“Human trafficking” and “trafficking in persons” are umbrella terms used to refer to both sex trafficking and compelled labor.  Relevant U.S. and international law describe this compelled service using a number of different terms, including involuntary servitude, slavery or practices similar to slavery, debt bondage, or forced labor.

Human trafficking can include, but does not require, movement.  People may be considered trafficking victims regardless of whether they were born into a state of servitude, were exploited in their hometown, were transported to the exploitative situation, previously consented to work for a trafficker, or participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked.  At the heart of this phenomenon is the traffickers’ aim to exploit and enslave their victims and the myriad coercive and deceptive practices they use to do so.

Human trafficking deprives millions worldwide of their dignity and freedom.  It undermines national security, distorts markets, and enriches transnational criminals and terrorists, and is an affront to our universal values.   At-risk populations can face deceitful recruitment practices by those bent on exploiting them for labor or commercial sex. Meaningful partnerships between public and private sectors and civil society can expand awareness, leverage expertise, and facilitate creative solutions.  The Department of State leads the U.S. global engagement to combat human trafficking and supports the coordination of anti-trafficking efforts across the U.S. government.

The United States follows the widely used “3P” paradigm — prosecution, protection, and prevention — to combat human trafficking worldwide.  In addition, the Department of State employs a “4th P” — for partnership — as a complementary means to achieve progress across the 3Ps and enlist all segments of society in the fight against human trafficking.

Read more about what specific bureaus are doing to support this policy issue:

Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office): The TIP Office partners with foreign governments, international organizations, other federal agencies, civil society, the private sector, and survivors of human trafficking to combat human trafficking. It is responsible for bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, targeted foreign assistance, and public engagement on trafficking in persons. Read more about TIP Office

The Diplomatic Security Service (DSS): DSS serves as the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of State. Operating in over 270 U.S. embassies and consulates across more than 170 countries, DSS agents, investigators, and analysts are at the forefront of transnational criminal investigations, particularly concerning human trafficking cases with links to travel document fraud. According to the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, DSS is recognized as one of only four federal investigative agencies with significant responsibilities in counter-trafficking efforts. Increasingly, foreign law enforcement partners seek DSS’s assistance in their own anti-human trafficking initiatives.

DSS conducts investigations into hundreds of trafficking cases with a victim-centered and trauma-informed approach. To further this approach, special agents collaborate closely with DSS’s Victims’ Resource Advocacy Program, which offers counseling and aid in securing safe housing and medical care for victims. Read more about DSS.

from — Human Trafficking – United States Department of State. (2024, November 14). United States Department of State.

~ ~ ~

This appears to be a site from the U.S. State Department that is having “technical difficulties” – March 2, 2026

Understanding Human Trafficking

Fact Sheet
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
January 20, 2025

“Trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” are umbrella terms—often used interchangeably—to refer to a crime whereby traffickers exploit and profit at the expense of adults or children by compelling them to perform labor or engage in commercial sex.  When a person younger than 18 is used to perform a commercial sex act, it is a crime regardless of whether there is any force, fraud, or coercion involved.

The United States recognizes two primary forms of trafficking in persons:  sex trafficking and forced labor.  The basic meaning of these forms of human trafficking and some unique characteristics of each are set forth below, followed by several key principles and concepts that relate to all forms of human trafficking.

The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended (TVPA), defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:

• sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or
• the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

More than 180 nations have ratified or acceded to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the UN TIP Protocol), which defines trafficking in persons and contains obligations to prevent and combat the crime.

The TVPA and the UN TIP Protocol contain similar definitions of human trafficking.  The elements of both definitions can be described using a three-element framework focused on the trafficker’s 1) acts; 2) means; and 3) purpose:

• The “acts” element focuses on a trafficker recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining another person for labor, service, or commercial sex. The “acts” element for sex trafficking is also often met when the trafficker patronizes or solicits another person for commercial sex.
• The “means” element focuses on a trafficker’s use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel the other person to engage in labor, services, or commercial sex.
• The “purpose” element focuses on the perpetrator’s goal to exploit a person for labor, services, or commercial sex act.

A victim need not be physically transported from one location to another for the crime to fall within this definition.

Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking encompasses the range of activities involved when a trafficker uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person to engage in a commercial sex act or causes a child to engage in a commercial sex act.

Coercion in the case of sex trafficking includes a broad array of means, including threats of serious harm, psychological harm, reputational harm, threats to others, and debt manipulation.

