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."
Sex tourism
Oppositions to sex tourism also stem from concerns around the trafficking of women. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime targets the trafficking of women and children as a central concern in their approach to transnational crime. The United Nations Global Report on Trafficking in Persons states that women "comprise the vast majority" of human trafficking victims for sexual exploitation across the world. They also note that women make up a relatively large portion of human trafficking offenders—about 30% of convicted human traffickers are women. Samarasinghe argues that women who become involved in human trafficking were once victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation themselves. The only way for these women to gain economic security and freedom is therefore to participate in the trafficking system as well. These factors all contribute to the debate on human rights and their relations with sex tourism. In "The Prostitution of Sexuality", Barry argues that the growing sex tourism industry reflects a global increase in sexual exploitation, and a lack of concern for the rights and dignity of sex workers. Barry states that sex tourism, as well as the growing international porn industry, indicate a normalization of prostitution and an increase in the exploitation of women. Additionally, Barry argues that sex tourism and prostitution directly contribute to gender inequality, and that general feminist political action should be expanded to include active opposition to prostitution.