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2-The global sex slavery market generates a $39 billion profit annually
3-Selling young girls is more profitable than trafficking drugs or weapons

Celebrities are taking part in Real Men Don't Buy Girls campaign. Be part in this campaign and spread awareness...﻿
Patricia F Anderson's profile photoChristina Bauhn's profile photoSimon Bridge's profile photoIsaías Gaddiel Peralta's profile photo
Oh..this is what is really said..﻿
Also more detailed discussion:

intregued: what about women being trafficked? or males of any age?

There is also a great deal of trouble getting reliable stats - the ones quoted are the sort of thing you get from studies that have included regular sex workers for example ... it is important to use decent to support a legitimate cause or you risk undermining your arguments.

Considering the general unreliability of stats on the internet, I'd have thought that an actual citation (where do these stats come from?) would be essential. Rule of thumb: you see "it has been estimated" you should automatically ask "where? how?" and if they don't tell you ask "why not?" Would a footnote hurt?

One of the troubles has been that, in countries where sex work is illegal, women arrested for prostitution are more likely to say they have been trafficked and so get state support than admit to voluntary sex work and be fined or deported or imprisoned. Another problem is how people who are against all sex (except their kind) between anybody no mater what have jumped on this as a fund-raiser.

Awareness raising is a good start but lets start with the end in mind. Lets try to make sure that the beast we end up raising does not eat us.﻿
I agree completely that the slogan leaves out a lot of vulnerable populations and audiences.﻿
"many women" how many?
The references needed are the ones the authors used to base their figures - there should be a bibliography at the back of each chapter and citations throughout.﻿
So cite the studies then - you are the one making the claims, the onus is on you to support them. Note: You are supposed to base the veracity of what a scholar says by the quality of the research not by the loftiness of their qualifications.

How extensive were the studies and what were their parameters? Are these studies' statistics supporting of the estimate in the first post? To what extent? Have you even looked at the references yourself? It is very common for a citation to appear in a book which turns out not to say what it purports to say.

I am not denying trafficking - I've seen it first hand (have you?) - I'd just like to see the studies referenced in discussions like this one so everyone can go look for themselves.

I've been trying to find a metastudy and so far no luck.
Note: it is very difficult just to estimate the number of sex workers in a country where prostitution is illegal or carries a large stigma ... eg. ... for an example.

With regard to trafficking and sex work:

Less formally - try:
... with citations that readers here can actually get to look at.﻿
On what basis is it "a good book"? You have not checked the research so, as an academic yourself, the correct answer is that you don't know if it is any good or not. Reviews that do more than describe the subject matter criticize the research (among other things) but I don't know what the reviewers did to obtain their views eg.
Important subjects but this book's treatment of them is poor, choppy, and lacks any systemic analysis. Very hard to read, both because of the brutality of the subject matter but also because there was no overarching theoretical message to tie any of it together. The examples used were very randomly drawn from all over the world without explanation; this book was just all over the place, hard to follow
... is mostly "I did not follow it therefore it was no good" <sigh>

Note: you don't have to parse the references in a book to do a basic reality check: do the figures make sense?
_ Human trafficking is reportedly only about 20% (2.45 million) of the 12.3 million people whom the ILO estimates are held in forced labor, debt bondage or slavery. The claim that profits from human trafficking are right behind arms and drugs would mean that the profits from 2.45 million victims are greater than the profits from the other 10 million victims – all of whom are also held in forced labor, debt bondage, and slavery. Could this be possible?_
... note: the 2.45million trafficked is men and women and boys as well as girls.

The statistic #1 suggests that about half the total people trafficked are children who are forced to work in the sex industry.
It is also about 3% of the total number of prostitutes worldwide (using the bigger estimates - using the lower estimates, it is 2/3rds of them.)

Compare that about 1% of the women in the USA have been involved in some part of the sex industry at some stage in their lives.

#2: I would love to see verified.
estimators for drug trade are also problematic:
... one estimate has the Mexico dealers making 400bill a year ... 10x the above estimate for trafficking.

#3 Kinda depends on #2.
But if the top estimates for drugs are anything like the real situation, this claim is clearly bunk.

Please, lets not demean these efforts with junk stats.﻿
... list of references.
If there were any trafficking studies in there I didn't find them. Perhaps someone elses eyes can show me which ones?
Some of the references I recognize, a great deal seem to be anecdotal studies. The collection suggests the book is more a political awareness-raising work than a scholarly one.﻿
Per +Simon Bridge 's suggestion, I pinged @bmagnanti on Twitter, who engaged @furrygirl @Maggie_McNeill and @LauraAgustin in the conversation. +Laura Agustin is the only one with a G+ presence, and @furrygirl had an account but Google has deleted her account as part of the "real names" brouhaha. There are obvious reasons why she should not and cannot safely use her real name, however this excludes informed voices from intelligent conversation on this and many other important issues, basically on any topic related to victimization. But that is a digression.

