Human Trafficking: Modern Day Form Of Slavery

Human trafficking is the exploitation of humans to make money. There are more slaves today than ever in history. Most times victims are trafficked by people they know, trust and love like friends and family.

Human trafficking was once called slavery. “Slavery began in Ancient Greece when they captured prisoners of war. They traded these slaves with other people to be used as laborers, including domestic work to build the pyramids. Slavery continued to grow all throughout Asian civilizations and into the birth of America.” (Gale) The slave trading began when the Europeans began establishing colonies with the Americans. Experts say that three hundred thousand slaves were sold to plantation owners in the 1400s and the 1500s. American colonies traded molasses and weapons for these slaves. Our textbooks tell us that slavery existed but it doesn’t always go into depth of what really happens. Everybody knows that slavery is bad. The word slavery itself, seems very unnatural and provokes mixed feelings depending on a person’s heart. Nobody really

Human trafficking is defined as a recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, of receipt of persons, by means of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, or abuse of power of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation (Human Trafficking Information). Today human trafficking, also known as modern-day slavery, has been one of the controversial issues in the United States and nationwide. In fact, it is now considered as the fastest growing multi-billion-dollar business form of organized crime. Also, Human trafficking is affecting the lives of millions around the globe and robbing the victims of their pride. As a matter of fact, Traffickers deceive men, women, and young children from around the world to force them into unspeakable

Each year about 17,500 individuals are brought into the United States and become victims of human trafficking. Every country has this problem and it has become the 3rd largest illegal industry worldwide.

Human Trafficking and Slavery universally happens in the world when individuals are placed or maintained in and exploitive situation for economic gain. Women, men and children are trafficked for a range of different purposes; forced and exploitative labour in factories, farms and private households, sexual exploitation, and forced marriage. Trafficking can happen to all people if the circumstances are right.

Throughout the 21st century, the number of human beings being capture and put into sex trafficking and prostitution has risen. In 2013, about 270,000 young boys, girls, and women were forced into human trafficking in the United States alone and estimated 20.9 million in the world. The UN has also estimated that nearly 4,000,000 are trafficked each year. UNICEF has estimated that as many as 50% of all trafficking victims worldwide are minors and that as many as two thirds of those adolescents are at some point forced into the sex trade. This is a 52 billion dollar industry. Two kids are sold every minute, 120 per hour. In other cases mothers of these children would sell them off for money due to financial reason, which

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery and involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act (Homeland).

Human Trafficking is “considered a form of modern slavery” involving the recruitment, transportation, transfer and/or harboring the receipt of a person by either the means of force or coercion that is affecting thousands of men, women and children per year both abroad and locally. This is a crime in violation of human rights (“Human Trafficking/What is Human Trafficking”, 2015). Human trafficking is an umbrella term that is not quite defined and/or recognized by law.

Human trafficking is considered to be another form of slavery and very common in many countries around the world. Several countries throughout the world are sites of cause, travel, purpose, and/or inner trafficking. There are many cases of human trafficking that have been reported in all fifty states within the United States. Human trafficking is a market-based economy that exists on values of supply and demand. It thrives due to circumstances, which allows for higher earnings to be obtained at low risk. With that being said, it is important to understand how human trafficking is defined. According to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the legal definition

Human trafficking is defined, legally, as all acts involved in “the recruitment, abduction, transport, harboring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons, within national or across international borders, through force, coercion, fraud or deception, to place persons in situations of slavery or slavery-like conditions, forced labor or services, such as forced prostitution or sexual services, domestic servitude, bonded sweatshop labor, or other debt bondage” (Harris, 2012); but human trafficking is more commonly known as the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor, or modern day slavery.

Human trafficking, also known as trafficking in persons is slavery. The United Nations defines human trafficking as "The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat

181-187). Although this theory of human trafficking only goes back to the 19th century, this is something that has gone on for a a long amount of time. If one was to think about history and how slaves were traded from Africa to the United States, the theory of “Human Trafficking” still applies. The slaves from Africa would be traded to someone who bought them. At times the slaves would be bought to work in fields, raise the children, and to provide sex for the “master” whenever summoned. If the person was to buy them to be a worker, or to nurse the children, even to have sex with. The definition of human trafficking is the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation (Unknown,

Human trafficking can take many forms, as well as many victims. One form of trafficking is slavery. Slavery is having a worker who is unpaid and who works by force using coercion, fraud or threat of bodily harm. “According to the United Nations, there are between 27 and 30 million modern-day slaves in the world (Jesionka, “Human Trafficking: The Myths and the Realities”).” “By 1860, the nation’s black population had jumped from 400,000 to 4.4 million, of which 3.9 million were slaves.(Henry Louis Gates).” That means there are nearly ten times more slaves today than there were in the late 1800’s.

In 2007, the U.S. state Department reported, “600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year,” “1 million is the number of children exploited by the global commercial sex trade every year,” and “161 countries identified as affected by human trafficking” (Polaris Project, DoSomething.org).

In recent times, the number of human trafficking cases has skyrocketed through the roof. So, what exactly is human trafficking? Human trafficking is defined as a criminal activity, in which people are recruited, harboured, transported, bought or kidnapped for the purposes of exploitation. These exploitations include forced labour, child soldiery, sexual slavery, forced marriages and so on. Statistics show that the main victims of human trafficking consist of women and young girls while children come in a close third (Appendix A). Over the years, human trafficking has become rampant worldwide as the demand for human labour and sex slaves drastically multiplies due to the Internet.