The U.S.'s attempts to address human trafficking have typically been based on emotional reactions to horrific situations and events, rather on research showing what works. The tendency in the past to focus exclusively on "sex trafficking," while neglecting labor trafficking, illustrates the U.S.'s willingness to allow emotional issues to override concerns about workplace abuses that are less sensational but no less grave. The focus on sex has led to many examples of misguided efforts to protect "women and children," while men, women and children who experience force, fraud and coercion, the hallmarks of trafficking, in other kinds of work are too often overlooked.

This year's TIP Report addresses forced labor and debt bondage in greater detail than earlier reports. US government efforts under Bush emphasized sex trafficking, and anti-trafficking task forces in the US were criticized by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children for their near-exclusive focus on brothel raids while ignoring trafficking in other workplaces, including those workplaces where there were immigration raids. This year's report cites men trafficked into construction work in Russia and the Gulf States, agricultural workers in Africa, domestic workers in Asia, and fishermen in Asia.

The 2009 TIP Report criticizes numerous examples of anti-trafficking efforts restricting women "for their own good." For one, Cambodia was influenced by the Bush administration to pass legislation addressing, and Cambodia has made it illegal for its women citizens to marry foreign nationals, lest they be trafficked. But restricting people's movement forces determined migrants to seek assistance to travel, sometimes from others who take advantage of their positions of relative power.  In other words, it may contribute to the very problem it seeks to resolve.

Efforts to protect people by preventing them from going where they want to go are not unique in the history of trafficking.  For example, in the US, the people most often prosecuted by the US White Slave Traffic Act, passed in 1910, were women who crossed US state lines to visit men, many of whom they later married.  To this day, women who travel from countries associated with trafficking or sex work may not be permitted to leave their own countries and have difficulty securing visas for other countries, forcing them to use the services of people who may procure falsified travel documents or guide undocumented migrants as they cross borders.

Another poor response to trafficking is the detention and imprisonment of people who have been victims of crime. The new TIP Report chastised governments including Cambodia, Gabon and others for imprisoning people who have been trafficked, including children, but the US also imprisons trafficked persons, usually as a result of raids on brothels and places where immigrants work. I wrote a report for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center documenting the ways raids discourage people in the US from cooperating with the government's prosecution efforts.  Raids deter people from cooperating with investigations--people who have been rounded up in raids do not trust the agents who have detained them--and so people who may be effective witnesses or who are victims of crime may be deported.

Media figures have engaged in sensational stunts while covering trafficking. For example, a century ago, publisher William Stead set out to "buy" a young girl to prove that sex trafficking was occurring in Victorian London. The girls' parents and other Londoners protested and their daughter was returned to them from France, where Stead had taken her. He served no jail time, but his assistant did. Nicholas Kristof, op-ed contributor to The New York Times, recreated this stunt when he "bought" two girls out of prostitution in Cambodia. The new TIP Report states, "By ‘purchasing' a victim's freedom, well-intentioned individuals or organizations may inadvertently provide traffickers with financial incentive to find new victims."

The critiques offered in the TIP Report reflect the intentions of the Obama administration. I'm encouraged by the greater recognition of trafficking into a wide variety of workplaces, the concern for people who have been unjustly imprisoned, and the lack of sensationalism when discussing sex work. The emphasis on effective responses gives me hope that change is already underway. The Sex Workers Project documented that people who left trafficking situations without law enforcement - leaving on their own, with the help of colleagues and friends. Service providers and trafficked persons described the ways that leaving situations of force, fraud and coercion without law enforcement intervention were better because people chose to move, exercising self-determination after having been coerced into their situations. Enforcing existing labor laws such as wage and hour provisions is one way to address abuses in many workplaces, particularly in factories and agriculture. Expanding these provisions to address domestic workers (they are not offered such protections now) would benefit maids and nannies and other live-in employees. Obama emphasized evidence and efficacy in his inauguration speech - these are a few examples of opportunities to act.

Around the world, people turn to sex work in the hope that it will enable them to earn a living. But authorities and misguided anti-prostitution policies routinely deny them that right. 

The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center has released two reports highlighting this fact. (See them here). Sex workers interviewed for these reports described becoming involved in commercial sex for financial reasons, and they described the difficulties faced by unskilled workers, especially transgender workers, in their efforts to earn a living wage.  

One of the reports, Behind Closed Doors, quotes one sex worker on her financial aims: "I have goals that change based on what bills need to be paid, what expenses I've had, and what my current ‘improve my situation' goals are."  

In the report Revolving Door, a transgender sex worker describes what she faced when looking for mainstream work: "I want to get a job where I'm respected - basically, where I'm not discriminated against." Sex workers from other countries explain that they came to the United States to pursue economic opportunities not available in their native lands.   

Sex workers support themselves and their families with their income. However, their income, personal safety and human rights are jeopardized by attempts to eliminate sex work, including prohibitions on it.  

