Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Is sex work linked to human trafficking?
Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, including sexual slavery.[1] A victim is forced, in one of a variety of ways, into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s) and then used by said trafficker(s) to give sexual services to customers.[2] There are three types of activities defined as sex trafficking crimes: acquisition, transportation and exploitation;[1] this includes child sex tourism (CST), domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) or other kinds of commercial sexual exploitation of children, and prostitution.[2] Sex trafficking is one of the biggest criminal businesses and it has been described as "the fastest growing criminal industry in the world."[3]
Efforts to combat sex trafficking are often linked to efforts against prostitution; however, this is often problematic in regards to legal recourse of sex trafficking victims. While prostitutes are nominally working by choice, sex trafficking victims do so under duress. Recognizing this, many states have passed legislation that allows sex trafficking victims amnesty under prostitution laws, however many fail to do so due to legal illiteracy and institutional prejudices.[107] As such, sex trafficking victims often risk legal persecution when alerting authorities to their situation.
Criminalization of sex work also may foster the underground market for sex work and enable sex trafficking.
Sex work and sex trafficking conflation is also a heavily debated legal topic. Several scholars argue that existing legal provisions aimed at combating human trafficking, such as the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, do not adequately account for the variety of sex worker conditions and contexts, voluntary or involuntary. For instance, Filipina hostesses who migrate to Japan to work as entertainers must give up their legal documents to their recruiters during the migration process. While the law considers the process of giving up a passport to a third party intermediary as a condition of human trafficking, several scholars, activists, and the sex workers themselves do not regard this to be human trafficking, particularly when individuals consent to this component of the migration process.
Like other Central American countries, the closeness of Guatemala to the United States provides a natural route for human trafficking as well as arms trafficking. Guatemala is a common location of exploitation of women and children from other Latin American countries, particularly sex trafficking, while all ages and sexes suffer from systems of forced labor in the country. Frequently, human trafficking cases are linked to transnational criminal organizations, such as trafficked children used by gangs to commit illegal activities.
There are a number of misconceptions about sex trafficking. Sex trafficking and human trafficking are not to be confused with human smuggling. Human trafficking for sexual or other labor may involve transporting victims across international borders, but to meet the definition of trafficking, there needs only to be exploitation of an individual after they have been coerced or deceived, so it does not necessarily involve transportation across national borders.[9] Human trafficking and sex trafficking are often used as synonyms. However, trafficking for non-sexual exploitation may be even more prevalent than trafficking for sexual exploitation, though accurate estimates of trafficking rates are extremely difficult to obtain.[10][11][12] Sex trafficking tends to receive more attention from aid organizations and donors due to the greater public outrage that forced sexual labor evokes compared to forced non-sexual labor and thus incidents of sex trafficking are more frequently reported.[10]
The problems against anti-trafficking raids are related to the problem of the trafficking concept itself, as raids' purpose of fighting sex trafficking may be conflated with fighting prostitution. The Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA) gives state and local law enforcement funding to prosecute customers of commercial sex, therefore some law enforcement agencies make no distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. One study interviewed women who have experienced law enforcement operations as sex workers and found that during these raids meant to combat human trafficking, none of the women were ever identified as trafficking victims, and only one woman was asked whether she was coerced into sex work. The conflation of trafficking with prostitution, then, does not serve to adequately identify trafficking and help the victims. Raids are also problematic in that the women involved were most likely unclear about who was conducting the raid, what the purpose of the raid was, and what the outcomes of the raid would be.
Because of their illegal and vulnerable economic status, some migrant sex workers may find themselves in situations where coercion and forced sex work may be present. Under international legal definitions of human trafficking, forced and coercive forms of sex work are considered to be instances of involuntary sex trafficking. However, many scholars caution against categorizing sex workers as either completely voluntary or completely involuntary. They often argue that sex work, like other forms of labor, can span a spectrum between the two extremes, with most circumstances falling in the middle through various labor rights violations. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of migrant sex workers can make them susceptible to exploitative or coercive labor practices that can resemble or be human trafficking.
Because prostitution can be an extremely political topic that represents differing political interests, the method of data collection and the use of collected data can vary in reliability. While more pro-sex work academics, organizations, and activists make an explicit demarcation between sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, many other groups consider prostitution to inherently lack a voluntary component. Many anti-sex work activists consider any form of migration for the purpose of commercial sex to be a form of human trafficking. As a result, depending on the definition of human trafficking by the organization or data collector, the number of either migrant sex workers or victims of sex trafficking can dramatically change depending on whether or not these two categories of individuals are conflated. Scholars, service providers, and practitioners who attempt to remain apolitical and outside the feminist views on sex trafficking and sex work regarding prostitution still often remark how the legal definitions of human trafficking are still too vague for them to efficiently and neutrally define and count victims. As a result, who is considered to be a migrant sex worker or victim of sex trafficking can widely vary.
