What Is Modern Slavery And Human Trafficking

Modern slavery and human trafficking are related, but they are not the same thing. Human trafficking is the process of recruiting, moving or receiving a person for the purpose of exploiting them. Modern slavery is the umbrella term for the condition that person ends up in, which includes forced labour, servitude, debt bondage and forced marriage.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime sets out three core elements to the crime of trafficking. The act is the recruiting, moving or receiving. The means is how compliance is obtained, through force, deception, coercion or the abuse of a position of vulnerability. The purpose is exploitation. Under the Palermo Protocol the means element falls away where the person is under 18, so a child can be trafficked without any threat or deception needing to be shown.

Two points catch Australian businesses out. Trafficking does not require a border to be crossed, and Division 271 of the Criminal Code covers trafficking within Australia as well as into and out of it. Trafficking is also only one of the practices that make up modern slavery under the Modern Slavery Act 2018, not a synonym for the whole of it.

The distinction changes what you can realistically look for. You will rarely see trafficking itself, because it happened before the person reached your workplace, often through a recruiter or labour hire intermediary offshore. What is visible on site is the condition. Knowing how someone came to be working for you is the practical starting point, which is why it helps to keep records of how candidates were screened and who introduced them. Those records do not prevent coercion. They make it harder to assume there was none.

This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations differ by jurisdiction and change over time. The UNODC definition of human trafficking is the primary source. For how this is covered in practice, see Sentrient’s modern slavery course and the wider compliance training courses.