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Human Trafficking And Sexual Exploitation

Decent Essays

Human trafficking has been dubbed the modern version of slavery as it is the act of taking an individual by force or coercion for some aspect of labour purposes. The phenomenon of human trafficking for sexual exploitation is not a recent one. Human trafficking has historical roots in traditions of worldwide slavery and in debt-bondage in the South East Asian region. In the 20th century, during the periods of the First World War and the Second World War, human trafficking for sexual exploitation grew as ‘comfort women’ were used in Japanese occupied areas in South East Asia. In modern times, globalization has proliferated both human trafficking and sex tourism industries through people’s increased ability to travel further and easier. Human trafficking, as opposed to human smuggling, focuses heavily on the exploitation and violation of those subjected to it. Women, men, and children are all at risk of being trafficked into exploitative work, including sexual labour. On the other hand, sex tourism avoids focusing on its exploitative side and instead engages heavily with global tourism in a lucrative industry. Women prostitutes are the primary contributor to the labour side of sex tourism industries. Prostitution economies, especially in the Global South, thrive on the “exotic Third World sex workers”.
Both sex tourism and human trafficking for sexual exploitation have dynamic gendered natures. Both sides of the international sex industry have created sexual moral panics

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