of modern day slavery have become one of the most profitable businesses in the world – and one of the most horrifying. Human trafficking is said to be the fastest growing source of income for organised crime and its third most important, exceeded only by drugs and arms trade (Obuah, 2006).

Sex work refer to the exchange of sexual labor for money, other material items, or access to social resources. These exchanges may be independently generated, facilitated through a third party, or leveraged by industry stakeholders. Sex work is as old as human society itself, and although often associated with women and girls, these systems of exchange involve people of all ages, genders, races, abilities, and sexual orientations. Typically considered to occur primarily in marginalized urban spaces or among underprivileged cultural groups, in reality sex work and prostitution take place everywhere: large cities, rural hamlets, suburban cul-de-sacs, institutional spaces. For many years, sex work has been conflated with human trafficking. The conflation between human trafficking is what this paper seek to critically examine.