Sex trafficking can take place in private homes, massage parlors, hotels, or brothels, among other locations, as well as on the internet.

Child Sex Trafficking

In cases where an individual engages in any of the specified “acts” with a child (younger than 18), the means element is irrelevant regardless of whether evidence of force, fraud, or coercion exists.  The use of children in commercial sex acts is prohibited by law in the United States and most countries around the world.

Forced Labor

Forced Labor, sometimes also referred to as labor trafficking, encompasses the range of activities involved when a person uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the labor or services of another person.

Traffickers’ coercive schemes can include threats of force, debt manipulation, withholding of pay, confiscation of identity documents, psychological coercion, reputational harm, manipulation of the use of addictive substances, threats to other people, or other forms of coercion.

There is no limit on the location or type of industry.  Forced labor can occur in any sector or setting, whether legal or illicit, including but not limited to agricultural fields, factories, restaurants, hotels, massage parlors, retail stores, fishing vessels, mines, private homes, or drug trafficking operations.

There are certain types of forced labor that are frequently distinguished for emphasis or because they are widespread:

Domestic Servitude

“Domestic servitude” is a form of forced labor in which the trafficker requires a victim to perform work in a private residence.  Such circumstances create unique vulnerabilities. Domestic workers are often isolated and may work alone in a house.  Their employer often controls their access to food, transportation, and housing.  What happens in a private residence is hidden from the world – including from law enforcement and labor inspectors – resulting in barriers to victim identification.  Foreign domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to abuse due to language and cultural barriers, as well as a lack of community ties.  Some perpetrators use these types of conditions as part of their coercive schemes to compel the labor of domestic workers with little risk of detection.

Forced Child Labor

The term “forced child labor” describes forced labor schemes in which traffickers compel children to work.  Traffickers often target children because they are more vulnerable.  Although some children may legally engage in certain forms of work, forcing or coercing children to work remains illegal under many countries’ laws.  Forms of slavery or slavery-like practices – including the sale of children, forced or compulsory child labor, and debt bondage and serfdom of children – continue to exist, despite legal prohibitions and widespread condemnation.  Some indicators of forced labor of a child include situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a non-family member and the child’s work financially benefits someone outside the child’s family or the denial of food, rest, or schooling to a child who is working.

Key Principles and Concepts

These key principles and concepts relate to all forms of trafficking in persons, including forced labor and sex trafficking.

Consent

Human trafficking can take place even if the victim initially consented to providing labor, services, or commercial sex acts.  A trafficker can target a victim after a victim seeks or applies for a job.  Even if the victim offered themselves voluntarily to perform work or services, if the work or services is no longer voluntary, the labor is forced. Likewise, in a sex trafficking case, an adult victim’s initial willingness to engage in commercial sex acts is not relevant where a perpetrator subsequently uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the victim and cause them to continue engaging in the same acts.  In the case of child sex trafficking, the consent of the victim is never relevant as a child cannot legally consent to commercial sex acts.

Movement

Neither U.S. law nor international law requires that a trafficker or victim move across a border for a human trafficking offense to take place.  Trafficking in persons is a crime of exploitation and coercion, and not movement.  Traffickers can use schemes that take victims hundreds of miles away from their homes or exploit them in the same neighborhoods where they were born.

Debt Bondage

“Debt bondage” is focused on human trafficking crimes in which the trafficker’s primary means of coercion is debt manipulation.  U.S. law prohibits perpetrators from using debts as part of their scheme, plan, or pattern to compel a person to work or engage in commercial sex.  Traffickers target some individuals with an initial debt assumed willingly as a condition of future employment, while in certain countries traffickers tell individuals they “inherited” the debt from relatives.  Traffickers can also manipulate debts after the economic relationship begins by withholding earnings or forcing the victim to assume debts for expenses like food, housing, or transportation.  They can also manipulate debts a victim owes to other people.  When traffickers use debts as a means to compel labor or commercial sex, they often have committed a crime under the laws of the country where the conduct occurred.

The Non-Punishment Principle

A victim-centered and trauma-informed approach is key to successful anti-trafficking efforts. A central tenet of such an approach is that victims of trafficking should not be inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts they committed as a direct result of being trafficked. Effective implementation of the “non-punishment principle,” as it is increasingly referred to, requires not only recognizing and embracing the principle in regional and national laws but also increasing proactive victim identification.

