Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
0
1AC State IHRL Advantage
CONTENTION 1: IHRL
Current lack of citation of foreign law specifically locks the US out of
developing I-law norms---plans critical
Austen L. Parrish 7, Associate Professor of Law @ Southwestern Law School; J.D. from
Columbia University; Director of Southwestern's Summer Law Program where he teaches
international and comparative law at the University of British Columbia, 2007, University of
Illinois Law Review, 2007 U. Ill. L. Rev. 637
The citation to foreign law is not only sensible for transparency reasons, it also can serve to legitimize the Court as
an institution, both within the United States and around the world. Legitimacy "emanates
from the persuasiveness of the arguments and the enhancement of communal knowledge." 278 In
some contexts, "foreign and international law are actually necessary to legitimate decision-making." 279
Early on in our nation's history, Americans "self-consciously" appealed to the views of other nations "to win global legitimacy for their fledgling republic." 280 In others, foreign
law legitimizes why our courts are doing something different. 281 [*677] As Frank Michelman has described it, by comparative encounters, we "clarify our picture of ourselves."
the use of foreign materials is particularly
282 Lastly, apart from issues of transparency and legitimacy in judicial reasoning,
appropriate if one considers dialogical (as distinguished from particularist or universal) methods of constitutional
interpretation. Tellingly, despite a fair amount of literature on the topic, those who condemn the use of foreign sources generally ignore the dialogic models. 283 In
recent years, theories of constitutional dialogue have emerged "as one of the principal contenders in
the quest for a satisfactory theory" that legitimizes judicial review . 284 Dialogical theories are based on "the notion that
judicial review is part of a "dialogue' between the judges and the legislatures." 285 Rather than focusing on interpretative criteria, dialogic models of interpretation focus on the
Dialogical models are particularly well suited
"institutional process through which decisions about constitutional meaning are made." 286
to justify the use of foreign law, a point generally well accepted. Indeed, the failure of the U.S. Supreme
Court to engage more vigorously in international dialogue leaves the U.S. judiciary out-of-
step and behind the times. 287 A significant amount of scholarship has emphasized the
essential nature of this dialogue and its benefits. 288 "Courts should be talking with each other ... and even with academics. All
are engaged in a search for the meaning of common concepts. The unique authority of each does
not speak at [*678] all to the common substance of their interpretative effort." 289 Melissa Waters has captured the
problem in a nutshell: This is not simply a debate over the relevance of foreign legal materials in the work
of the U.S. courts. In a larger sense, it is a debate over what role U.S. courts will play in
the emerging transnational judicial dialogue among the world's courts. Moreover, the
outcome of this debate will ... have a tremendous impact on the ability of the Supreme Court and other
U.S. courts to influence the emerging transnational judicial dialogue, and through
that dialogue, the development of international legal norms on a wide range of legal
issues. 290
Scenario 2- Overpopulation:
Prostitution is a test case for the USs approach to human rightslegalizing
as sex work is critical
Agnes Binagwaho 10, Permanent Secretary of Health, Republic of Rwanda, and a visiting
lecturer at Harvard University, et al-Mawuena Agbonyitor, Aimable Mwananawe, Placidie
Mugwaneza, Alexander Irwin, and Corine Karema, Developing human rights-based strategies
to improve health among female sex workers in Rwanda, Health and Human Rights Journal,
http://www.hhrjournal.org/2013/08/26/developing-human-rights-based-strategies-to-
improve-health-among-female-sex-workers-in-rwanda/
Such an approach implies a fundamental rethinking of how many governments have
traditionally dealt with sex work. Instead of fighting sex workers, governments should focus on fighting the causes of sex
work. Imprisoning sex workers is not a solution . If governments and parliaments wish to criminalize prostitution,
justice dictates that they go even further by arresting the clients of sex workers, since these men are the ones buying illegal services
otherwise, the demand for commercial sex will persist. However, in a context marked by poverty and HIV/AIDS,
instead of incarcerating sex workers and/or their customers, public policy should aim first to
secure the publics health. This means pursuing two simultaneous, mutually reinforcing priorities: Bring health
services and prevention interventions to sex workers in a participatory manner , advancing
universal access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment, and protecting sex workers and the general population
against HIV and STIs; and Accelerate policies in appropriate sectors to address the structural issues of
poverty and gender discrimination that currently leave female sex workers in Rwanda with few
credible paths to alternative livelihoods. The international human rights framework provides
arguments for this multidimensional approach. The 1946 WHO Constitution already
acknowledged that the right to health implies not only access to medical care, but just as fundamentally the creation
of health-enabling social and economic conditions for all people .37 This insight has been refined
through a series of declarations, covenants, and other human rights instruments, notably including the 1978 Alma-
Ata Declaration and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights General Comment 14,
on the right to health, issued in 2000.38 The implications of these positions have been worked out by
human rights scholars and jurists, including in the pages of this journal.39 A growing consensus has
emerged that the implementation of a human rights-based approach to health requires
deliberate action on the social factors that shape health opportunities and outcomes .40 This does
not mean that a tension-free relationship exists between rights-based models and a public health agenda oriented to the social
determinants of health. The articles gathered in this issue of Health and Human Rights highlight divergences and potential conflicts,
as well as positive resonances, among social epidemiology, social medicine traditions, and human rights. These contrasts stem in
part from these approaches distinctive historical trajectories, which have been closely intertwined but are not identical. From the
pragmatic standpoint of health policymaking, several factors could weaken the emerging synergy between social determinants
analysis and rights-driven health action. Perhaps most important, a public health approach emphasizing multiple social
determinants could exacerbate the fuzziness that has historically plagued the notion of the right to health, and which, in some
circles, has damaged the credibility of rights-based approaches to health policy.41 As Alicia Ely Yamin has argued, proponents of the
right to health are often tempted to blur the distinction between health and overall well-being or quality of life.42 This tendency to
include practically everything good and desirable under the rubric of health may enable us to score rhetorical points in the short
term but, ultimately, it limits the precision and efficacy of rights-driven arguments in the health policy sphere. If handled without
appropriate analytic rigor, social determinants language in public health could exacerbate this dilution of the concept of the right to
health. A social determinants agenda enlarges the boundaries of health action to include policy objectives in gender discrimination,
poverty, housing, and education, for example. Yet this expansion of the notion of health action must not become an excuse for
intellectual laziness. The terms health or health determinants must not be brandished indifferently to designate everything we
might value in a good life.43 The conceptual and legal rigor of a human rights-based analysis is precisely what is needed to avoid
this trap. Human rights analysis takes the emerging scientific picture of how social and economic
factors influence health outcomes and translates these scientific findings into specific, concrete
objectives for policy and social action. Among the many social factors that influence health, and on which in an ideal
world it might be desirable for policy to act, rights-based analysis tells us which factors are actionable within countries existing legal
frameworks and political structures. In this sense, human rights-based analysis mediates the passage from
scientific description and social aspiration to political action, that is, from recognizing the
multiple social factors that influence peoples health to formulating policy and programming
measures that can achieve political traction and so bring change on the ground. The
expansion of the conceptual and political space connected with health underscores this critical clarifying role of human rights.
Human rights-based legal analysis tells us what claims are actionable within legal and policy
structures. It thus helps us set realistic and achievable goals for policy rather than invoke
pie-in-the-sky aspirations with no political weight. Rights-informed legal analysis identifies
those areas where public health evidence and social demand can achieve leverage, not just
theoretically, but through the actual accountability mechanisms that mediate
relations between citizens and government. Thus, as Yamin and others have argued, a human rights lens
can actually begin to change how members of disadvantaged communities experience their
position vis--vis public authorities. Rather than passive victims of external forces, citizens
operating within a rights structure become active protagonists participating in the
identification, implementation, and evaluation of political solutions. Yamin writes that what a rights
framework most distinctively adds to mounting work from the fields of social medicine and social epidemiology is
precisely to demand justifications and accountability, recasting public health inequities as
violations for which people are empowered to seek legal redress .44 The situation of female sex
workers constitutes a test case for human rights-based policy approaches, precisely
because of the multiple forms of social exclusion and the compounded health risks
these women face. In many settings, these risks converge in extremely high levels of HIV infection among sex workers.45 However,
examples from a range of international settings suggest that policy measures informed by a human rights perspective can yield
significant reductions in HIV prevalence among sex workers, along with other health benefits for this population. Additional
