Types of Slavery and Bondage

READ THE STATE DEPARTMENTS BROCHURE ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Forced labor, including forced child labor, encompasses the range of activities – recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining – involved when a person uses force or physical threats, psychological coercion, abuse of the legal process, deception, or other coercive means to compel someone to work. Once a person’s labor is exploited by such means, the person’s previous consent or effort to obtain employment with the trafficker becomes irrelevant. Migrants are particularly vulnerable to this form of human trafficking, but individuals also may be forced into labor in their own countries. Likewise a child can be a victim regardless of where the nonconsensual exploitation occurs.  Some indicators of possible forced labor of a child include situations in which a child appears to be in the custody of a nonfamily member who requires the child to perform work that financially benefits someone outside the child’s family and does not offer the child the option of leaving. Female victims of forced labor, especially in domestic servitude, are often also sexually exploited.

Bonded Labor or Debt Bondage -  One form of coercion is the use of a bond or debt. U.S. law prohibits the use of a debt or other threats of financial harm as a form of coercion and the Palermo Protocol requires its criminalization as a form of trafficking in persons. Some workers inherit debt; others fall victim to traffickers or recruiters who unlawfully exploit an initial debt assumed as a term of employment.  Debt incurred by migrant laborers in their home countries, often with the support of labor agencies and employers in the destination country, can also contribute to a situation of debt bondage. Such circumstances may occur in the context of employment-based temporary work programs when a worker’s legal status in the country is tied to the employer and workers fear seeking redress.

Involuntary domestic servitude Involuntary domestic servitude is a form of human trafficking found in circumstances that create unique vulnerabilities for victims.  Domestic workplaces are informal (private residences), connected to off-duty living quarters, and often not shared with other workers.  Such an isolating environment is conducive to exploitation because authorities cannot inspect homes as easily as they can formal workplaces. Investigators and service providers also report cases of untreated illnesses and widespread sexual abuse, which in some cases may be symptoms of a situation of involuntary servitude.

Unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers The unlawful recruitment or use of children – through force, fraud, or coercion – by armed forces for combat or other forms of labor is a manifestation of human trafficking. Perpetrators may be government armed forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are unlawfully made to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls can be forced to marry or have sex with male combatants, but both male and female child soldiers are often sexually abused by armed groups.

Sex Trafficking When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution – or maintained in prostitution through one of these means after initially consenting – that person is a victim of trafficking.  Sex trafficking also may occur within debt bondage, as women and girls are forced to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful “debt” purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their crude “sale” – which exploiters insist they must pay off before they can be free. A person’s initial consent to participate in prostitution is not legally determinative: that person, if thereafter held in service through psychological manipulation or physical force, is a trafficking victim.

Child sex Trafficking When a child (under 18 years of age) is induced to perform a commercial sex act, it constitutes human trafficking regardless of whether there is any force, fraud, or coercion.  There are no exceptions to this rule: no cultural or socioeconomic rationalizations should prevent the rescue of children from sexual servitude. The use of children in the commercial sex trade is prohibited both under U.S. law and by statute in most countries around the world.

Is indentured servitude slavery? Before the Civil War, slaves and indentured servants were considered personal property, and they or their descendants could be sold or inherited like any other personalty. Like other property, human chattel was governed largely by laws of individual states.

Economic Tax Slavery -  If a society over taxes individuals, there becomes a degree of economic slavery.  100% tax is pure slavery. Any group or individual who is taxed and receives on benefits commuserate with the tax, is subjected to a form of slavery.