“International airline seeks striking hostess to greet passengers. Meet new people, see the world and earn a stable income!”–appears innocent enough until an impoverished and unaware applicant with apparently nothing to lose is employed from her home country and who arrives at her destination only to be coerced into prostitution. According to an estimate by the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are at any given time, 2.4 billion people in the world involved in forced labour and subjected to exploitation as a result of trafficking (ILO 2008). As the world “shrinks” and evolves towards global community, the transfer of people both forced and voluntary is becoming more widespread. Globalization and regional integration have contributed to human trafficking becoming the fastest growing and the third most widespread criminal activity in the world after weapons and drug trafficking. The focus of the paper is not just to say how much the flesh trade is occurring, but how forms of it are changing. The flesh trade has been a wide-spread industry for a long time; but now with the globalization of transport and technology, it is becoming even more transnationalized. The problem is so far-reaching that every country in the world can be considered to be a country of origin, transit or destination. This paper examines the relationship between globalization and the flesh trade, why is it growing at a alarming rate worldwide, and what can be done by individual nations to control and stop this most surreptitious international crime.
Globalization, Trafficking, Prostitution, Sexual Exploitation, Human Rights
