Human trafficking, defined as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel someone to perform labor or a commercial sex act, impacts millions of people in the United States and throughout the world.
The International Labor Organization estimates on any given day in 2021, 27.6 million people were experiencing forced labor and/or commercial sexual exploitation globally. The estimated global prevalence of human trafficking increased from 3.4 to 3.5 per 1,000 people between 2016 and 2021 driven entirely by the private economy. Although there is not a prevalence estimate of human trafficking within the United States, cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, on Tribal land, and within U.S. territories.
As a form of violence, human trafficking has adverse short- and long-term physical and behavioral health, developmental, and financial consequences, which can extend beyond the person directly impacted to families, communities, industries, and society.
Human Trafficking Defined
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and its subsequent reauthorizations recognize and define two primary forms of human trafficking:
Sex trafficking: The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(A)).
Labor trafficking: is 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 subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(B)).
For additional legal definitions, see 18 U.S.C. Chapter 77 (criminal definitions) and 19 U.S.C. § 1307 (includes customs definition of “forced labor”).
The term “commercial sex act” means any sex which anything of value is given to or received by any person. 22 U.S.C. § 7102(4). 18 U.S.C. § 1591 provides a criminal definition for sex trafficking that is similar to 22 U.S.C. § 7102(11); it prohibits the same acts in addition to enticing, advertising, or maintaining a person for the same purpose and through the same means.
Learn what you can do to help end human trafficking.
Voices of Freedom
Voices of Freedom is a collaborative initiative between OTIP, the Administration for Native Americans, and StoryCorps for people with lived experience and allied professionals to share their stories. The Voices of Freedom archive is a digital record of knowledge and experiences that can be used to inform future anti-trafficking work.
Quick Facts
- Human trafficking does not require any movement. People can be recruited and trafficked in their own communities and even within their own homes.
- Traffickers often hold positions of trust, such as family members, friends, romantic partners, employers, and job recruiters.
- Anyone can experience human trafficking. Traffickers seek out people with existing vulnerabilities, often promising a better life. Risk factors include a history of abuse or neglect, poverty, unemployment, and unstable living situations or homelessness.
- Under U.S. federal law, all commercial sex involving a minor is human trafficking, regardless of whether force, fraud, or coercion are involved. Commercial sex involving an adult is human trafficking if it occurs due to force, fraud, or coercion.
- Force, fraud, or coercion in sex or labor trafficking can include physical force, threats of violence, physical restraint, threats of serious harm, abuse of the law, threats to family members, restricted movement, isolation, withholding of identity documents, withholding drugs to cause withdrawal, debt manipulation, false promises of future wages, or threats to expose embarrassing behavior or images.
- People who experience trafficking may not seek help for a number of reasons, including shame, fear, self-blame, or instructions from traffickers on how to act when interacting with others. They may not recognize they have rights or identify as victims.
- People often stay in trafficking situations for complicated reasons. Some lack basic necessities, such as transportation or a safe place to live. Others fear for their safety or have been so manipulated that they no longer recognize they are being controlled.