Lucine Kasbarian
Sexual slavery, forced labor and the extraction of body organs: These are the most common reasons for human trafficking, which represents an estimated $32 billion per year in international trade.
In 2008, the United Nations estimated that nearly 2.5 million people from more than 125 different countries were being trafficked into some 135 countries around the world.
According to the International Organization for Migration, sex trafficking means coercing a migrant into a sexual act as a condition of allowing or arranging the migration. Sex trafficking uses physical or sexual coercion, deception, abuse of power and bondage incurred through forced debt. Trafficked women and children, for instance, are often promised work in the domestic or service industry but, instead, are sometimes taken to brothels where they are forced into prostitution, and their passports and other identification papers are confiscated. They may be beaten or locked up and promised their freedom only after earning – through prostitution – their purchase price and their travel and visa costs.
Vulnerable populations in former Soviet states, such as Armenia, are particularly susceptible to this global phenomenon. Since Armenia’s independence, thousands of Armenian women and girls have been taken -- to Russia, Turkey, and some Arab states of the Persian Gulf -- to be initiated into prostitution.
