Human Trafficking Equals Slavery

The buying and selling of women, men and children for sexual exploitation is today’s most common form of slavery. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, human trafficking generates an estimated $9.5 billion in annual revenue. Its profits fuel other criminal activities. It is closely connected with money laundering, drug trafficking, document forgery, and human smuggling. (TIP Report)

The Magnitude of the problem:
Between 700,000 to two million persons are trafficked each year.
(more below)

An international law against trafficking is the U.N. Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. (Palermo Protocol)

It defines trafficking and is the first international document to talk about how essential it is to address demand when discussing the trafficking of women and children from a human rights perspective.

Governments and nongovernmental organisations care about the victims of trafficking.  They work to prevent trafficking and to protect and reintegrate victims. They criminalise traffickers, recruiters, pimps, and brothel owners, etc.

But rarely do they work to stop the men (and according to statistics, they are largely men) who buy sex, the prostitutors.

Men who exploit women and children in prostitution are invisible and even “protected” by culture and law.

As long as men seek pleasure in exploiting women and children by purchasing their bodies, trafficking will continue to be profitable. If there is no money to be made in trafficking, those who benefit from the sex industry will look for other ways to become rich.

If men stop buying sex, the source of profits will dry up. It’s that simple.