research is needed to quantify the impact of specific rights-based program components on health outcomes among target
populations. Already, however, the picture emerging from a number of recent studies on HIV prevention among sex workers is
encouraging. Findings suggest that programs application of key human rights principles, such as participation by sex workers in
program design and implementation,have been associated with substantial reductions in HIV epidemics.46
government has issued five TIP Reports and three rounds of sanctions against countries deemed
non-compliant with the U.S. minimum standards for combating trafficking. Eager to avoid the threat of U.S. sanctions, an
unprecedented number of governments worldwide have passed anti-trafficking legislation and
developed domestic infrastructure to meet the U.S. minimum standards. In one sense, then, the sanctions regime has contributed to the international *465 framework by
But whether the actions taken by a government
promoting recognition of states' obligation to address trafficking.139
respect to its overall ability to bring governments closer to internalizing international anti-
trafficking norms. Viewed through the lens of the four assessment criteria discussed in Part II, the U.S. minimum standards and the
process by which the United States articulates and promotes those standards abroad fall short of their
capacity to promote internalization of international anti-trafficking norms. Instead,
the TVPA sanctions regime has become a convenient vehicle for the United States to export its domestic views
and priorities on issues that were highly contested in Vienna and for which the Palermo Protocol
effectively brokered a ceasefire. In threatening to disturb this fragile consensus, the sanctions regime
foundation in mutually binding norms also helps stave off allegations of U.S. hypocrisy in forcing
others to abide by norms to which the United States refuses to bind itself. While the hypocrisy
charge typically has been of little consequence to the United States,140 it has particular
significance in the trafficking context, where international cooperation is essential to the
success of both global and U.S. domestic anti-trafficking efforts. The recent decision by
the United States to ratify the Palermo Protocol is a welcome development in this regard. By signaling to the *466 international
community, through ratification, its willingness to be bound by a set of internationally-defined standards, the United States has improved its standing to police the domestic
These salutary effects, however, are offset by the United States' unwillingness to
anti-trafficking efforts of other countries.
abide by the Palermo Protocol's compromise over the definition of trafficking.141 For reasons
explained below, this departure from the compromise definition risks undermining the overall
legitimacy of the TVPA sanctions regime. B. Inconsistency with International Norms The second
criterion for assessing the TVPA sanctions regime concerns whether the United States looks to international
standards in applying its domestic sanctions laws. Key factors to consider include whether the substance and application of the U.S.
minimum standards comply with the definitions set forth in international instruments and the interpretations and recommendations of international bodies. 142 As Cleveland
notes, "states are much more likely to voluntarily comply with international norms that they
perceive to be fair, and reliable interpretation and application of international norms by
transnational actors is critical to encouraging nations to recognize, internalize, and obey
international law." 143 Given the struggles over the trafficking definition, consistency
with international norms is crucial to the successful operation of the international
anti-trafficking legal framework. As the legislative guide to the Protocol makes clear, "the main
reason for defining the term "trafficking in persons' in international law was to provide some
degree of consensus-based standardization of concepts" to undergird "efficient international
cooperation in investigating and prosecuting cases." 144 An agreed definition would also
standardize research and other activities, allowing for better comparison of national and
regional data and a clearer global picture of the problem. 145 By substituting its own
trafficking definition for that of the Protocol and failing to apply more comprehensive
human rights standards in its [*467] country assessments, however, the U.S. sanctions regime currently diverges in
critical respects from the evolving international anti-trafficking framework. 1. A "New
Realist" Approach to the Trafficking Definition In a move that invites Danchin's "new realism" critique, the TVPA sanctions regime employs a
trafficking definition that cites to the Protocol, but substantively modifies the
internationally-agreed upon Protocol definition. Embracing an abolitionist
viewpoint on prostitution reform, 146 this modified definition is fundamentally
inconsistent with the Protocol drafters' intent to preserve individual state
discretion to decide the domestic legal treatment of prostitution. 147 As discussed in Part I, in
implementing the sanctions regime, the TIP Office works closely with foreign governments to bring their domestic anti-trafficking laws and policies into compliance with the
U.S. minimum standards. 148 The TIP Office drafts a plan of action for the governments and then provides them with a document setting forth Legal Building Blocks to Combat
