What is human trafficking?
Trafficking:
- Involves the exploitation of people, often through forced labour. Those who are trafficked may be forced into sex work. But they may also be forced to do domestic work or work in the service industry.
- Often involves the transportation of victims across borders or within a country. People who are far from their home communities are much easier to exploit, because of their isolation in an unfamiliar community. This is true of people in Canada, but also people transported within Canada, such as aboriginal people separated from their nation.
- Exploits the vulnerable. This is why women and children are the principal victims. Traffickers often rely on the very limited options available to people, especially women, in desperately poor communities. Trafficked persons are often unaware of the rights they do have and traffickers will try to keep them ignorant.
United Nations Definition
Governments have defined trafficking in persons as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation”.
United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons especially women and children
(also known as the Palermo Protocol)
Governments have defined trafficking in persons as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation”.
United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons especially women and children
(also known as the Palermo Protocol)
Trafficking vs. Smuggling
- A person who is trafficked is kept under the control of traffickers and exploited in some way, sometimes after having been transported across a border.
- A person who is smuggled receives assistance to enter a country, usually in exchange for money, and that is the end of the relationship with the smuggler.
