HUMAN TRAFFICKING DEFINED
Any person who is recruited, harbored, provided, or obtained through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, forced labor, or commercial sex qualifies as a trafficking victim. Movement is not necessary.
- U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report

Read the 2010 Department of State’s Trafficking In Person’s Report: http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/index.htm#

Human trafficking is an umbrella term used to describe all forms of modern-day slavery:

• Labor Trafficking
• Bonded Labor
• Involuntary Servitude
• Involuntary Domestic Servitude
• Forced Child Labor
• Child Soldiers
• Sex Trafficking
• Children for Commercial Sex
• Child Sex Tourism

There are an estimated 27 million trafficking victims in the world today.
-The Salvation Army, Not for Sale Campaign

It isn’t “just over there”

Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states.
- United States Department of Education

Between 100,000 – 300,000 U.S. children are enslaved in sex trafficking each year.
- Ernie Allen
President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

U.S. Government Domestic Anti-Trafficking in Persons Efforts
The United States (U.S.) is a destination country for thousands of men, women, and children trafficked largely from East Asia, Mexico, and Central America for the purposed of sexual and labor exploitation. A majority of foreign victims identified during the year were victims of trafficking for forced labor. Some men and women, responding to fraudulent offers of employment in the United States, migrate willingly – legally or illegally – but are subsequently subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude or debt bondage at work sties or in the commercial sex trade. An unknown number of American citizens and legal residents are trafficked within the country primarily for sexual servitude and, to a lesser extent, forced labor.
- U.S. State Department Trafficking In Persons Report

MORE ON SEX TRAFFICKING…
Taken from the U.S. State Department Trafficking In Persons Report

Sex Trafficking and Prostitution
Sex trafficking comprises a significant portion of overall trafficking and the majority of transnational modern-day slavery. Sex trafficking would not exist with the demand for commercial sex flourishing around the world. The U.S. Government adopted a strong position against prostitution in a December 2002 policy decision, which notes that prostitution is inherently harmful and dehumanizing, and fuels trafficking in persons. Turning people into dehumanized commodities creates an enabling environment for human trafficking.

The United States Government opposes prostitution and any related activities, including pimping, pandering, or maintaining brothels as contributing to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons, and maintains that these activities should not be regulated as a legitimate form of work for any human being. Those who patronize the commercial sex industry form a demand which traffickers seek to satisfy.

Children Exploited for Commercial Sex
Each year more than two million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade. Many of these children are trapped in prostitution. The commercial sexual exploitation of children is trafficking, regardless of circumstances. 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. law and the U.N. TIP Protocol. There can be no exceptions, no cultural or socio-economic rationalizations that prevent the rescue of children from sexual servitude.
Terms such as “child sex worker” are unacceptable because they falsely sanitize the brutality of this exploitation.

North Korea/China
Nineteen-year-old So-Young stands at less than five feet tall after being chronically malnourished in North Korea. A refugee, she crossed illegally into China with hopes of a better life, but found instead a nightmare of sexual exploitation. An “employer” offered her approximately $1.40 per day in exchange for work – money that So-Yong planned on sending back to her family. Deceived by this empty promise, So-Young spent the next several months being passed between handlers. Just days before she was to be purchased by a forty-year-old Chinese man, So-Young managed to escape with the help of a local pastor. Three years later, she was forcibly repatriated to North Korea where she was imprisoned for six months before escaping once more to China. Traffickers kidnapped her once again, repeatedly raping her prior to her sale. Her new “husband” also raped her multiple times before she was able to escape. So-Young remains in hiding today” “There are many people coming out of North Korea, but they don’t have anywhere to go and no other choice but to go that route [into China].”

Child Sex Tourism
Child Sex Tourism (CST) involves people who travel from their own country – often a country where child sexual exploitation is illegal or culturally abhorrent – to another country where they engage in commercial sex acts with children. CST is a shameful assault on the dignity of children and a form of violent child abuse. The commercial sexual exploitation of children has devastating consequences for minors, which may include long-lasting physical and psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism ,and possibly death.

Tourists engaging in CST often travel to developing countries looking for anonymity and the availability of children in prostitution. The crime is typically fueled by weak law enforcement, corruption, the Internet, ease of travel, and poverty. Sex offenders come from all socio-economic backgrounds and may in some cases hold positions of trust. Case of child sex tourism involving U.S. citizens have included a pediatrician, a retired Army sergeant, a dentist, and a university professor. Child pornography is frequently involved in these cases, and drugs may be sued to solicit or control the minors.