Domestic servitude is the seemingly normal practice of live-in help that is used as cover for the exploitation and

control of someone, usually from another country. It is a form of forced labor, but it also warrants its own category of slavery because of the unique
contexts and challenges it presents.

Victims of domestic servitude may appear to be nannies or other domestic help, but the moment their employment arrangement transitions into a situation whereby they cannot leave on their own free will, it becomes a case of enslavement.

The circumstances of live-in help can create unique vulnerabilities for victims. Domestic workplaces are connected to off-duty living quarters and often not shared with other workers. Such an environment can isolate domestic workers and is conducive to exploitation because
authorities cannot inspect homes as easily as they can formal workplaces.

Domestic servitude can also be a form of bonded labor. This form of slavery happens when migrant workers reach a destination country, and they incur a debt for their travel and/or a recruitment fee. Though working, if their employer or recruiter adds on additional costs that can
never be repaid, like housing or food, then the arrangement has transitioned into a form of slavery. This problem is compounded when employers or recruiters neglect legal documentation or confiscate it because migrant domestic workers are often fearful of reporting the abuse for
fear of legal consequences.

Forced Marriage
Domestic servitude can also be linked to forced marriage. Forced marriage is a marriage without the consent of one or both parties, and the U.S. government considers forced marriage to be a violation of human rights. In the case of minors, its also a case of child enslavement.
Forced marriage is a mix of several forms of slavery, including forced labor, sexual enslavement and domestic servitude.
Domestic Servitude throughout the World
Forced domestic servitude occurs throughout the world. Migrant workers are often vulnerable to domestic servitude, and some recruiting agencies trick workers into moving abroad and then confiscate their documents. This leaves workers stuck inside a home with no power to walk
away. In many cases, these workers-turned-slaves are beaten by the families they serve and work from very early in the morning to late at night. Oftentimes, these individuals do not speak the language of the country they are in, are fearful of immigration officials or are unable to
make contact outside of the home they serve. Beatrice Fernandos story shows how this happens all throughout the world.

Forced domestic servitude is quite common in Haiti, whereby forced child servants are called restaveks. Restavek comes from the French rester avec, which means one who stays with. Haitian parents send their children to work and live with other families in exchange for better
care and educational opportunities. These children are forced to work as enslaved domestic servants, and there are hundreds of stories of these children facing extreme beatings and inhumane living conditions, while never receiving the promised care or education.
Domestic Servitude in the United States
Forced domestic servitude occurs in the United States too. There have been several cases of various legal and undocumented workers traveling to the U.S. under the pretense of real employment and then forced into enslavement. One example is the story of Maria and Sandra
Bearden of Laredo, Texas. In The Slave Next Door, we learn of Sandra, an upper-middle-class mother with a solid brick home and manicured lawn. She wanted a housemaid and nanny but didnt want to pay a lot for the services. She traveled to Mexico where she promised a set
of parents that shed provide an education for their daughter in the United States. She smuggled their daughter, Maria, into the U.S. and immediately imprisoned her in Texas. Sandra, currently serving a life sentence for trafficking in persons, sprayed Maria with pepper spray, hit
her with brooms and bottles and even sexually assaulted Maria with a gardening tool. Sandra even chained Maria to a pole in the backyard and fed her dog feces. An attentive neighbor finally saw Maria in the backyard and reported the crime to authorities.
Sex trafficking is a crime when women, men and/or children are forcefully involved in commercial sex acts. In the United States, any minor under the age of 18 engaged in commercial sex acts is automatically considered a victim of sex trafficking under the law.
Worldwide, it's estimated that there are 4.5 million victims of sex trafficking.

Worldwide, false promises are ways in which traffickers bait and enslave their victims both adults and minors. Indigenous populations and those who live in abject poverty are typically economically and politically marginalized; thus, most lack rights and access to basic services
such as education which make them particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking.

Many times, people from these communities are offered false employment opportunities in major cities. For example, men and boys are sent overseas to work in construction and agriculture but are also forced to perform commercial sex acts. Women and young girls may be
offered jobs as models, nannies, waitresses or dancers. Some traffickers operate under the guise of agencies that offer cross-country dating services. However, upon arrival, these individuals are abused, threatened and sold in the sex industry.

Often, traffickers keep victims under their control by saying that theyll be free after they pay their debt. The debt is supposedly incurred from the victims recruitment, transportation, upkeep or even their crude sale. Thus, sex trafficking may occur within debt bondage/bonded
labor. Victims of sex trafficking may eventually perform other functions, in addition to being forced sex workers. Some traffickers use sex trafficking victims to recruit or transport other victims.

