Human trafficking
The problems against anti-trafficking raids are related to the problem of the trafficking concept itself, as raids' purpose of fighting sex trafficking may be conflated with fighting prostitution. The Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA) gives state and local law enforcement funding to prosecute customers of commercial sex, therefore some law enforcement agencies make no distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. One study interviewed women who have experienced law enforcement operations as sex workers and found that during these raids meant to combat human trafficking, none of the women were ever identified as trafficking victims, and only one woman was asked whether she was coerced into sex work. The conflation of trafficking with prostitution, then, does not serve to adequately identify trafficking and help the victims. Raids are also problematic in that the women involved were most likely unclear about who was conducting the raid, what the purpose of the raid was, and what the outcomes of the raid would be.
Human trafficking in Nepal
Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, second to drug dealing and tied with arms dealing. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking is the acquisition of people by improper means such as deception, force, or fraud, with the goal of exploiting them. All countries are affected as source or destination countries or a combination of both, although developing countries tend to be source countries for developed nations.
According to a conservative estimate by the International Labour Organization, around 2.4 million people—overwhelmingly women and girls—are currently in forced labor as a result of trafficking, creating a 32 billion USD industry worldwide. Annually, approximately 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked across national borders around the world, 80 percent of whom are women and girls. Around 1.2 million victims of trafficking are minors: around 43% are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation while 32% are for involuntary servitude, and 25% for a mixture of both. Nepali victims are trafficked within Nepal, the Middle East, and even Europe plus other areas such as Malaysia and forced to become prostitutes, domestic servants, beggars, factory workers, mine workers, circus performers, child soldiers, and others.