SEX WORK TOOLKIT

Understanding Sex Work

Human Trafficking

Sex Work is Not Human Trafficking

In recent years, many types of sexual exchange have been conflated with sex trafficking. When adult consensual sex work is conflated with human trafficking, sex workers experience harms and resources can be diverted away from actual cases of human trafficking. Therefore, it is important to differentiate sex work and youth sexual exploitation from human trafficking, as responses to these issues are dependent on how they are understood.

According to the United Nations, trafficking is defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.”(1) Sometimes, anti-trafficking campaigners will speak about trafficking as ‘modern-day slavery,’ but we caution against using this language, given that some seeking to criminalize sex work also refer to it as slavery, invoking the struggle to abolish slavery decontextualized from the struggle for Black liberation and reparations.(2)

Global economic forces play a role in trafficking. People who have few economic opportunities may have little choice but to migrate for work, which may lead to being trafficked. Canada, a wealthy nation known to provide social and economic opportunities, is a sought-after destination. While individuals may know that they are coming to Canada and may even know the kind of work they will engage in, control, threat, coercion, and isolation constitute human rights violations when they are used to exploit people in the context of human trafficking. Trafficking can also occur within Canada. In recent years, much attention has been paid to domestic human trafficking.

In Canada, six offences in the Criminal Code specifically address human trafficking. The Immigrant and Refugee Protection Act also contains a number of provisions against human trafficking.

There are many resources available to learn more about trafficking in BC, such as: 

 

(1) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-Trafficking/Human-Trafficking.html

(2) Robyn Maynard, https://thefeministwire.com/2015/09/blacksexworkerslivesmatter-white-washed-anti-slavery-and-the-appropriation-of-black-suffering/