Migrant sex work
Sex work and sex trafficking conflation is also a heavily debated legal topic. Several scholars argue that existing legal provisions aimed at combating human trafficking, such as the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, do not adequately account for the variety of sex worker conditions and contexts, voluntary or involuntary. For instance, Filipina hostesses who migrate to Japan to work as entertainers must give up their legal documents to their recruiters during the migration process. While the law considers the process of giving up a passport to a third party intermediary as a condition of human trafficking, several scholars, activists, and the sex workers themselves do not regard this to be human trafficking, particularly when individuals consent to this component of the migration process.
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.