State-Sponsored Human Trafficking

While the TVPA and UN TIP Protocol call on governments to proactively address trafficking crimes, some governments are part of the problem, directly compelling their citizens into sexual slavery or forced labor schemes.  From forced labor in economically important sectors, as part of government-funded projects or missions abroad, or as a method of punishment or discrimination, officials use their power to exploit their people.  To extract this work, governments coerce by threatening the withdrawal of public benefits, withholding salaries, failing to adhere to limits on national service, manipulating the lack of legal status of stateless individuals and members of minority groups, threatening to punish family members, or conditioning services or freedom of movement on labor or sex.  In 2019, Congress amended the TVPA to acknowledge that governments can also act as traffickers, referring specifically to a “government policy or pattern” of human trafficking, trafficking in government-funded programs, forced labor in government-affiliated medical services or other sectors, sexual slavery in government camps, or the employment or recruitment of child soldiers.

Unlawful Recruitment or Use of Child Soldiers

Another manifestation of human trafficking occurs when government forces or any non-state armed group unlawfully recruits or uses children – through force, fraud, or coercion – as soldiers or for labor or services in conflict situations.  Children are also used as sex slaves.  Sexual slavery, as referred to here, may occur when children are forced or coerced to “marry” or are raped by commanders or combatants.  Both male and female children are often sexually abused or exploited by members of armed groups and suffer the same types of devastating physical and psychological consequences associated with sex trafficking.

Accountability in the Private Economy

Forced labor is well documented in the private economy, particularly in agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, construction, and domestic work, but no sector is immune.  Sex trafficking occurs in several industries as well.  Forced labor is most well-known is the hospitality industry, but it also occurs in connection with extractive industries where activities are often remote and lack meaningful government presence.  Governments should hold all entities, including businesses, accountable for human trafficking.  In some countries, the law provides for corporate accountability in both the civil and criminal justice systems.  U.S. law provides for criminal culpability for any legal person, including business entities, for certain conduct related to human trafficking, and a civil cause of action for victims of such conduct.

Terminology

As noted in the 2021 report of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking (the Council), there are myriad terms survivors use to identify themselves. While some individuals who have experienced trafficking choose to embrace the title “survivor,” others do not. Terminology regarding human trafficking varies based on a country’s respective laws and language(s). The word “survivor” is not generally defined by law, nor is it universally used or accepted in the context of human trafficking.

Within the United States, there are some widely used terms for individuals who have experienced human trafficking and subsequently decided to engage in anti-trafficking related work on a professional level. Individuals may prefer to be referred to as “survivor leaders,” “survivor advocates,” or “subject matter experts with lived experience of human trafficking.”

Other important terms used in this introduction and in country narratives within this report include:

• Victim: In the United States, the term “victim” means a person who has suffered direct physical, emotional, or pecuniary harm as a result of the commission of a crime. As in the United States, in some other countries “victims” are expressly afforded certain rights and services to assist during and in the aftermath of the commission of that crime. For these reasons, country narratives within this report still make extensive use of this term. Adopting survivor and trauma-informed approaches should not conflict or compete with the provision of assistance entitled to victims.
• Victim-centered approach: Stakeholders place the crime victim’s priorities, needs, and interests at the center of their work with the victim; providing nonjudgmental assistance, with an emphasis on self-determination, and assisting victims in making informed choices; ensuring restoration of victims’ feelings of safety and security are a priority; and safeguarding against policies and practices that may inadvertently re-traumatize victims. A victim-centered approach should also incorporate a trauma-informed, survivor-informed, and culturally competent approach.
• Survivor-informed approach: A program, policy, intervention, or product that is designed, implemented, and evaluated with intentional leadership, expertise, and input from a diverse community of survivors to ensure that the program, policy, intervention, or product accurately represents their needs, interests, and perceptions.
• Trauma-informed approach: A trauma-informed approach recognizes signs of trauma in individuals and the professionals who help them and responds by integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, practices, and settings and by seeking to actively resist re-traumatization. This approach includes an understanding of the vulnerabilities and experiences of trauma survivors, including the prevalence and physical, social, and emotional impact of trauma. A trauma-informed approach places priority on restoring the survivor’s feelings of safety, choice, and control. Programs, services, agencies, and communities can be trauma-informed.
• Culturally competent approach: Cultural and linguistic competence enables effective work in cross-cultural situations, by having the capacity to function effectively as an individual and an organization within the context of the cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs presented by consumers and their communities.