What Is Human Trafficking? A Review Essay H uman trafficking is a major international policy concern of the twentyfirst century. Although human trafficking is often confused with human smuggling and migration, given that these practices also involve the movement of persons, there are important differences between them. The United Nations "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime" (otherwise known as the Palermo Protocol) defines "trafficking in persons" as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation." 1 In short, the defining traits of trafficking are, first, the transportation of a person; second, force, fraud, or coercion; and, finally, exploitation. By this definition, the consent of a person is irrelevant. In contrast, the United Nations Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air accounts for consent in its definition of human smuggling. The body has clarified that the "smuggling of migrants" is "the procurement. .. of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident." 2 Simply put, the legal violation under human smuggling pertains to the illicit crossing of nation
