Human Trafficking: Trade for Sex, Labor, and Organs

The last few decades have seen a huge increase in attention being paid to the trafficking of human beings, often referred to as modern-day slavery. A number of international and national policies and protocols have been developed and billions of dollars have been spent to combat the issue and protect trafficking victims. Yet it continues to flourish and human beings, both in the Global North and the Global South, continue to be degraded to the level of commodities, smuggled across borders for profit, trafficked for sex, labor, or their body parts.

Drawing upon feminist and human rights approaches to trafficking, this book links the worlds of policy, protocols, and social structures with the lived experience and conditions of trafficked people. Recognizing that trafficking for sex, labor, and body parts often overlap in a broader context shaped by poverty, violence, and shrinking access to rights, the authors offer a more thorough-going account of this social problem. Only by doing so can we understand the exploitative conditions that make people vulnerable to trafficking, and the progress - as well as gaps - in initiatives seeking to address it.