(Disclaimer: La Tonique Media LLC does not represent any political ideology. While we do not espouse any political beliefs, we do seek to provide a balance perspective by incorporating voices from both sides of the political spectrum.)

By Giulia Miraglia

Since 2008, the worst year for the number of human trafficking victims worldwide has been 2019, reaching 105,787 victims. According to the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, “trafficking in persons (TIP) shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power for the purpose of exploitation” (art. 3, a). The purposes (art.2) of the Protocol are to “prevent and combat human trafficking, paying attention to children and women” (paragraph a), “to protect and assist the victims with full respect to their human rights” (paragraph b) and “to promote cooperation among State Parties to meet those objectives” (paragraph c).

Sex trafficking falls under human trafficking as a modern form of slavery, in which individuals perform commercial sex through coercion, fraud or the use of force. The sex industry has expanded over time, and it can involve sexual exploitation of persons – usually girls and women – including pornography, prostitution, sex tourism and other sexual services.

Trafficking in persons – as a transnational crime – does not regard just the sex industry, but it also includes forced labor. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, the first Federal Anti-Trafficking Law, amended by the Justice for Victims or Trafficking Act of 2015, includes an approach divided into three parts: to prevent the crime, protect the victims and prosecute the traffickers. Under this U.S. federal law, both sex and labor trafficking are criminalized.

The Bureau of Justice detected almost 1,900 suspects in the fiscal year 2015 – 39% for slavery, forced labor or sex trafficking, 32% for child pornography and 29% for transportation for illegal sex activity. In2019,11,500 human trafficking cases have been reported by the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 1,507 of which were in California and 1,080 in Texas.72% of the cases were characterized as Sex Trafficking,10,6% Labor Trafficking and4,4% Sex and Labor, and most of them had adult women as victims.

The sex industry is a market-driven criminal activity based on the principles of supply and demand. Purchasing commercial sex allows an increase in the demand for it and provides profits for traffickers. It has become a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide, and human trafficking cases are still increasing in the United States.

What can be a way to reduce or partially control sex trafficking? First, prohibiting the sex industry exacerbates every harm that sex workers are vulnerable to - such as abuse, violence, murder and exploitation by law enforcement officials. The fear of being arrested pevents sex workers from seeking justice for crimes against them. The myth that decriminalization of the sex trade may increase sex trafficking needs to be knocked down. 

Second, decriminalization is not legalization. The first means the removal of laws and regulations that allow prostitution to be treated like any other occupation. The second involves the direct regulation of sex work by the government – such as methods, zoning requirements and advertising restrictions. However, legalization may not have the same positive results of decriminalization which removes the prohibition against the sale of consensual sex among adults. Though legalization provides regulatory frameworks, it leaves space for underground sex trafficking to grow. Sex workers are persons who decide and choose sex work like any other profession, whereas trafficking victims are coerced or forced into the sex trade by traffickers or smugglers.

The researcher Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco asserts that decriminalizing sex work will reduce sex trafficking, empowering victims to come forward and denounce the crime without the fear of alerting the authorities of the abuse.

In 2016, Amnesty International called for decriminalizing sex work to protect  workers from harm, exploitation and coercion. Amnesty’s researchers find themselves against the main legal approaches applied to sex work throughout the world. Juno Mac, a sex worker and activist explained in an interesting TED Talk which model sex workers think would really fit for them and keep them safe for self-determination.

The first legal approach is the full criminalization adopted by half of the world including Russia, South Africa and most of the U.S., criminalizing every actor involved without distinction – the seller, the buyer and third parties. The fear of getting arrested should deter people from selling sex; instead, this approach has not been successful.  The second approach, adopted in UK and France, is a partial criminalization or indirect criminalization, where buying and selling sex is legal, but the surrounding activities of brothel-keeping or soliciting on the street is banned. Here, sex workers run the risks to work alone, making them vulnerable to violence. The third approach is the Swedish and Nordic model of sex-work law. The idea behind it is that selling sex could be harmful and the aim is to end the demand. However, there is no evidence that the Swedish model has succeeded in decreasing levels of sex work. Instead, it has resulted in increased difficulties and danger associated with sex work.

The fourth model is the legalization of sex work, adopted in Germany, the Netherlands and Nevada in the U.S., but sex workers do not have the same rights as other workers. In state-controlled sex work, regulations sound great, but politicians usually make the applications expensive and difficult to comply with. In this way, two systems emerge as “backdoor criminalization:” the legal and illegal work.

The way to decrease human trafficking is to follow the full decriminalization of sex work starting to consider it as another normal work. Preventing this crime requires addressing and resolving the causes of marginalization that create vulnerable communities. Punitive laws that prevent people from reporting abuse and exploitation to the authorities should be removed to provide workers more legal protection and to decriminalize and destigmatize sex work. Recognizing and improving sex workers’ human and health rights means doing the same for those who are trafficked into the sex trade. The United Nations Office of the High Commission for Human Rights recommends guidelines regarding the promotion and protection of human rights whose violations are both a cause and a consequence of trafficking in persons. States should consider (Guideline 1) ensuring that anti-trafficking laws, policies and programs do not affect the right of trafficked persons (6) and establishing mechanisms to monitor the human rights impact of the previously mentioned interventions (7).

About New Zealand

New Zealand decriminalized sex work in2003, and safety workers are guaranteed through employment and human rights legislation. Since then, sex workers have experienced greater health conditions and better relations with law enforcement.

Sex work and sex trafficking are two interrelated phenomena. Decriminalization of sex work may make everyone safer, reducing the number of people trafficked and helping victims to make their voices heard publicly.

Giulia is a political writer for La Tonique. You can follow Giulia on Twitter ⁦@gm_miraglia⁩.