Sex Work and Migration: The Dangers of Oversimplification: A Case Study of Vietnamese Women in Cambodia

In recent years, the international sex trade has received increasing media coverage and policy attention, particularly in regard to associated migration and the growing role played by organized criminal networks. In an effort to protect women from exploitation, the 2001 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children made all forms of trafficking illegal, explicitly including forced prostitution. The Protocol defined trafficking as: The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments of benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.1