Human Trafficking and Foreign Policy: An Introduction

[Excerpt] Human trafficking (also known as trafficking in persons) refers to the subjection of men, women, or children to exploitative conditions that may be tantamount to modern-day slavery. From a foreign policy perspective, human trafficking can be viewed as a human rights problem, a manifestation of transnational organized crime, and a violation of core international labor standards. Human trafficking also raises economic development, international migration, and global governance and security issues, and disproportionately victimizes vulnerable populations. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA, Division A of P.L. 106-386; 22 U.S.C. 7101 et seq.) defined “severe forms of trafficking in persons” to include sex trafficking induced by force, fraud, or coercion, child sex trafficking (under 18 years of age), and forced labor trafficking. The latter involves the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person—induced by force, fraud, or coercion—for the purpose of subjecting that person, including a child, to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery