ABSTRACT
Human trafficking and slavery are often conflated; these terms are often used synonymously, but also as umbrella terms meant to capture various types of human exploitation. This should hardly be surprising as, historically, the very genesis of what we today call ‘human trafficking’ was conceived in terms of the ‘white slave traffic’, 1 thus equating prostitution with the visceral revulsion felt towards the African Slave Trade and slavery. In fact, and in law, these two regimes – human trafficking and slavery – are distinct conceptually, but also have separate historical origins, and only come together with the negotiations of the Palermo Protocol.
