Sex Trafficking

Abstract

The definition of sex trafficking has been contested across international and US contexts and among US government policy and legal and advocacy frameworks as well. The US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) defines “severe forms of trafficking” as: (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 an act is under 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 subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. The TVPA also defines “sex trafficking” as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act” (Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000).