Trafficking in human beings in the tourism industry: trends and approaches

Tourism and hospitality scholars have been studying the prevalence of trafficking in human beings in the context of travel and tourism, particularly in the framework of sex tourism. However, a legal perspective is currently underexplored, especially one that reflects a human rights-based approach. The present chapter contributes such an approach. To do so it considers the existing international legal instruments and the legal obligations that derive from them and which states have committed to fulfil. To clarify the content of those obligations the chapter takes into account the findings and recommendations of human rights monitoring bodies, as well as existing soft law instruments, mostly from the field of business and human rights, that may have the potential to develop into hard law. Furthermore, it looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives undertaken in the private sector, which complement hard and soft law and offer the tourism industry valuable tools to address the scourge of human trafficking.