Drafters should consider including additional clarifications in sex trafficking laws to explicitly describe the vulnerabilities of trafficking victims, except where drafters decide to use the terms “by any means.” A woman’s or girl’s vulnerabilities directly relate to the means traffickers and pimps need to use to sexually exploit women and girls. Various legal instruments describe this vulnerability as follows:

• Any situation in which the person involved believes he or she has no real and acceptable alternative but to submit; or
• Taking advantage of the vulnerable position a person is placed in as a result of:

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  • Having entered the country illegally or without proper documentation; or

  • Pregnancy or any physical or mental disease or disability of the person, including addiction to the use of any substance; or

  • Reduced capacity to form judgments by virtue of being a child, illness, infirmity or a physical or mental disability; or

  • Promises or giving sums of money or other advantages to those having authority over a person; or

  • Being in a precarious situation from the standpoint of survival; or

  • Being in a precarious situation from the standpoint of survival; or
  • Other relevant factors.
• Abuse of the economic situation of the victim or of dependency on any substance.

(See: UNODC Model Law Against Trafficking in Persons, Art. 5 commentary)

For example, the Bulgarian “Combating Trafficking in Human Beings Act” defines “trafficking in human beings” as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, concealment or acceptance of human beings, regardless of their own will, by means of coercion, abduction, deprivation of liberty, fraud, abuse of power, abuse of a state of dependence, or by means of giving, receiving or promising benefits to obtain the consent of a person who has control over another person, when it is carried out for the purpose of exploitation.” (See: Combating Trafficking in Human Beings Act, Additional Provosion 1(1-2))