This book focuses on the global sex trade. Based on hundreds of interviews with victims in brothels and shelters, families of victims, brothel owners, men who purchased sex, NGO workers, police officers and attorneys, the author’s condemnation of trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation is clear through the countless stories of the “slaves” he encountered while carrying out research in Albania, the Balkans, India, the Greater Mekong Subregion, Moldova, Nepal, the former Soviet Union, the United States and Western Europe. Each chapter is devoted to emotive stories of women and girls trafficked into the sex industry, child labour and debt bondage. More often than not, the victims are presented as naïve, childlike, innocent and uninformed, thus reinforcing the dominant discourse of what constitutes a trafficked victim.
What is different about this book is the author’s focus on the business side of the sex trade and his recognition that people are involved in trafficking to make a profit. He argues that the pervasiveness of trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation is a direct result of the vast profits derived from the sexual exploitation of women and girls. The author discusses both the supply and demand side of trafficking in persons and argues that the best short-term tactic to combat the problem is to attack its immense profitability by making the risk of operating a sex slave operation far more costly. To address the business of trafficking for sexual exploitation in the long term, he argues that the primary conditions that give rise to the phenomenon — poverty and the inequalities of economic globalization — must be addressed. Throughout the book, a number of solutions, ranging from a better-paid anti-trafficking police force to community vigilance, are suggested. In the concluding chapter, the author presents a framework for abolition, which is based on the creation of an extra-governmental Coalition of Freedom dedicated to abolishing all forms of trafficking in persons and slavery.
