Over the last fifteen years, ever-increasing public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and modern slavery. This attention has been converted into action as pressure from international advocates has generated new international norms and policies. Advocacy within the United States has resulted in new domestic legislation. Subsequent pressure from the U.S. government has resulted in new legislation abroad, as well as extensive funding of projects intended to prevent trafficking, protect trafficked individuals, and prosecute perpetrators.

Action on the part of the United States has also generated a range of criticism, from both human rights advocates and scholars...

Over the last decade, the various practices that fall under the rubric of contemporary slavery have generated a level of public interest that has not been matched since early twentieth-century campaigns against both “white slavery” and forced labor in the Congo Free State. Numerous governments have recently drafted new anti-slavery (mostly anti-trafficking) laws. Some legislatures have even established specialized anti-slavery agencies and taskforces. Various reports have been drafted, additional protocols and procedures have been established, and a range of rehabilitation schemes and training programs have been introduced. These official activities have followed in the wake of a remarkable change in...

The trafficking of persons across borders for sexual, labor, and other forms of exploitation is a subject that has captured the attention of international organizations, activists, and policy makers that range the ideological spectrum. A 2000 United Nations Protocol established guidelines on how nations should combat trafficking and assist victims. In the same year, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act became law in the United States with near unanimous support, establishing the first and most aggressive effort to date in the punishment of traffickers, protection for victims, and prevention programs (Stolz 2007; Wyler, Siskin, and Seelke 2009). Since then, new anti-trafficking...

Over the last decade, international humanitarian campaigns and policy have begun to address the horrific and increasing transnational sexual exploitation of women and children. While this is a welcome development, it is too often based on a distorted understanding of trafficking, violence, and globalization. Sexualized, individualistic myths regarding trafficking limit appropriate attention and response to victims of a wide range of globalized exploitation and coercion—including the intended beneficiaries of anti-trafficking efforts.

The fight against slavery is seen as the first international human rights movement, but the persistence and revival of this ancient evil shows that in an era of...

Once an invisible issue, the problem of human trafficking has captured public and political attention over the past decade, as evidenced by the many books, films, and college courses that today speak to the subject, as well as the myriad anti-trafficking laws and policies that are now in place at the national and international levels. This is a development welcomed by activists around the world who have struggled to bring international visibility to exploitative labor conditions associated with globalization. But, as Alison Brysk observes, the implementation of anti-trafficking efforts has also become a “relatively easy way [for states] to enact...

Both domestic violence and trafficking in humans pose serious problems worldwide. However, there are differences in the ways in which similarly abused battered immigrant women and trafficked immigrant women are treated by governmental agencies in Greece and in the United States. Trafficking in humans has been securitized worldwide, rather than treated as a human rights violation—that is, framed as an issue linked to international security risk. As a result, countries that do not take legal action to stop human trafficking could face U.S. sanctions such as loss of U.S. military and economic assistance. Under significant international pressure, in 2002...

In July 1999, the United Nations deployed the Kosovo Protection Force (KFOR) to protect ethnic Albanians in the war-torn province of Serbia. With the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1244, approximately 20,000 UN troops were deployed to Kosovo to protect the civilian population from daily skirmishes between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Within months, several international human rights organizations began reporting precipitous increases in trafficking for sexual exploitation in the region. An Amnesty International report released in August 2004 reported that human trafficking rings were abducting women from Eastern Europe to be sold...

How can global governance contribute to a human rights approach to human trafficking? As the number of international organizations (IOs) has expanded in the post–World War II period, so, too, has their role in global governance. The World Health Organization plays a key role in arresting the spread of infectious disease around the globe. The International Monetary Fund rescues states with loans when they are in danger of economic collapse, and the United Nations (UN) deploys troops to conflict zones to maintain international peace and security. Yet, for all of their positive contributions, we lack an understanding of all...

There is a strong basis for the argument that freedom from slavery is a universal right, as it is protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 as well as numerous subsequent treaties that have been ratified widely. Yet in practice, contemporary forms of slavery are widespread, and despite international and state-based action, NGO pressure, and increasing criminal proceedings against employers, the consistent violation of freedom from slavery raises the question: What makes governments reluctant or incapable to protect this right effectively within and across their own borders?

Human rights discourse is traditionally divided over the role of nation-states...

Until the turn of the present century, the phenomenon of trafficking was of only vague and incidental interest to states and the international community. The traditional concept of trafficking was, by today’s standards, extremely narrow: it was generally accepted that only women and children could be trafficked and then only for commercial sexual exploitation. Few states considered themselves directly affected, and at the international level, discussions on trafficking were confined to the margins of the UN human rights system. The changes that have taken place over the last decade are truly astonishing. Trafficking is now the subject of a strong...

How we end slavery is the 27-million-person question. What does the rethinking of this volume tell us about how to end slavery and trafficking—and how can we integrate this with the knowledge and practice of the anti-slavery movement in the field? In this volume, the contributions rethinking the roots of trafficking suggest we must address interlocking dynamics of domination: gender, consciousness, political economy, and international relations.

When we look at what supports slavery around the world, things seem a little discouraging. Apparently all we have to do is end world poverty, stop all corruption, keep people from being greedy,...