As a result, when sex trafficking victims are caught, they might be detained and prosecuted for criminal activity (e.g., prostitution). However, a legal charge is only one area of concern. Sex trafficking has devastating consequences for the trafficked individual. Victims may suffer
from long-lasting physical and psychological trauma, disease (HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, malnutrition and social ostracism.

International Definition
Forced labor includes forced sexual services. The ILOs Forced Labor Convention defines forced labor as all work or service exacted from a person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily. The UNs Protocol to Prevent,
Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the Palermo Protocol) includes three elements in its definition: the act, the means and the object. Sex trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons who under
threat, force, coercion, fraud, deception or abuse of power are sexually exploited for the financial gain of another.
United States' Definition
Similarly, in the United States, sex trafficking involves three elements: the process, the means and the goal. The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act defines sex trafficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of an individual who
under force, fraud or coercion is induced to perform a commercial sex act. Note that sex trafficking does not have to have some form of travel, transportation or movement across borders. At the core, sex trafficking is characterized by sexual exploitation through force, fraud or
coercion. For children (anyone under 18 years old), consent is irrelevant, and the element of means (e.g., force) is not necessary (22 USC 7102).
Sex trafficking in the United States
The United States is a source, transit and destination country for sex trafficking victims. Trafficked men, women and children are typically taken to brothels, escort services, massage parlors, strip clubs or hotels and are prostituted on the streets or forced to participate in
pornography. Primary countries of origin for foreign victims in FY 2013 were Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, Honduras, Guatemala, India and El Salvador. Americans may also be trafficked within the U.S. or sent to other industrialized states such as the Netherlands, Germany
and Japan.

Trafficking and the Internet

Supply and demand have increased through the years partially due to the internet and the ease with which traffickers and customers can discreetly complete a transaction. Traffickers utilize social media, dating sites and online advertisements to market minors and trafficked
victims. Ads seemingly posted by a person willingly engaged in the sex trade are often created or monitored by traffickers. Traffickers lie about the victims age and may even disguise themselves as the person in the ad when communicating with johns via the internet or phone.
Some websites try to screen ads for trafficking; however, the sheer volume of ads makes this process a daunting task. For instance, when the U.S. Craigslist Adult Services Section was available, there were 10,000-16,000 adult services postings per day in the U.S. alone.
Additionally, its difficult to determine if the person advertising is independently working in the sex industry or is under a trafficker.
An estimated 20.9 million are victims of forced labor, a type of enslavement that captures labor and sexual exploitation. Forced labor is most like historic American slavery: coerced, often physically and without pay. All other categories of slavery are a subset of
forced labor and can include domestic servitude, child labor, bonded labor and forced sex. State authorities, businesses and individuals force coercive labor practices upon people in order to profit or gain from their work.

Not included in the International Labor Organizations (ILO) definition or their estimate of 20.9 million people trapped in forced labor are cases of trafficking for organ removal, forced or child marriages and forced adoptions.
Forced labor is the type of enslavement used across the world to produce many products in our global supply chains. The fishing, textile, construction, mineral and agriculture industries are particularly laced with forced laborers. The private economy businesses and individuals
seeking to create a profit exploits 90% of the worlds forced laborers, meaning that the desire to produce a profit is the largest motivating force behind the institution of slavery.

Many state and rebel governments also practice forced labor, with at least 2.2 million people worldwide in state-imposed forms of forced labor. When public governments exploit individuals bodies for their own gain, its a form of enslavement. It occurs in state prisons, in convict
leasing programs and in work imposed by military or rebel armed forces. Child soldiers fall into this category of enslavement.

International Definition
According to the ILOs Forced Labor Convention, forced or compulsory labor is all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily. Forced labor can include forced sexual services.
United States' Definition
Forced labor in the United States can include sex trafficking and/or labor trafficking since both utilize forced or compulsory labor under threat, fraud or coercion. Most often though, U.S. activists reference forced labor when speaking about labor trafficking since sex trafficking is a
separately defined crime.

According to the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purposes of subjection to involuntary
servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery (22 USC 7102).
Forced Labor in the United States
In the U.S., more foreign victims are found in labor trafficking than sex trafficking. Some of these labor trafficking victims entered the country under work or student-based visa programs. Victims can be targeted once they arrived in the U.S., or foreign recruiters may bring these
forced laborers to the U.S. using fraudulent or coercive means. Immigrants can be vulnerable to U.S.-based traffickers because of unfamiliarity with the English language, American customs or job processes.

