Sex Trafficking A Global Perspective

Global estimates of human trafficking range from six hundred thousand to four million victims each year with the majority being victims of sex trafficking. This strikingly large range belies the difficulty in the gathering, defining, and accounting of sex-trafficking data. Victims of sex of sex trafficking may be forced into pornography, prostitution for the military, spousal prostitution, and prostitution for the sex-tourism industry. In response to the problem of sex trafficking, many nations have either misunderstood the definition or failed to comprehend the magnitude that occurs within their birders. The United National has defined "human trafficking" as "the recruitment, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by threat or use of force." Similarly, the U.S. State Department's trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 describes severe forms of trafficking as: "(a) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained eighteen years of age; or (b) 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."

Kimberly A. McCabe is dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of criminology at Lynchburg College. Sabita Manian is professor of international relations at Lynchburg College.