Title: Who Are Human Traffickers? | Human Rights First
Headings: Who Are Human Traffickers?
June 10, 2014
Who Are Human Traffickers?
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Human Trafficking: Defining the Phenomenon
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The Business of Trafficking
The Exploiters
Case Examples
The Enablers
Human Rights First’s Campaign

Content: Traffickers profit from this practice by controlling their victims and exploiting them for labor and/or sex. Under U.S. law, human trafficking is defined as “sex trafficking 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,” or “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.” Human trafficking can involve transnational recruitment of victims who are then transported across borders into another country where they are exploited for labor and/or sex. Human trafficking can also occur domestically, where little or no transportation is involved in recruitment and exploitation of victims. Download
The Business of Trafficking
Human trafficking is the second largest criminal enterprise in the world, earning exploiters more than $150 billion each year, according to a report released by the International Labor Organization in May 2014. With the potential of high monetary rewards with very low risk of punishment, the business of human trafficking has been steadily growing. Profits from human trafficking have more than tripled over the past decade alone. Traffickers range from small-time, solo operators to loose networks of criminals, to highly sophisticated criminal organizations that operate internationally. According to trafficking expert Louise Shelley, “Traffickers choose to trade in humans … because there are low start-up costs, minimal risks, high profits and large demand. For organized crime groups, human beings have one added advantage over drugs: