HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Human trafficking is also known as trafficking in persons or in short TIP is often distinguished from one another by the notion that migration is characterized by choice and trafficking by coercion, deception, or force.

The UN defines human trafficking as:

The recruitment, transportation, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of 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.

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that at any given time, 12.3 million men, women, and children worldwide are coerced into forced and bonded labour, involuntary servitude, and sexual slavery; of these, 9.8 million are exploited by private agents.

Human trafficking is a labour issue for three key reasons:

·         Related with exploitation in labour;

·         One of the worst forms of labour exploitation; and

·         Related with violations of worker rights, those are lack of labor standards and protections for workers especially in migrant workers, and globalization forces that displace workers and encourage competition for low wage jobs.

Source: Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO. 2008. Worker rights and migrant workers. In Solidarity    Center, AFL-CIO, Justice for All: A Guide to Workers Rights in the Global Economy. pp. 98-99. Washington, D.C: Solidarity Center. http://www.solidaritycenter.org/files/pubs_jfa2009.pdf [13 February 2011].