Primary countries of origin for foreign victims certified by the U.S. government are Thailand, Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, India, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

Exploitative Working Conditions

Forced labor is different from sub-standard or exploitative working conditions found in some factories and employment opportunities worldwide. Victims of unfair or low wages - like those in sweatshops - are not enslaved because they do not work under the threat of a penalty or
without volunteering their employment. Their employment is a different form of exploitation, though related to the similar desire to generate a profit.
Bonded labor, also known as debt bondage and peonage, happens when people give themselves into slavery as security against a loan or when they inherit a debt from a relative. It can be made to look like an employment agreement but one where the worker
starts with a debt to repay usually in brutal conditions only to find that repayment of the loan is impossible. Then, their enslavement becomes permanent.

Bonded labor is designed to exploit workers. The cyclical process begins with a debt, whether acquired or inherited, that cannot be paid immediately. Then, while the worker labors to repay the debt, the employer continues to add on additional expenses. For instance, a laborer
may begin with an initial debt of $200. While working and unable to leave, this worker needs a shelter, food and water. The employer tacks on $25 per day to the debt to cover those expenses. Consequently, the employee only grows his debt while continuing to labor for his debtor,
and repayment is impossible.

Oftentimes this debt is passed down from generation to generation, making it eerily similar to chattel slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its seen throughout the world when employers force the children of employees to labor in the same situation as their parents in order to help
pay off their parents debt or when parents or family members pass away and employers require another body to fill the lost role all under the pretense of a debt owed.

Bonded labor is used across a variety of industries in order to produce products for consumption around the world.

Migrant laborers are particularly vulnerable to this form of enslavement. In their home countries, migrant laborers contract with labor agencies and employers for a destination country, looking for an economic opportunity. These situations are ripe for exploitation because agencies
and employers hold a debt or a bond over these employees. Instead of honoring a genuine term of employment, some recruiters or employers unlawfully exploit the initial debt by adding immigration, housing and other fees that are designed to keep the migrant workers from ever
being capable of repayment. In some scenarios, these recruiters and employers confiscate legal immigration documents, making legal employees entirely dependent on them, or require the temporary work in order to maintain their legal status. In other instances, recruiters falsify
documents or ignore them altogether, once again making migrant workers vulnerable and dependent. In these situations, workers often fear seeking redress.

Bonded Labor throughout the World

The international Palermo Protocol requires the criminalization of bonded labor as a form of trafficking. Still, this particular system of slavery is deeply entrenched around the world. Its most common in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. In fact, the majority of the worlds
slaves live and work in India in a form of bonded labor.
Bonded Labor in the United States
U.S. law prohibits the use of a debt or similar threat of financial harm as a form of coercion for forced labor. The earliest U.S. legislation outlawed bonded labor under its Spanish name, peonage, which surged following the legal emancipation of U.S. slaves in 1865. Following the
Civil War, former slaveholders and white Americans needed labor for their workforce, so they found new ways to force African Americans to work. Whites arrested and charged African Americans and then fined them for their various crimes. Former slaves had little money to afford
such fines, so white businessmen forced the emancipated slaves to take on debts in exchange for paying them. These former slaves then had a bond over them, and employers exploited the situation so that the debt could never be repaid.
Today, more than a quarter of the worlds slaves are children. These children are forced to commit commercial sex acts, forced into a system of domestic servitude or employed in occupations that are mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful.

Supply needs and industry demand for cheap, unskilled labor are some of the leading causes of child labor. Specifically, production processes that require certain physical attributes, such as small stature and agility, lead to the employment of children. In addition, price pressures
encourage suppliers - especially those at the top of the supply chain - to find the cheapest labor. Poverty leads these children to accept the job, or their parents ask them to work to supplement the family income. These supply and demand factors are reinforced by systemic,
structural issues such as lack of access to education, inadequate employment opportunities for the educated, corruption and social stratification.

Today, child labor is present in many industries - from the carpet sector in Afghanistan to the cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast.
International Definition
According to the ILOs Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, child labor is the enslavement (i.e., sale, trafficking, debt bondage, serfdom, compulsory labor) of anyone under the age of 18. The definition includes the use of children in armed conflict, prostitution and illegal
activities such as drug trafficking. Lastly, any work deemed to be harmful to the health, safety or morals of a child is considered to be child labor.
United States Definition
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 prohibits the employment of minors in oppressive child labor. Oppressive child labor is the employment of a child under 16 by anyone other than that childs parent(s) or guardian(s). However, the Secretary of Labor permits the employment
of individuals between 14 and 16 so long as the work is not in the manufacturing or mining industries and so long as the childs health, well-being and education are not negatively affected. Occupations that are deemed hazardous to the health or well-being of individuals between
16 and 18 years old are also considered to be oppressive child labor.
Children have always worked in the United States. Child labor was significantly present during industrialization, the Great Depression and the 19th and 20th centuries when a number of poor immigrants migrated to the U.S. Today, American and foreign children who are forced into
prostitution, domestic servitude and other forms slavery fall into the child labor category.