Abolitionists who seek an end to sex trafficking explain the nature of sex trafficking as an economic supply and demand model. In this model, male demand for prostitutes leads to a market of sex work, which, in turn, fosters sex trafficking, the illegal trade and coercion of people into sex work, and pimps and traffickers become 'distributors' who supply people to be sexually exploited. The demand for sex trafficking can also be facilitated by some pimps' and traffickers' desire for women whom they can exploit as workers because they do not require wages, safe working circumstances, and agency in choosing customers.
In 2013, the Mayor's Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking was created to eliminate gaps in services to survivors of human trafficking and create a victim-centered approach to treating survivors. This task force consisted of a Child Sex Trafficking Committee, a Labor Trafficking Committee, and a Sex Work and Trafficking Policy Impact Committee.
The strong economic and social ties between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua make El Paso one of the most popular destinations for trafficking from Mexico. While Ciudad Juarez has already destroyed its Zona de Tolerancia in an effort to create a new image for the city, its plan to move sex work outside the city limit was never fully instituted. As a consequence, most of Ciudad Juarez's sex workers are still located in the Zona Centro, which is the commercial center of the city's downtown area. The estimated 6,000 sex workers in Ciudad Juarez operate out of a variety of businesses, including cantinas, nightclubs, bars, and the streets, and Ciudad Juarez is a huge destination for sex tourism from the United States. Because of El Paso's strong links with Ciudad Juarez, this thriving sex trade and the sex trafficking trade that has developed with it has spilled into El Paso, making it one of Texas' largest entry points for trafficked persons from Mexico.
However, sex worker activists and organizations distinguish between human trafficking and legitimate sex work, and assert the importance of recognizing that trafficking is not synonymous with sex work. The Sex Workers Alliance Ireland organization explains: "victims of human trafficking may be forced to work in industries such as agriculture, domestic service as well as the sex industry. It is critical to distinguish human trafficking, which is a violation of human rights, from voluntary migration." The Open Society Foundations organization states: "sex work is done by consenting adults, where the act of selling or buying sexual services is not a violation of human rights. In fact, sex workers are natural allies in the fight against trafficking. The UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work recognizes that sex worker organizations are best positioned to refer people who are victims of trafficking to appropriate services."
Before April 1, 2015, Virginia was the only state in the nation that did not have any standalone human trafficking laws. SB 1188 and HB 1964 were passed on April 1, 2015. They were the first bills in Virginia to define sex trafficking, establish penalties, criminalized child sex trafficking as a Class 3 felony without the need to prove force, intimidation or deception, and criminalized recruitment for commercial sex. It also provides provisions for protecting and identifying sex trafficking victims. Robert Dillard was the first man charged under this law.The State of Wisconsin has worked to address human trafficking by establishing a comprehensive task force co-chaired by Attorney General Brad Schimel and Secretary of Children and Families Eloise Anderson. An implementation committee was chaired by Jodi Emerson of the Fierce Freedom Organization. In 2017, the Wisconsin Department of Justice launched a Human Trafficking Bureau .There are five organizations in Wisconsin that are affiliated with human trafficking cosortium efforts. These organizations include "Comprehensive Approaches to Youth who have been Sexually Exploited" (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), "Dana County Coordinated Community Response to the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children," "Fierce Freedom" (Eau Claire), "La Crosse Task Force to Eradicate Modern Slavery," and the Outagamie Human Trafficking Steering Committee.
There are also national non-governmental organizations working on the issue of human trafficking, including sex trafficking. In Kenya, for example, Awareness Against Human Trafficking (HAART) works on ending all human trafficking in the country.[133] HAART has also participated in the UNANIMA International Stop the Demand campaign.[134]
While there is currently no nationwide government-sponsored anti-trafficking awareness campaign focused on all forms of trafficking, the government continued a campaign begun in 2008 called “Who Pays the Price?” to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts, which may be linked to sex trafficking. The government had an anti-trafficking action plan, and the government produced an annual status report monitoring the previous year’s developments related to the plan. The government forged anti-trafficking partnerships through its funding of anti-trafficking programs in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. Danish authorities sustained partnerships with Scandinavian Airlines, the Association of Danish Travel Agents, and Save the Children to disseminate public service announcements against child sex tourism. Denmark established a hotline for trafficking victims and one for information about suspected child sex tourism overseas. The government did not report any prosecutions of its citizens for child sex tourism during the reporting period. The Ministry of Defence provided training on human trafficking to all soldiers prior to their deployment abroad on international peacekeeping missions.
