Migrant sex work
Whether or not human trafficking and migrant sex work should be considered the same concept has been a contentious debate among feminist activists, government officials, scholars, and religious organizations for the past 15 years. This debate currently dominates much of the public discussion surrounding human trafficking and sex work. On one side of the debate are anti-prostitution activists who conflate migrant sex work and human trafficking because they do not believe in voluntary prostitution or because they view any migration for the purpose of sex work as human trafficking. This perspective has largely dominated mainstream governmental and NGO perspectives toward human trafficking across international contexts. On the other side of the debate are pro-sex work academics and activists who argue for the separation of voluntary migrant sex work from involuntary human trafficking and a greater focus on labor and migration rights instead of trafficking. This group works for the recognition of the right of prostitutes to pursue sex work as a legitimate form of work, more flexible and open borders for migrants, and a greater focus on the spectrum of coercive labor conditions.
Human trafficking in Southeast Asia
Human trafficking, is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in their Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons document as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring 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.” This definition applies to harvesting of organs, slavery or forced labor, and sexual exploitation. According to an International Labour Organization (ILO) a report using a methodology based off national surveys reported, as recently as 2012, 20.9 million people were being held against their will in various forms of forced labor around the world. The majority of these laborers were women at 55% and males at 45%. According to Besler, annual profits from industries specializing in forced labor have averaged 44.3 billion dollars in 2005.