Child Sex Trafficking

Around the world, an influx in sex tourism, the insatiable demand for child pornography and greed play key roles in the prevalence of child sex slavery and trafficking. In addition to strangers, family and close friends have been known to sell children off to individuals, businesses
and groups involved in the sex industry. Once sold, the children are forced to perform commercial sex acts. In the U.S. and in most countries abroad, any commercial sex with a minor is considered sex trafficking.

These adolescents are chosen by traffickers for different reasons. Although kids from broken families, runaways and poor children are at higher risk of being trafficked, middle and upper class children may also be targeted. Generally, online predators and individuals looking to
profit from the sex trade pick children that have certain insecurities and vulnerabilities someone they can manipulate and dominate. It is through this manipulation and domination that traffickers are able to continuously sell and profit from the children.

The standard price for sex at a brothel in the U.S. is $30. Typically, trafficked children see 25-48 customers a day. They work up to 12 hours a day, every day of the week; every year, a pimp earns between $150,000 and $200,000 per child.

Abuse and indoctrination, mixed with alcohol and drug addiction, enable traffickers to enslave these children for years.

Children still face challenges even when they reach out for help, escape or are rescued. Some survivors of child sex trafficking are, at first, arrested and treated as delinquents. Society prescribed labels for those in the sex industry are often degrading, and children feel as if they
cant live a normal life anymore. They might think that theyre stuck living a life of prostitution and that they dont have any options. In some cases and in many cultures, children particularly girls that have been sexually violated are no longer accepted in their families or
communities because they are seen as tainted.

Child sexual slavery and trafficking are connected to other forms of slavery. Children may be forced into domestic servitude and, along the way, are sexually abused by their new family. At times, minors are forced into marrying to give the family financial stability or to pay off a debt.
Due to the, often, unofficial and undocumented nature of most forced marriages, statistics on forced marriage vary. In 2003, the International Center for Research on Women estimated that over 51 million girls under the age of 18 were forcibly married. Forced
and early marriage are most common in impoverished states in Africa, South Asia as well as the former Soviet republics. However, there are still cases of forced and early marriage in more affluent North American and European countries.

Forced marriage can be coupled with other forms of slavery. Children who are trafficked for sex may also be sold into forced marriages. An adult who is forcibly married may then be trafficked for labor or sex by and for the financial gain of his or her spouse.

View Photo Gallery on Stories of Forced Marriage

International Definition
Articles 1 and 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery akin forced marriage to slavery. Forced marriage is an institution or practice where individuals dont have the option to refuse or are
promised and married to another by their parents, guardians, relatives or other people and groups. Early marriage is the forced marriage of a child, usually defined internationally as an individual under the age of 18.
Sometimes called servile marriage, forced marriage also occurs when a wife is forcibly transferred to another in exchange for some type of payment or when a widow is given no choice and inherited by one of her husbands male relatives.

The key piece to forced marriage is that at least one of the marrying parties does not give his or her consent. There is no agreed-upon international minimum age for marriage consent. However, most countries set the limit at 15 or 18 years old.

United States Definition

In the United States, only ten states have legislation that directly address forced marriage. The U.S. State Department recognizes forced marriage as a marriage without the consent of at least one party. Duress, threat, physical abuse and death threats by family members
constitute force and coercion. In the United States, forced marriage is considered to be a human rights violation and in some cases, a form of child abuse.
An arranged marriage is differentiated from forced marriage because the marrying parties agree to the marriage arrangement in an arranged marriage.

Forced Marriage in the United States

In the United States, adults and children are forced to marry through familial deception, cultural tradition, emotional blackmail and threats of abuse or even death. Exceptions allow children under the age of 18 to legally marry. Most states grant children, usually between 16 to 17
years old, a marriage license so long as their parents give parental consent. The other exception involves judicial approval and can allow people under the age of 15 to marry.

Unchained at Last found that between 1995 and 2012, judges allowed 178 children between the ages of 10 and 15 to marry in New Jersey. From this sample, a number were children married to adults.
The Tahirih Justice Center reported at least 3,000 suspected forced marriage cases in the United States between 2009 and 2011.