Digital Dangers. Information and Communication Technologies and Trafficking in Women
- Document number
- 1386
- Date
- 2008
- Title
- Digital Dangers. Information and Communication Technologies and Trafficking in Women
- Author/publisher
- APC ISSUE PAPERS, Kathleen Maltzahn, Respect
- Availability
- View/save PDF version of this document
- Document type(s)
- Research/Study/Analysis,
- Keywords
- Clients, Recruitment, Sexual exploitation, Internet, Child exploitation, Prevention, Law enforcement, Labour exploitation, Victims (of trafficking), Trafficked persons
- Summary
- The word ‘trafficking’ suggests something very physical. Stories of trafficking of women often include details of stolen passports, border crossings, and foreign countries. But what happens when a concept that suggests the actual movement of people is taken into the virtual world of the web? What happens when trafficking is combined with information and communication technologies (ICTs)? It seems unlikely that whoever coined the term ‘information superhighway’ anticipated that the traffic on the internet would be in people, as well as information. How, and how much, the internet and other ICTs are implicated in trafficking is the subject of this paper. Because ICTs are being increasingly used in more social activities, the inevitable question is: what is the relationship, if any, between trafficking and ICTs? To date, very little has been written about this question. Interestingly, both the counter-trafficking and ICT experts interviewed for this paper frequently commented on how much we have to learn in this area. At present, there is little data establishing that ICTs are anything more than basic communication tools for traffickers. This raises an important question: Is it the case that we just do not know what the connection is, or could it be that there is no significant connection? We therefore need to consider whether it be that ICTs have little significance in relation to trafficking, and if discussing them is a distraction from the real task of stopping trafficking.
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