Trafficking in Persons (Legal Building Blocks), 149 i.e., model provisions for states to consider incorporating into their own domestic anti-trafficking laws. The Legal Building
Blocks employ a trafficking definition (TIP definition) that mirrors the Palermo Protocol definition but for one critical difference: how it defines the term "exploitation." 150
The Legal Building Blocks cite the Palermo Protocol as if to suggest the TIP definition carries the
imprimatur of the international community. But a comparison of the two trafficking definitions
exposes [*468] a sleight of hand: whereas the Palermo Protocol defines the "exploitation" element of the trafficking definition to include, at a minimum,
the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of
organs, 151 the TIP definition, while explicitly citing to the Protocol definition, states that: "Exploitation" shall mean3: (a) keeping a person in a state of slavery; (b)
subjecting a person to practices similar to slavery; (c) compelling or causing a person to provide forced labor or services; (d) keeping a person in a state of servitude, including
sexual servitude; (e) exploitation of the prostitution of another; (f) engaging in any other form of commercial sexual exploitation, including but not limited to pimping,
pandering, procuring, profiting from prostitution, maintaining a brothel, child pornography; (g) illicit removal of human organs. 152 All elements are the same but for the
the Palermo Protocol drafters
addition of subsection (f), defining "commercial sexual exploitation." As discussed above in Part I, however,
purposely left the terms "exploitation of the prostitution of others" and "other forms of
sexual exploitation" undefined to ensure that the trafficking definition would be "without
prejudice to how state parties address prostitution in their domestic laws." 153 While governments
technically are not required to incorporate the Legal Building Blocks into their domestic legislation, the threat of sanctions nonetheless
pressures governments to conform to U.S. preferences . By virtue of a December 2002 National Security Presidential Directive, 154
[*469] the U.S. government has now upped the ante by making the abolitionist position official U.S. policy and an explicit condition of its foreign grant-making programs. As
explained in the 2005 TIP Report 155 and a "Fact Sheet" on the TIP Office website, "the indisputable connection between human trafficking and prostitution led the [Bush]
Administration to take a strong stand against legalized and tolerated prostitution." 156 Accordingly, "the U.S. government [has] concluded that no U.S. grant funds should be
awarded to foreign non-governmental organizations that support legal state-regulated prostitution." 157 Specifically, U.S. law now prohibits the use of U.S. funds for (1)
programs that "promote, support, or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution"; 158 and (2) any organization "that has not stated in either a grant application, a grant
agreement, or both, that it does not promote, support, or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution." 159 The U.S. government recently extended this restriction to
U.S.-based HIV/AIDS organizations that receive funding for work overseas, requiring them to sign an "anti-prostitution loyalty oath" [*470] pledging their opposition to
prostitution and sex trafficking. 160 Predictably, this policy has spawned two lawsuits challenging its constitutionality on First Amendment grounds. 161 Though the sanctions
regime does not explicitly require countries to adopt an abolitionist position, the combination of the funding restrictions and the Legal Building Blocks strongly signals to those
in need of economic assistance that the path to gold lies on the abolitionist side of the road. Having provided $ 82 million in anti-trafficking grants in 2004 alone, 162 the United
the ability of developing countries and
States plays a critical role in global economic assistance. As repeatedly raised during the Vienna process,
consequences. The reductive trafficking narrative oversimplifies the problem of trafficking from a
complex human rights problem rooted in the failure of migration and labor frameworks to respond to globalizing trends, to a moral problem and crime of sexual violence against women and girls best addressed
interventions proffered, feeding states preference for aggressive criminal justice responses. It overlooks, if not
discounts, the need for better migration and labor frameworks or socioeconomic policies to counter the negative effects of globalizing trends that drive people to undertake risky migration projects in the first
instance. 1. The Focus on Sex Trafficking The influence of neo-abolitionist discourse traces back to Representative Smiths original anti-trafficking bill, which was presented to legislators and the American
public as a necessary response to the 50,000 innocent women and young children . . . thrust into the international sex trade industry with no way out each year.156 Though the 50,000 figure actually
encompassed trafficking of men, women, and children into the United States for sweatshop labor, domestic work, and agricultural labor (and was downgraded in 2003 to a figure of 18,000 to 20,000),157 [t]he
misleading claim that all these . . . were sex slaves. . . was useful in rallying public support for victims of migrant abuse in a climate generally hostile to undocumented workers in Americas factories and
as politically neutral questions of humanitarian concern about third world women .159 In the wake of anti-
