What is Trafficking?
"The recruitment, transportation, transfer, 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.” - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Human Trafficking = Modern Day Slavery
The U.S. State Department defines human trafficking as persons subject to (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such acts is under age 18 or (2) 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. Trafficking occurs for a number of purposes, including commercial sex (prostitution, stripping, pornography and live-sex shows) and labor exploitation (domestic servitude, sweatshop factories, or migrant agricultural work). Human trafficking is not the same as people smuggling. People smuggling means that someone is attempting, for a fee, to bring people illegally into another country. Although this is dangerous, it does not (necessarily) lead to slavery. Human trafficking always leads to conditions of slavery.
[1] In June 2009 Interpol rescued 54 children aged 11 to 16 working as slaves on cocoa and palm plantations in the Ivory Coast.
[2] Through Oasis campaigns from Oasis and other NGOs, consumers have influenced corporations such as Hershey, Mars and Nestle to make commitments at least to work on providing chocolate that is guaranteed to be free of child and slave labor. We still have a long way to go, but progress is being made!