In some places, the rule of law is absent, which leads to violations of everyone's rights. In other places like the United States, where sex workers are criminalized, it is difficult if not futile for sex workers to report incidents of violence to the police, because the state and its agents - police and military forces - are the groups most involved in violating sex workers' human rights.  

Sex workers who are brave enough to report violent experiences often find that their complaints are not investigated or even rejected outright. Criminals know they can assault sex workers with impunity because such crimes are highly unlikely to be prosecuted.  

Economic motives for sex work combine with these abusive police practices to create higher levels of potential violence against women with few economic opportunities.  

All people who press forward with sexual assault cases face intense scrutiny, but in New York State, for example, the law makes it more difficult for people charged with a prostitution-related crime to bring such a case. Right now in New York City, the crackdown has expanded to include even legal forms of sex work.  

For example, people who work in venues involving bondage and domination are being targeted in vice raids and being charged with prostitution, even though the work involves no sexual contact with clients. Police go after these people because they are already marginalized as sex workers. Many then plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because taking their cases to trial could result in exposure that risks their future ability to get a job in the mainstream sector.  

In fact, that is perhaps the worst consequence of prostitution-related arrests: the barrier to finding other work that the arrest record creates - especially work that offers a living wage.  

Add United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the list of people who understand that arresting and punishing sex workers is counter-productive in the battle against HIV/AIDS. And take the government of Cambodia off that list.

The Global Working Group on HIV and Sex Work Policy wrote to Ban in June to applaud his statement commending the findings of a March report that favored decriminalizing sex work. The Report of the Commission on AIDS in Asia noted that sex workers are part of the solution to preventing the spread of HIV, and advised countries to "avoid programs that accentuate AIDS-related stigma and can be counterproductive. Such programs may include ‘crack-downs' on red-light areas and arrest of sex workers."

To express their gratitude for this understanding, sex workers and advocates circulated a statement at the June 11-12 UN High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS as Ban spoke to the gathering in New York. "Sex workers thank [Ban] for his support of their efforts to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic," the statement said.

The March report strongly advised countries to enlist sex workers in the effort to prevent the spread of HIV. It included firm recommendations against punitive measures targeting sex work and other frowned-upon behaviors, on the grounds that such approaches have proven counter-productive. The UN Secretary-General supported these recommendations in his statement and sex workers everywhere are grateful.

Unfortunately, some governments continue to deny reality.

Under pressure from the United States, Cambodia outlawed prostitution in February. The government's promotion of a "no condoms, no sex" program in legal brothels there had succeeded in reducing HIV infection rates, but now those brothels have closed or gone underground, along with bars, karaoke clubs and street areas. Hundreds of women have been arrested, jailed or displaced, while dozens have been raped and beaten by police and prison guards. The HIV prevention and care programs that were working have collapsed.

The new law, ironically named the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Law, is a failure in every way. It encourages trafficking and exploitation because it makes sex workers easier prey: the workers can no longer seek clients in public and must depend upon others to introduce them. Worse, police now use condoms as evidence of prostitution, so sex workers can no longer use them. We can expect to see HIV rates rise as a result.

The U.S. ambassador to Cambodia acknowledged in an article in The International Herald Tribune that U.S. influence played a part in the passage of this dangerous law. The annual U.S. Trafficking In Persons Report ranks countries on their efforts to end the practice according to U.S. perception, with those low on the list risking economic sanctions.

By passing the law, Cambodia moved up from the "Tier 2 watch list" to "Tier 2" and thus evaded sanctions. But is U.S. aid worth the cost in sex workers' lives and in lost ground against HIV/AIDS?

Sex workers in Cambodia protested the new law on June 4, calling for repeal and an end to raids. "Don't be fooled by talk of rescuing ‘sex slaves' until you have heard our testimonials and seen video evidence of the brutality and misery this new law is causing," their statement said (watch the video below).

Sex workers and their allies also protested the new law at the Cambodian Mission to the United Nations in New York on June 11, during the High-Level Meeting on AIDS. Further demonstrations are planned in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Cambodian sex workers call for a repeal of the trafficking law passed by the Cambodian government under pressure from the US government.

UPDATE at 10:54am: Detained sex workers in Cambodia were released on June 24, 2008

The Department of Justice, which is responsible for enforcing the bill's provisions, is opposing these misguided changes -- and so should anyone else who is concerned about human trafficking in its many forms.

It is already sadly evident that the U.S. government's anti-trafficking program has devolved into a global campaign against sex work and is not working to halt trafficking. In a 2006 report critical of the program, the Government Accountability Office found that "the U.S. government has not developed a coordinated strategy to combat trafficking in persons abroad...or evaluated its programs to determine whether projects are achieving the desired outcomes."