According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO), every year the human trafficking industry generates 32 billion USD, half of which ($15.5 billion) is made in industrialized countries, and a third of which ($9.7 billion) is made in Asia. A 2011 paper published in "Human Rights Review", "Sex Trafficking: Trends, Challenges and Limitations of International Law", notes that, since 2000, the number of sex-trafficking victims has risen while costs associated with trafficking have declined: "Coupled with the fact that trafficked sex slaves are the single most profitable type of slave, costing on average $1,895 each but generating $29,210 annually, [there are] stark predictions about the likely growth in commercial sex slavery in the future." Sex trafficking victims rarely get a share of the money that they make through coerced sex work, which further keeps them oppressed. , profits from human trafficking were about around 150 billion USD each year ranking it along with drug trafficking as one of the most profitable transnational crimes. 
After leaving the sex industry, and due to the success of Abeni, Muñoz has been an outspoken activist in the struggle for the rights of sex workers. Primarily, she stresses the representation of sex workers "by" sex workers, and the importance of all sex workers to have a safe space in which they can avoid the social stigma that comes from being a sex worker. She supports the decriminalization of sex work to benefit the safety of sex workers and survivors of trafficking. She is critical of organizations and propaganda that seeks to paint all sex work as human trafficking: “It’s great PR for organizations and law enforcement, but I have yet to see that translate into solid, long lasting, consistent, relevant, holistic support and care that helps those who need it the most.” Muñoz is an avid user of Twitter, and continues to Tweet her experiences and views surrounding sex work (see External Links).
Sexual exploitation Human trafficking Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children Transnational efforts to prevent human trafficking Migrant sex work Sex tourism Karayuki-san Forced prostitution Exploitation of labour Trafficking of children Child laundering Prostitution People smuggling
The 2010 report confirmed Canada's Tier 1 status.
The report states that "Prostitution by willing adults is not human trafficking regardless of whether it is legalized,
decriminalized, or criminalized." Therefore, should Canada fully legalize sex work, it will not affect its Tier ranking. This is a change from earlier reports such as 2005
which linked tolerance of prostitution to trafficking. Furthermore, the US now follows the International Labour Organization which considers human trafficking to be predominantly an issue of forced labour rather than of sexual exploitation. (p. 8)
There are different feminist perspectives on sex trafficking. The third-wave feminist perspective of sex trafficking seeks to harmonize the dominant and liberal feminist views of sex trafficking. The dominant feminist view focuses on "sexualized domination", which includes issues of pornography, female sex labor in a patriarchal world, rape, and sexual harassment. Dominant feminism emphasizes sex trafficking as forced prostitution and considers the act exploitative. Liberal feminism sees all agents as capable of reason and choice. Liberal feminists support sex workers rights, and argue that women who voluntarily chose sex work are autonomous. The liberal feminist perspective finds sex trafficking problematic where it overrides consent of individuals.
Human trafficking in Nepal—more specifically, sex trafficking—is a common precursor to voluntary sex work. After escaping from the sex trafficking world, women return to sex work when they return to Nepal, for it is the only thing they know.
Some feminists, such as Carole Pateman, believe that exploitation is in both prostitution and sex trafficking. They believe that even if the women agreed to be a sex worker in a foreign country that the worker was still trafficked because of the preceding conditions that lead her to believe that sex work was the only viable work option. Other feminists such as Kamala Kempadoo, on the other hand, believe that prostitution is a form of labor just like any other migrant labor; however, due to the criminalization of prostitution, prostitutes are then subject to coercion and exploitation and subsequent trafficking. In the USA, each year 80,000 women are arrested for prostitution. Current debates about modifications to Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 policy are based about these two arguments. In providing aid for victims of sex trafficking the government must take a stand on whether or not they believe the sex industry and sex trafficking are inherently linked. These people involved in prostitution have an 80% higher chance of sexually transmitted infections and many never can afford to seek treatment. This results in serious infections, lifelong diseases, and sometimes even death.
Trafficking in persons crimes have also been detected outside of the sex industry. In practice, these crimes tend to be referred to as "labour trafficking" or (non-sex industry) labour trafficking (reflecting the fact that sex work is either legal or decriminalized in most States and Territories).
Sex Trafficking is the practice of kidnapping people, typically young women and children, to be forced into the practice of sexual slavery and prostitution. Sex Trafficking is the most common form of human trafficking. According to a report by the UNODC, 79 percent of trafficking is for sex trafficking. Typically, people with histories of sexual assault or sexual violence and people who live in poverty are targeted and kidnapped. According to State Department officials, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Latin American women are trafficked each year, typically internationally. A large number of these victims come from Colombia or The Dominican Republic. According to a report made by the United Nations in 2016, multiple gangs, crime families, and drug trafficking organizations deal in human trafficking which may involve some 48,500 victims. These women and usually children are trafficked into prostitution, but can also be forced to work in pornography or stripping. Argentina and Brazil are very common destination countries for women from the Andes and some places in the Caribbean, like the Dominican Republic and Panama is a destination country for women from Colombia and Central America who are forced to work in the sex trade. Trafficking is a common occurrence along borders in Central and South America. The Mexican-Guatemalan border is especially popular because undocumented women trying to get to the United States are often pushed into prostitution. 