Book Review Of Human Trafficking: Lit Review

Human Trafficking: Lit Review Human trafficking has existed for centuries. Throughout history, there have been recorded accounts of slave trade for labor and sex, even dating back to biblical times. In many historical instances, these forms of human trafficking were at one point or another considered legal (Grubb & Bennett, 2012; Europol, 2005). It has only been within the last few centuries that civilized societies have begun to center policies more around human rights, in an attempt to protect those who are vulnerable from being exploited, dehumanized, and degraded.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons…for the purpose of exploitation (“Human Trafficking”, Article 3, para.

It is estimated that probably 70% of people being trafficked are women (Clawson, Dutch, Solomon & Goldblatt-Grace, 2009). This is believed to be due to factors, such as; the global inequality of women, poverty, and lack of education (Anstadt 2013). In many situations, traffickers deceive their victims by offering them a better life. They prey on the most vulnerable, the most impoverished, and the most uneducated. They make false promises of finding their victims employment, better education, and an overall better standard of living. In many human trafficking situations, families living in poverty will sell their female members to a trafficker. The motives are not always just to make money to support the rest of the family. Often times, traffickers will promote themselves to the family as a marriage broker who will find husbands for the women in cases where the family resides in a country or culture that requires a family to pay a dowry that the family cannot afford due to poverty. Sometimes, the family believes and trusts that their female family members will have an opportunity for a better life (Collins