prostitution feminists failed domestic pornography and prostitution wars in the early 1980s and 1990s, focusing on Third World women was pivotal to waging the fight against commercial sexuality at home and
abroad.160 Accordingly, congressional testimony in the lead-up to the TVPA played on the imagery of women and children forced into literal sexual slavery, utilizing graphic images of women and girls locked in
trailers, raped, and deprived of food.161 Victims were portrayed as no more than unwilling goods exchanged between unscrupulous men, . . . commodities . . . bodies exchanged on a market.162 The imagery
used in this new campaign against modern-day slavery was reminiscent of that used in the early 1900s in the feminist-conservative crusade against white slaveryof innocent women lured, deceived, and
the reporting on non-sex-sector trafficking ,167 as evidenced by the attention garnered by Nicholas Kristofs high-profile and controversial New York Times series
on sex slavery in Cambodia168 and India169 and Peter Landesmans New York Times Magazine expos on sex slavery in the United States.170 The vast majority of documentaries and films on trafficking focus
on sex-sector trafficking.17 By contrast, Chicago Tribune reporter Cam Simpsons awardwinning Pipeline to Peril series on the trafficking of Nepalese men into U.S. military bases in Iraq for forced labor172
garnered relatively little attention in mainstream media and public discourse. Cases of women and girls trafficked into forced domestic work in the United States, a phenomenon exposed by Human Rights Watch
back in 2001,173 only began receiving media attention within the last three years,174 when non-abolitionists made it a priority in lobbying for the 2008 TVPRA. Recent case law reveals that those trafficked into
Critics of
non-sex sectors tend to be viewed simply as exploited migrants rather than trafficked per-sons; the problem is viewed as one of hiring illegal immigrants, not of abusive labor conditions.175
the biased treatment of the different forms of trafficking attribute the disparity to the
mediagenic nature of sex-sector traffickingsimply put, the fact that sex sells.176 The reductive
narrative of trafficking as being about women and children forced into prostitution resonates
because of its simple narrative structure, with a bad guy (evil trafficker or deviant, sex-crazed male) doing bad things (sexual
violence or enslavement) to an innocent, ignorant, impoverished victim (trafficked woman or child, sex slave, or prostitute). The imprisoned nanny or the forced
male farm worker is not nearly so compelling an object of pity or compassion as a brothel captive. The tendency to assume that the nanny and male farm
worker are illegal migrants masks the reality that many cross borders legally. And even if they do not, the notion that consent to cross borders illegally does not translate into consent to all subsequent exploitation
is harder to sell than the standard sex-sector trafficking narrative of innocence debauched. Migrants exploited in fields, farms, restaurants, hair and nail salons, homes, and factories are par for the course in the
United States, their exploiters quite possibly our neighbors, colleagues, and friends. The sense of urgency and threat to our communities is far greater when it comes to loose modern sexual mores, which can
to the general populace than the complex, multilayered narrative concerning the destabilizing effects of globalization and the resulting
transnational flow of capital, goods, and people.178 Under this construction, Third World prostitutes represent the
paradigmatic example of prostitution amounting to sex-sector trafficking . They are characterized as perpetually
underprivileged and marginalised by all-encompassing economic and cultural oppression, such that the very possibility of choice or agency is negated.180 By equating choice with
wealth, and coercion with poverty, no space remains to recognize and validate the choices that women
make when confronted with limited economic opportunities.181 As sociologist Kamala Kempadoo argues, the universalizations and
generalizations that the neo-abolitionists adopt and export abroad reveal the epistemic privilege of a social group that has a racialized power to define the world and to create new meanings about social
realities.182 The reductive portrayal of the trafficking victim sets up a neoimperialist power relation that presumes and establishes an essential divide between East and West, South and North-exotic, archaic,
and authoritarian versus progressive and enlightened; it positions Third World women as ignorant, tradition bound, poor, and infantilized, resembling minors in need of guidance.183 In the prostitution context,
the neo-abolitionist narrative do[es] offer an important critique of liberal notions of freedom and consent that presume autonomous individuals abstracted from relations of power.184 These liberal notions miss
their mark in the trafficking context by failing to appreciate the nuances of contextfor example, how significant economic, gender, and racial inequalities severely compromise the exercise of choice in many
prostitution contexts. As sociologist Laura Agustn notes, many migrant prostitutes do notcontrary to the view of some Western sex-worker advocatesadopt the view that sex work is art, therapy, or like any
other job.185 While formalizing the industry might enable workers to advocate on their own behalf, many migrants do not self-identify as sex professionals but rather view sex work as a temporary financial
