WHAT IS

TRAFFICKING
IN PERSON?
CRI 223 3898
 Trafficking in Persons
• The law defines Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment,
transportation, transfer or harboring, or receipt of persons
with or without the victim’s consent or knowledge, within or
across national borders by means of threat or use of force,
or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception,
abuse of power or of position, taking advantage of the
vulnerability of the person, or, the giving or receiving of
payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person
having control over another person for the purpose of
exploitation which includes at a minimum, the exploitation
or the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, servitude or
the removal or sale of organs.

• The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or

receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall also
be considered as “trafficking in persons” even if it does not
involve any of the means set forth in the preceding
paragraph
 Trafficking in Persons
• Trafficking: the act of buying or selling people, or of making
money from work they are forced to do.
– SOURCE: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/trafficking

• Victims of trafficking in persons are forced to provide their

labor or services under circumstances which would be
reasonably expected to cause them to fear for their own
safety or for the safety of someone known to them if they
refuse to provide that service or labor.

• Three main types of Trafficking in Persons are sex

trafficking, forced labor, and debt bondage.

– Sex trafficking victims are forced to be prostitutes.

– Forced labor victims are forced to do domestic work, agriculture,

factory work, construction, mining, “illegal activities” and many
others.

– Debt bondage victims are forced to do anything what the person

who they owe money from in order to pay back their debt.
Examples
SOURCE: https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/

• In India and Nepal, young girls from poor and rural areas
were often expected to leave school to help support their
families during the economic hardship—some were
forced into marriage in exchange for money, while others
were forced to work to supplement lost income.
• Reports from the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Uruguay illustrate that landlords forced their tenants
(often women) to have sex with them when the tenant
could not pay rent.
• During lockdown, traffickers in the Amazon in Brazil
changed their patterns by sending child sex trafficking
victims to the perpetrators’ private quarters or specific
locations instead of the usual places where children were
sold to perpetrators.
• In Haiti, Niger, and Mali, gangs operating in IDP camps
took advantage of reduced security and limited protection
to force residents at the camp to perform commercial sex
acts.