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Smuggling? Trafficking? What's the Difference?

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), people smuggling and people trafficking are similar in some respects, but there are several important differences.

Those who are smuggled have consented to be smuggled. Trafficking victims, according to the UNODC, "have either never consented or, if they initially consented, that consent has been rendered meaningless by the coercive, deceptive or abusive actions of the traffickers."

Another major difference, according to the UNODC, "is that smuggling ends with the arrival of the migrants at their destination, whereas trafficking involves the ongoing exploitation of the victims in some manner to generate illicit profits for the traffickers."

The United Nations' Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime defines the "smuggling of migrants" as "the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or permanent resident."

The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines the "trafficking in persons" as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall 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."

See the United Nations web site for their description of The Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants