Sex trafficking
After members of Prostitutes Anonymous who were survivors of modern domestic sex trafficking spent 13 years doing TV, radio, public appearances, news interviews, etc. and calling out that this country needed to "'do something' about it" an internationally recognized definition for sex trafficking was finally established with the Trafficking Act of 2000. It was during the same year the Palermo Protocol was enacted, the United States passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) to clarify the previous confusion and discrepancies in regards to the criminalizing guidelines of human trafficking. Through this act, sex trafficking crimes were defined as a situation where in which a "commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age." If the victim is a child under the age of 18 no force, fraud, or coercion needs to be proven based on this legislation. Susan Tiefenbrun, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law who has written extensively on human trafficking, conducted research on the victims addressed in this act and discovered that each year more than two million women throughout the world are bought and sold for sexual exploitation. In order to clarify previous legal inconsistencies in regards to youth and trafficking, the United States took legal measures to define more varieties of exploitive situations in relation to children. The two terms they defined and focused on were "commercial sexual exploitation of children" and "domestic minor sex trafficking." Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is defined as "encompassing several forms of exploitation, including pornography, prostitution, child sex tourism, and child marriage." Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is a term that represents a subset of CSEC situations that have "the exchange of sex with a child under the age of 18, who is a United States (US) citizen or permanent resident, for a gain of cash, goods, or anything of value."
Human rights in East Asia
Human trafficking is unfortunately on the increase in Asian countries. Women and children appear to be the most vulnerable to become the victims of this black market trade. They are generally trafficked with the intention of being used for commercial sex, domestic work, and construction work. Children are also in demand for factory or farm work or in the entertainment sector. Trafficking amounts to a severe breach of human rights, victims are obviously forced into situations unwillingly, suffer physical and mental abuse and social stigmatization. Traffickers target families who are socioeconomically poor. Human trafficking in the area of Eastern Asia is a very serious problem, especially in Southeast Asia, and one of the region’s biggest human rights issues. Human trafficking is not just a problem in the Asian region, it appears to grow as a black market sector in areas that suffer from poverty, yet are also affected by globalisation, meaning many areas of the world are being affected by a rise in the trade. A mix of disadvantaged individuals placed underprivileged situations and manipulative people in a position of wealth and power create an environment for trafficking to develop. Many eastern nationals have attempted to take measures to end trafficking within their country by increasing security measures and imposing harsher penalties on traffickers, but so far attempts have been largely unsuccessful. In 2014 a study was conducted which established approximately two thirds of the victims of human trafficking were from the Asian region.