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Kara, Siddharth. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009

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Notes

  1. This is somewhat controversial as current international law is not clear as to the relationship between slavery and human trafficking. See, for example, the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, no. 25965/04, ECHR 2010.

  2. This distinction is often missed by lawmakers and scholars alike. For example, both the UN and US definitions of human trafficking place an emphasis on the process of acquisition, recruitment, and transportation of individuals and pay less attention to their ongoing exploitation. This inattentiveness permeates into the public discourse and law enforcement prioritization, which tend to conflate human trafficking with illegal migration and smuggling.

  3. While this book focuses on trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, Kara also interviewed over 200 victims of other forms of slavery, such as bonded labor and forced labor. Data from these interviews were used to estimate the overall extent of slavery, and Kara hopes to bring them to the forefront in his upcoming publications.

  4. The often cited estimate of 600,000–800,000 annual trafficking victims (United States Department of State 2004) only takes into account individuals who have been transported across international borders. This huge discrepancy serves to exemplify the importance of Kara’s distinction between slavery and the trade in slaves, as discussed earlier.

  5. The others are in other forms of bonded labor or forced labor (18.1 and 9.1 million, respectively).

  6. For example, p. 62 contains some statistics that illustrate the socioeconomic conditions in the Indian village of Bihar, with no apparent source. Endnote 2 in p. 271 contains unreferenced data on HIV rates in India.

References

  • Bales K (1999) Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif.

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  • Belser P, de Cock M, Mehran F (2005) ILO Minimum Estimate of Forced Labour in the World. International Labor Organization (ILO), Geneva

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  • United States Department of State (2004) Trafficking in Persons Report. U.S. Department of State publication. Office of the Under Secretary for Global Affairs, Washington, DC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law, Policy, and Society, Northeastern University, 330 Holmes Hall, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Noam Perry

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  1. Noam Perry
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Correspondence to Noam Perry.

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Perry, N. Kara, Siddharth. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery . Hum Rights Rev 12, 401–403 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-011-0192-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-011-0192-0

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