I directed their attention to this conversation. Maggie suggested these collections of links and annotated statistics to inform the conversation.

Safety in Numbers:
Handy Figures:

What seems to dominate any conversation on this topic is the New Zealand study:
Estimation of Sex Workers in New Zealand:

On a related note, much of the new research in this area is coming out of Rights Work, a unit within the American University Center for Human Rights.

American University: Washington College of Law: Center for Human Rights:

Rights Work: Reports:
Rights Work: Is Human Trafficking Really the 3rd Most Profitable Business for Organized Crime:

On the other hand, I have personally met people who were trafficking victims, a series of teen boys and young men who were brought into the USA from Mexico with the promise of jobs and sponsorship to get a green card. They did get those things, but were required to trade sex with the sponsor in order to get either job or green card.

This should not be seen as a simple polarized issue. There is significant value on both sides, with the truth most likely somewhere in a muddy middle of this profoundly complicated issue.﻿
Sides? What sides?

Nobody is saying trafficking does not happen - it's just that some people think that action is more effective if it has facts behind it while other are happy to repeat any old dribble if it gets people stirred up.

The three statements in the first post are simply made up.
Junk like this is getting reported as true so much that it hurts actual victims. Please get real.﻿
+Simon Bridge I agree that facts connected to true stories are more persuasive (or should be!) than well-intended fictions. Certainly, it is easier to help someone if you know what is actually wrong and what they want to have as a solution.

I'm a medical and science librarian, specializing partly in systematic reviews — research is what I do. If this conversation was centering around a systematic review, I'd say there is insufficient evidence, and that we need more and more authoritative and accurate research. But as you say, "Nobody is saying trafficking does not happen." In healthcare when we have a clinical problem for which there is insufficient evidence, we go ahead and use best judgment to do what we can to help the patient. I think that is what people are trying to do here.

It is truly valuable that you bring up the issue of accuracy so that more people know that the figure are debated and highly suspect, even while the advocacy, the support and assistance intended by the intervention is likely to still be necessary. It would indeed be truly saddening if this effort to help was causing harm. I have read of other circumstances in which that has been true. Open conversations and sharing multiple points of view can help to prevent that, or stop it when it occurs.﻿

Christians have a saying about roads paved with good intentions. By all means lets have good intentions - but lets have them with our brains engaged too.

eg. in medicine you try to choose treatments from the range that have some connection to the problem being treated - witness cot-death action in New Zealand: while research was underway, medical professionals were advising new parents on prevention strategies. The strategies were revised as new information came in about the prevailance and likely causes. Ineffective strategies were discarded. Obvious quackery was discarded early.

Anti-trafficking efforts have been around decades now.
Inflated figures have been a characteristic. Usually these figures are easily debunked but the next round of figures circulating is even more inflated ... the figures which should be improving with time are getting worse!

Beyond the figures is a gross mischaracterization of the problem. For instance, someone entering the USA as a laborer is considered a migrant but if that labor is in the sex industry suddenly they have been trafficked (DOJ - refs supplied prev in thread).

As a result, measures enacted to oppose trafficking (mass brothel raids for eg) are demonstrably ineffective against trafficking, and yet continue to be used rather than discarded.

In NZ, the trafficking has dropped to almost nothing since prostitution has been legalized. It eliminates a lot of false positives in the ID process and enlists consensual sex workers on the side of law enforcement ... this is proven effective, with no demonstrable negative sides effects, and yet has failed to be implimented more widely.

As a scientific librarian, familiar with scientific method, how would you characterize these efforts?

Sadly, in this world, real stats soberly presented tend not to be very pursuasive. However, it is also true that good, effective, policy is only obtained through good data. Certainly not by hyping hugely exaggerated claims.

Hopefully a sober discussion of the facts and likely strategies will do for migrant labor abuse (because this is what is wrong here) and the sex industry what open discussion around AIDS did for sex education and SDIs.

Just like the AIDS effect, we cannot make progress unless we ditch the bogus hype. It is difficult here - academics who should know better are taking figures like in the opening post at face value - not even skimming the "research" done by book authors and so forth. This is very common where a problem is framed in terms of harm to children.

Critical thinking is only the first step - but it is essential.

In this thread I have focussed on debunking the claimed stats in this thread. The wider situation is more complicated and I have not turned my attention to the specific campaign being promoted here yet.

If the campaign is basing it's policies on stats like those - then it is bogus and should not be supported. There are groups working at actual effective strategies - I'll publish something about this in due time: I want to get my ducks in a row first.

If you've been following me you'll have seen some examples of what I've been finding. I'm having a lot of trouble locating affirmative works about trafficking which are not baseless hysteria. I'm sure it exists - it's just being swamped by all this garbage.﻿
it's a little bit ironic with ashton kutcher xD﻿
I stopped and thought about it, when I saw him. But actually, Ashton and Demi are the ones who started the whole meme﻿
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