An Introduction to Trafficking in the Americas

Intern at the Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of American States and the Women, Health and Development Program of the Pan American Health Organization 2001



“We came to the United States to find a better future, not to be prostitutes. . . . No woman or child would want to be a sex slave and endure the evil that I have gone through. I am in fear for my life more than ever. I helped put these evil men in jail. Please help me. Please help us. Please do not let this happen to anyone else.”

--Maria, trafficking survivor

The trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation is a high-profit, low-risk trade for those who organize it, but it is detrimental to the millions of women and children exploited in slavery-like conditions in the global sex industry. This trade, which UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called an outrage and a worldwide plague, is conducted throughout the world with near impunity, in many cases carrying penalties far less severe than drug trafficking. Though people often associate it with Eastern Europe or Asia, there is mounting evidence that the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation, with its concomitant human rights abuses and health consequences, is a significant problem in the Americas--one that promises to worsen unless collective action is taken. This paper is an introduction to trafficking in the Americas, offering a brief discussion of relevant issues.

The first international agreement on the definition of trafficking is found in the 2000 UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime: "trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, harbouring 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” (Trafficking Protocol, Article 3a). In this definition the term exploitation encompasses sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, servitude and removal of organs. However, this paper focuses on the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation, referring to the practice simply as trafficking or sex trafficking. The technical language can obscure the lives at the center of the issue--the millions of women and children preyed upon, abused, and prostituted in such appalling conditions that trafficking has been identified as a contemporary form of slavery.