Sex Trafficking Summary

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Last week, Michele Anderson from Covenant House Toronto gave us a presentation about her work at the organization in regards to sex trafficking and exploitation. Covenant house is Canada’s largest homeless youth agency that helps 3000 young people annually (Anderson, 2016). They provide a 24/7 crisis shelter, transitional houses and many other services (Anderson, 2016). Much of their work focuses on sex trafficking victims, and providing services to them (Anderson, 2016). One of the services that they provide that Michele discussed was crisis beds, which are only designated for sex trafficking victims that are making an effort to leave the situations that they are currently in (Anderson, 2016). Michele, also discussed a case involving two …show more content…
Commercial sex and non-commercial sex are both forms of sex trafficking (Mattar, 2006) Commercial sex refers to prostitution, sexually-orientated performances, sex tourism and pornography (Mattar, 2006). Global sex trafficking can be conceptualized as organized and ‘industrialized’ (Hughes, 2008). Hughes, also discusses how the state plays a role in this, as the act of legalizing prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, passively contributes to the demands for victims (2008). I both agree and disagree with these statements. Global sex trafficking can be regarded as informally institutionalized, by this I mean that there are avenues in which exploitation occurs and resides within the formation of the State, but it is not a direct by-product of state policy, for example I believe that legalizing prostitution would partially take away the exploitation factor that occurs by being tied to a trafficker or ‘pimp’ rather than increase the demand for …show more content…
The 3 P’s – prevention, protection and prosecution, alongside the 2 R’s – report and rescue are central to the victim-centered approach (Hughes, 2008). Michele also discussed how the 3 P’s and 2 R’s are center to her work in order to help victims in the right way and give them the support they need. The perpetrator-centered approach, deals with the deceptions, motivations, activities and the profits of a perpetrator (Hughes, 2008). It targets the investigation and prosecution of traffickers (Hughes, 2008). An aspect that links these two approaches together is the dynamics of supply and demand (Hughes, 2008), this includes the demand for sex workers, as well the individuals that are the consumers of commercial sex (Hughes, 2008). Although both the victim-centered and perpetrator-centered approaches are extremely vital to the fight against human trafficking, there needs to be an assessment into the systemic/personal background issues that produces the ‘supply’ aspect, in terms of the women that are trafficked. For example, an analysis into how the ongoing legacy of colonialism (Grant, 2016), renders Indigenous women to be at a high risk to being trafficked, due to systemic racism, poverty, poor housing, and limited education among other issues (Grant, 2016), can be targeted in such a way that understand the layers of vulnerabilities, decreases

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