Now comes a plan to further ratify this failure. The Trafficking Victims' Protection Reauthorization Act addresses the crime of trafficking in persons, which is recognized in U.S law as cases that involve force, fraud or coercion, which includes threats, intimidation, and psychological abuse. The law offers protection to workers who are most vulnerable to abuse -- immigrants, people in forced labor, and minors who exchange sex for cash or goods. The bill currently before Congress, however, would expand the definition of "sex trafficking" to include cases in which no elements of force, fraud or coercion were involved.

Specifically, the House version of the TVPRA would expand U.S. laws against prostitution by re-defining most prostitution-related activities, regardless of consent, as trafficking. Human trafficking is a complex issue, but there is widespread agreement about its key distinguishing features, namely the use of force, fraud or coercion. HR 3887 throws out these cornerstones and threatens to re-define all prostitution, arguably even all sex work, as trafficking. And it would require the involvement of federal law enforcement through a broad new provision that covers actions "affecting" interstate commerce (rather than actual activities that involve the crossing of state lines, the standard trigger for bringing in the feds). Therefore, most prostitution-related activities defined as sex trafficking would fall under federal law even if no interstate commerce was involved.

The immediate consequences of this definitional sleight-of-hand are bad enough: the use of federal resources to prosecute state-level offenses involving consenting adults who may not see themselves as victims of a crime. But turning the DOJ into the prostitution police is not the worst of it. By shifting the focus of the law from genuine cases of trafficking to prostitution as a whole, the bill threatens to divert resources from those most in need: the real victims of trafficking.

The Department of Justice has written to members of Congress to express its opposition to the proposed reauthorization bills, saying that the changes would remove their focus from genuinely abusive situations that involve force, fraud or coercion and place it instead on the over 100,000 prostitution-related arrests annually.

The DOJ's resistance to the changes stem also from the fact that addressing each prostitution case as a potential trafficking case would significantly increase their caseload while reducing the likelihood of convictions. Trafficking cases require an identifiable victim. Contrary to popular mythology, most sex workers are not in coercive situations. If they do not choose to self-identify as victims or otherwise participate in the prosecution of their associates, the case may collapse.

The dangers of laws that are both overly general and backed by heavy penalties should be familiar to any student of U.S. history. The 1910 White Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act, criminalized interstate travel for "immoral acts," which at that time referred fairly generally to (female) promiscuity and interracial sexual activity. In practice, the application of the law was often distinguished by racism or political bias. High-profile victims of racist prosecutions under the Mann Act included Chuck Berry and Jack Johnson, while Charlie Chaplin and Frank Lloyd Wright, suspected of Communist sympathies, were subject to politically motivated Mann Act prosecutions.

Above all else, however, application of the Mann Act was sexist. The law purported to protect women, yet the overwhelming majority of those charged under the Act were women. Women were tried and jailed for crossing state lines to visit men, often men that they would later marry. It seems inconceivable to us today that simply visiting a romantic partner in another state could be grounds for conspiracy charges, yet this is exactly what happened.

In 1986, the scope of the Mann Act was amended to cover only acts that were crimes in the location where they were committed. When the Act was conceived in 1909, prostitution was not a crime in any state of the Union. But within twenty years, every state had passed laws criminalizing prostitution. Today, almost a hundred years from its conception, the Mann Act remains on the books as a law enforcement tool targeting prostitution. This little-known law got its moment in the spotlight recently when four people involved with the Emperors Club VIP, whose best-known client was New York governor Eliot Spitzer, were charged with Mann Act offenses.

Just as the Mann Act, ostensibly created to protect women, was used largely to prosecute them, the targets of the re-authorized TVPRA will not be international traffickers. They are more likely to be prostitutes (including, once again, many women), charged with trafficking offenses that exist only on paper.

If no "victims" or "traffickers" can be found, some will have to be created. The threat of additional charges or the promise of immunity can be used to persuade some of those charged to testify against their colleagues. During the initial period of the TVPRA, despite lavish spending on raids and on services for victims of trafficking, there was an embarrassing lack of migrants coming forward to take advantage of the protection offered by the law and to cooperate in the prosecution of their traffickers. The expanded definition of trafficking provided by HR 3887 should make up the shortfall in trafficking victims, but only by spuriously applying trafficking charges to cases that do not involve force, fraud or coercion.

There is something deeply wrong with our government when the answer to the desperate problem of human trafficking is to change the definition of the crime so we can claim we're doing something about it. It's a tactic that is misguided at best and at worst, downright cynical.

Equating prostitution and trafficking simultaneously denies the agency of sex workers and trivializes the experiences of people in genuinely abusive situations. Enshrining this wrongheaded equation in law delivers a double whammy. On the one hand, it undercuts the ability of government agencies to provide services to those who desperately need them. On the other it opens the door to the same kind of abuses seen with the Mann Act, creating "victims" where none exist and bringing the full force of anti-trafficking law to bear on a group that is already stigmatized and marginalized by society. By any standards, this would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

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• Melissa Ditmore, Sex Work, Trafficking: Understanding the Difference