How many prostitutes are trafficked

There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein's weapons.

In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been subjected to the same treatment as the restrained reports of intelligence analysts who studied Iraqi weapons — stripped of caution, stretched to their most alarming possible meaning and tossed into the public domain. There, they have been picked up by the media who have stretched them even further in stories which have then been treated as reliable sources by politicians, who in turn provided quotes for more misleading stories.

In both cases, the cycle has been driven by political opportunists and interest groups in pursuit of an agenda. In the case of sex trafficking, the role of the neo-conservatives and Iraqi exiles has been played by an unlikely union of evangelical Christians with feminist campaigners, who pursued the trafficking tale to secure their greater goal, not of regime change, but of legal change to abolish all prostitution.

The sex trafficking story is a model of misinformation. It began to take shape in the mid s, when the collapse of economies in the old Warsaw Pact countries saw the working flats of London flooded with young women from eastern Europe. Soon, there were rumours and media reports that attached a new word to these women.

They had been "trafficked". And, from the outset, that word was a problem. On a strict definition, eventually expressed in international law by the Palermo protocol, sex trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to transport an unwilling victim into sexual exploitation.

This image of sex slavery soon provoked real public anxiety. But a much looser definition, subsequently adopted by the UK's Sexual Offences Act, uses the word to describe the movement of all sex workers, including willing professionals who are simply travelling in search of a better income.

This wider meaning has injected public debate with confusion and disproportionate anxiety. Two academics from the University of North London, Liz Kelly and Linda Regan, tried to estimate the number of women who had been trafficked in the UK during the calendar year , an exercise which they honestly described as "problematic". First, there was the problem of the word, which Kelly and Regan solved by accepting all variations of its meaning. Then, there was the shortage of facts.

They spoke to specialists, studied news reports and surveyed police, who reported that 71 women had been "trafficked", whether willingly or not, during In Stopping Traffic, which they published in May , Kelly and Regan argued that the real scale of the problem was probably bigger than this and, in the absence of any accurate data, they made various assumptions which they themselves described as "speculative". At the very least, they guessed, there could be another 71 trafficked women who had been missed by police, which would double the total, to At the most, they suggested, the true total might be 20 times higher, at 1, But reaching this figure involved a further quadrupling of the number of victims missed by police, plus quadrupling existing estimates by sex health workers, plus assuming the accuracy of a newspaper report that "hundreds" of women had been trafficked into the UK from Albania and Kosovo, plus assuming that mail-order brides were also victims of trafficking, plus adding women who were transported within the UK as well as those brought into the UK.

Kelly and Regan were transparent and honest about the speculative character of their assumptions. They were clear about their adoption of the widest possible meaning of the term.

They presented their conclusion with caution: "It can be estimated that the true scale of trafficking may be between two and 20 times that which has been confirmed. And they presented their conclusion as a range of possibilities: "It is recognised that this is a wide range, but it indicates the likely scale of the problem while reflecting the poverty of information in this area.

During the following years, the subject attracted the attention of religious groups, particularly the Salvation Army and an umbrella group of evangelicals called Churches Alert to Sex Trafficking Across Europe Chaste. Chaste explicitly campaigned for an end to all prostitution and, quoting their commitment to the principles of the Kingdom of God, they were enlisted as specialist advisers to the police.

Chaste took the work of Kelly and Regan, brought the estimate forward by two years, stripped out all the caution, headed for the maximum end of the range and declared : "An estimated 1, women were trafficked into the UK in for the purposes of constrained prostitution. The misleading figure was repeated in news stories and adopted by politicians. Even the government's Crimestoppers campaign recycled it. And over and over again, the absence of a definition in the original work was replaced with the certainty that this was about women who were forced to work against their will.

Chaste spoke repeatedly about "sexual enslavement" and "sex slavery". Crunching these percentages into estimates of the number of foreign women in the various forms of sex work, they came up with an estimate of 3, women working against their will in the UK sex trade.

The researchers ringed this figure with warnings. Department of Justice. The largest number of people trafficked into the United States come from East Asia and the Pacific 5, to 7, victims. The next highest numbers come from Latin America and from Europe and Eurasia, with between 3, and 5, victims from each. Agency for International Development. Assessment of U. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

The United States government has taken steps to address trafficking both nationally and globally. Victims of trafficking are eligible for benefits through several government channels. In addition, non- governmental, community, and faith-based organizations around the country continue to provide a wide range of social services for both U. American citizens who are victims of domestic trafficking are eligible for social services such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies.

The services funded by these offices not only provide victims with the essentials for day to day living, but also the training and educational opportunities that will allow them to become self-sufficient in this country.

This file is provided for reference purposes only. Commercial sexual exploitation needs to be stopped. To effect change, we need to respond to the specific needs of both people in prostitution and human trafficking— and all those in between.

With the commitment of our team an our community, we can and will continue to help one survivor at a time. Kim is 16 years old, poor, in and out of school, no job, and wants to help her family survive. Michelle is 26 years old; also, poor, was once married at 17 and has five children.

Kim and Michelle are both affected by poverty and social exploitation. If the sex industry were a continuum; on one side are adult men and women who are knowing and willing participants in prostitution — whether through direct exploitation, because of poverty or abuse, or by choice, they use prostitution as a means for income.

The Elements of Prostitution and Human Trafficking. Elements of Sex Trafficking Act : Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons.

Elements of Prostitution Act: Sexual act or contact with another person in return for giving or receiving a fee or a thing of value. Means: To invite, entice, offer, persuade, or agree to engage in prostitution. Willing Participants in Prostitution Prostitution is another oftentimes difficult reality for millions globally.

What is UAHT doing about it? Prevention Programs. Direct Services. Follow UAHT. Contact Us contact uaht.