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United Nations

Glossary

"Human Trafficking" as a term has only recently been used from a historical perspective. This term, as we know it today, stems from the legal, internationally recognized term “trafficking in persons”. This glossary serves as a foundation and resource for review before moving into other areas of the project. Once you are familiar with these terms and how they differ from each other, the following documents and your journey through the history of human trafficking in the twentieth century will become easier to interpret and understand.

 

Note: The glossary terms are not limited to the 20th-century as meanings change over time and are used in various capacities. Providing a flexible timeline in the following definitions is essential to understand the rest of the project's content.

Human Trafficking

N. - "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit" (first documented use 1904) (Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime).

Sex Trafficking

N. - "the illegal business of recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining, or providing a person and especially a minor for the purpose of sex" (Source: Merriam Webster).

Labor Trafficking

N. - "the illegal business of engaging in forced labor" (Source: Merriam Webster).

Trafficking in Persons

N. - "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, 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 (...)

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation" (Source: United Nations).

Exploitation

N. - "the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs" (Source: United Nations).

Sextortion

N. - "extortion in which a perpetrator threatens to expose sexually compromising information (such as sexually explicit private images or videos of the victim) unless the victim meets certain demands" (first documented use 1949) (Source: Merriam-Webster).

Sexual Exploitation

N. - "actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, power, or trust, for sexual purposes, including, but not limited to, profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another" (Source: World Health Organization).

Sexual Abuse

N. - "actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature, whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions" (Source: World Health Organization).

Child Sex Trafficking

N. - "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation.  A child is a victim of sex trafficking, for example, when they are induced to engage in prostitution or the making of pornography for the benefit of a third party, without regard to the use of force, fraud or coercion by that third party" (Source: Foreign Affairs Manual).

Child Sexual Exploitation

N. - "generally defined as involving a child in a sexual act for commercial gain. Examples include child pornography, child sex trafficking, sextortion, the live streaming of child sexual abuse, and child sex tourism" (Source: Foreign Affairs Manual).

White Slave

N. - "a woman or girl held unwillingly for purposes of commercial prostitution" (first documented use 1870) (Source: Merriam-Webster).

White Slave Traffic

N. - "the transportation in foreign commerce of alien women and girls for purposes of prostitution and debauchery" (first documented use in 1910) (Source: White Slave Traffic Act).

Debauchery

N. - "extreme indulgence in bodily pleasures and especially sexual pleasures : behavior involving sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. that is often considered immoral" (first documented use 1642) (Source: Merriam-Webster).

Forced or Compulsory Labour

N. - "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily" (first defined in 1930) (Source: International Labor Organization).

Modern Slavery

N. - "comprised of two principal components – forced labour and forced marriage. Both refer to situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or cannot leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power" (Source: International Organization for Migration).

Traffic

N. - "import and export trade; the business of bartering or buying and selling; illegal or disreputable usually commercial activity" (Source: Merriam-Webster). 

Trafficking in Human Organs

N. - "(i) Removal of organs without free, informed and specific consent;

(ii) Removal of organs for financial gain or comparable advantage;

(iii) Implantation or other use of illicitly removed organs;

(iv) Preparation, preservation, storage, transportation, transfer, receipt, import and export of such illicitly removed organs; 

(v) Illicit solicitation or recruitment of organ donors or recipients; and

(vi) Offering and requesting of undue advantages to or by healthcare professionals or officials with a view to performing or facilitating such removal or implantation and other use; 

(vii) Attempting to commit or aiding or abetting the commission of any of these criminal acts" (Source: The Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons).

Trafficking in Persons
for Organ Removal

N. - "a person of vulnerability is exploited, deceived, coerced, or abused for the illicit use of their organ. The organ doesn’t even have to be removed for this crime to take place, since it is the trafficking of the person that is the crime" (Source: The Exodus Road).

Forced Marriage

N. - "a marriage with 1 or more elements of force, fraud, or coercion, and where 1 or both parties do not or cannot consent to the marriage (...) may occur when family members or others use physical or emotional abuse, threats, or deception to force you to marry without your consent (...) can be both a cause and a consequence of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking." (Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). 

Child Soldiering

N. - "(a manifestation of human trafficking as) the unlawful recruitment or use of children through force, fraud, or coercion by armed forces as combatants or other forms of labor." (Source: U.S. Department of State).

Domestic or Involuntary Servitude

N. - "a domestic worker is not free to leave his or her employment and is abused and underpaid, if paid at all" (Source: U.S. Department of State).

Debt Bondage, Bonded Labor, or Peonage

N.  - "the status or condition of a debtor arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of those of a person under his or her control as a security for debt, if the value of those services (as reasonably assessed) is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined" (Source: Victim of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act).

Force

N. / V. - "(A) the use of a weapon; (B) the use of such physical strength or violence as is sufficient to overcome, restrain, or injure a person; or (C) inflicting physical harm sufficient to coerce or compel submission by the victim" (Source: Uniform Code of Military Justice).

Fraud

N. - “consists of some deceitful practice or willful device, resorted to with intent to deprive another of his right, or in some manner to do him an injury. In the context of human trafficking, fraud often involves false promises of jobs or other opportunities” (Source: Combating Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) Program Management Office).

Coercion

N. – “(A) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; 
(B) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person;
(C) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process” (Source: TVPA, 2000).

Red Light District

N. - "denotes the part of a town or city in which prostitution and other commercial sexual activities are concentrated. This phrase refers to the use of a red light as a sign outside a brothel" (earliest documented use in 1869) (Source: Word Histories) .

Comfort Women

N. - "translated from the Japanese word ianfu. A euphemism for women who provided sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during Japan’s militaristic period that ended with World War II and who generally lived under conditions of sexual slavery" (Source: Britannica).

Comfort Station

N. - "the system of sexual slavery created and controlled by the Imperial Japanese government between 1932 and 1945. It is the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking and sexual slavery in modern history. Comfort stations were established first in Shanghai in 1932, then in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, Burma, East New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, French Indochina, and other regions" (Source: Association for Asian Studies).

Slavery
N. - "the practice of forced labor and restricted liberty. It is also a regime where one class of people - the slave owners - could force another - the slaves - to work and limit their liberty. Throughout history, some forms of slavery existed as punishment for committing crimes or to pay off debts” (Source: Cornell Law School).
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