Crime Reduction Toolkits

Trafficking of People

What is Trafficking?

The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (2000) to which the UK is a signatory includes the following comprehensive and widely accepted definition of trafficking.

Definition of trafficking in human beings from the UN Protocol, 2000

For the purposes of this protocol:

(a) ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, or abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments of benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purposes of exploitation.

   Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of 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.

   The consent of the victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in paragraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used.

(b) The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article.

(c) ‘Child’ shall mean any person under eighteen years of age.

For practical purposes it is important to understand the difference between trafficking and smuggling, to appreciate the extent of coercion and deception to which the victim may be subjected, and to understand the different types of exploitation the victims may suffer.