Difference between revisions of "Understanding Human Trafficking"

*'''Online Vulnerability''': Traffickers increasingly use social networking and video chat sites to lure, advertise and exploit people. Traffickers then use explicit or compromising photos to further their control - threatening to publish these images online where family members will see them. Online social networking sites are now prime recruiting locations, replacing easier to monitor locations such as shopping malls, schools, bus stations and parties. Children and youth are particularly vulnerable to being lured this way.

Anti-trafficking advocates argue that human trafficking exists because there is a demand for cheap goods, cheap labour, and the provision of sexual services. “Push factors” include poverty, gender inequality, lack of opportunity and education, political unrest, and unemployment.“Pull factors” include globalization of the economy, the demand for cheap goods and services, and new communications technologies. Trafficking in human beings is not new. Slavery, servitude, forced labour and other similar practices have existed for thousands of years. In the last two decades however, changing conditions around the world have led to a global increase in human trafficking, mainly of women and girls.