measure.186 As Agustn explains, there is an inescapable, fundamental contradiction[] of working in a sector where illegality is the norm.187 Normalizing sex work through harm-reduction strategies cannot
a form of work at least focuses attention on the specificities of context: for instance, the fact that
certain working conditions are better for some (e.g., nationals) than others (e.g., migrants). Moreover, as Sullivan explains, the
prostitution-as-work discursive strategy . . . opens up a space for the formation of
new identities not based on passivity, or sexual exploitation and sexual victimhood.189 Perhaps [i]t is not sex
work itself that promotes oppressi[on] . . . but rather the particular cultural and legal production of a
marginalized, degraded prostitution that ensures its oppressive characteristics while acting to
limit the subversive potential that might attend a decriminalized, culturally legitimized form of sex work.190 Indeed, when it comes
to the commodification of sex, what matters ultimately is who controls the meaning of the purchase. In this sense, perhaps sex-worker unions could be an example
of the victims of commodification . . . appropriat[ing] the chains that bind them .191
Scenario 2: Sanctions
U.S. domestic policy on prostitution shapes how we enforce TVPA
sanctions---plan moves away from current abolitionism that dictates
broader trafficking policy
Janie A. Chuang 10, Assistant Professor of Law at American University, "Rescuing Trafficking
From Ideological Capture: Prostitution Reform and Anti-Trafficking Law and Policy", Vol. 158,
2010, scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1161&context=penn_law_review
In the service of the neo-abolitionist cause, law and policy initiatives during the Bush Administration
waged a war on prostitution at home and abroad. The neo-abolitionists had key support
in the government bureaucracy to implement the anti-prostitution agenda worldwide , having
successfully lobbied for a neo-abolitionist to direct the U.S. State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
(GTIP),101 the office responsible for coordinating U.S. antitrafficking policy. Because 2003 was the first year that
countries risked anti-trafficking sanctions for failure to comply with the U.S. minimum standards,102 the
U.S. governments new anti-prostitution policy factored into perceptionsif not the realityof
what would be required of other countries in order to avoid sanctions.103 The State Department posted on
its website a Fact Sheet stating that where prostitution has been legalized or tolerated, there is an increase in the demand for sex
slaves and the number of victimized foreign womenmany likely victims of human trafficking.104 Prominent display of
the Fact Sheet on the State Department website alongside the Departments Model Law to
Combat Trafficking in Personswhich encouraged countries to adopt a definition of trafficking
that encompasses noncoerced prostitution105certainly signaled to other countries the U.S.
governments interest in eradicating prostitution worldwide. The U.S. governments aim to
eradicate prostitution writ large under the banner of anti-trafficking measures soon
manifested in more explicit laws and regulations that were introduced and largely adopted in the
2003, 2005, and 2008 reauthorizations of the TVPA.106 Three initiatives in particulareach
foreshadowed in earlier neoabolitionist congressional testimony articulating an agenda for U.S. anti-trafficking policymaking107
merit close attention: (1) antiprostitution restrictions on federal-grant administration, (2)
antiprostitution restrictions on U.S. military personnel and government contractors, and (3)
measures to end demand for prostitution and to federalize prostitution-related crimes .
Through the first two measures, the neo-abolitionists have remapped the
trafficking field, using the threatened withdrawal of U.S. funds to pressure foreign
governments, civil-society organizations, and private-sector actors to adopt anti-prostitution measures. Though
the third measure ultimately did not survive legislatively, that it was included in the House version of the 2008 reauthorization bill
marks the tremendous inroads the neoabolitionists have made in pursuit of their anti-prostitution agenda. But perhaps the most
significant neo-abolitionist gains lie not in these legal reforms but in their success in controlling
the trafficking discourse and promoting for mainstream consumption a reductive understanding
of the very nature of the trafficking phenomenon. Contrary to the U.S. and international legal definitions of
trafficking, the neo-abolitionists have succeeded in characterizing trafficking as
primarily about, if not limited to, prostitution (both forced and voluntary). Rather than a
complex phenomenon driven by deep economic disparities between wealthy and poor
communities and nations, and by inadequate labor and migration frameworks to manage their
consequences,108 neo-abolitionism constructs trafficking as a moral or social problem driven by
social deviance or entrenched male patriarchy. The following discussion describes the neo-abolitionist legal
reforms and reductive narrative used to heighten the urgency and stakes of the anti-prostitution campaign. Deeming the
problem a modern form of slavery, the neo-abolitionists have successfully transformed
the anti-trafficking movement into a modern, worldwide moral crusade against
prostitution.