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 Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso is a country of origin, transit, and destination for persons, mostly children, subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. The Government of Burkina Faso provided data from the Ministry of Social Action showing that, in 2009, security forces and regional human trafficking surveillance committees intercepted 788 children Burkinabe and foreign children, 619 of whom were boys, destined for exploitation in other countries, principally Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and Niger. Child trafficking victims who remain inside Burkina Faso are usually found in large cities such as Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso, Nouna, and Hounde. Child victims face conditions of forced labor or services as plantation and mining hands, laborers on cocoa farms, domestic servants, beggars recruited as pupils by unaccredited Koranic schools, or captives in the prostitution trade. To a lesser extent, traffickers recruit Burkinabe women for nonconsensual commercial sexual exploitation in Europe. Women from neighboring countries like Nigeria, Togo, Benin, and Niger migrate to Burkina Faso on the promise of respectable work, but are subjected to forced labor in bars or forced prostitution.