Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery [13+]

Siddharth Kara first encountered the horrors of sexual slavery in a Bosnian refugee camp in 1995. Since then, he has traveled to India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Albania, Moldova, Mexico, and the United States to learn the mechanics of this brutal business and to take stock of its devastating human toll. This book provides a rare business analysis of sex trafficking, focusing on the local drivers and global macroeconomic trends that gave rise to the industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Kara quantifies the size, growth, and profitability of sex trafficking and other forms of modern slavery-metrics that have not been published before-and locates the sectors that would be hardest hit by specifically designed interventions and penalties. Kara bolsters his analysis with a riveting account of this unconscionable industry, sharing the stories of victims and revealing the shocking conditions of their exploitation. He concludes with a plan for aggressive measures that would sharply increase the costs of exploiting sex slaves, thereby reducing their aggregate demand among slave owners and consumers.