Human trafficking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Human trafficking - Essay Example World governments, UN, Council of Europe, NATO and NGOs are making efforts to combat it. The U.S is leading efforts with efforts to combat it domestically and internationally. The U.S Trafficking and Violence Protection Act 2000 {TVPA} has defined human trafficking as comprising severe crimes: sex trafficking and forced labor. It defines sex trafficking as a crime where â€Å"a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.† TVPA defines forced labor as â€Å"the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery (http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/82902.pdf). Human trafficking is a transnational activity that does not consider boundaries or borders. Profits from human trafficking go into the strongboxes of international organized criminal outfits. Human trafficking is supported by other global crimes like money laundering document fraud and human smuggling (ht tp://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/crimjust/human.htm). Human trafficking has a common denominator with all other forms of trafficking, i.e., reducing human beings to forms of property over which an unlimited power is exercised (Savona & Stefanizzi, 2007, p.10). Human trafficking is the ‘perfect’ crime because the risks of being caught are very less, negligible punishment awaits those unlucky enough to be apprehended, exorbitant profits are easily made and the whole business feeds on a traded item {human beings} that can be used and reused, marketed and exchanged (King & Clift, 2004, p.21). Human trafficking is the third most lucrative global illegal activity, surpassed only by illegal arms sales and illicit drugs. The human trafficking trade is widely and