Basic Definitions for the Study of Contemporary Slavery and Human Trafficking*
Slavery:
state of control of one person over another through violent means; lack of
payment beyond subsistence; and theft of labor that results in economic gain
for the enslaver.
Sex Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation,
provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.
Commercial Sex Act: any sex act on account of which anything of value is
given to or received by any person.
Involuntary servitude: any condition of servitude induced by means of (a)
any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that, if the
person did not enter into or continue in such condition, that person or another
person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or (b) the abuse or
threatened abuse of the legal process.
Debt bondage: the status or condition of a debtor arising from a
pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or of whose of a person
under his or her control as a security for debt, if the value of those services
as reasonably assessed is not applied toward the liquidation of the debt or the
length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined.
Coercion:
(a) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; (b)
any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure
to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against
any person; or, (c) the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
*The definitions in this section are from the United
States State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report 2003.
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