Reader Responses to The Human Trafficking Crisis

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Not to sound like an annoying fact checker, but the first sentence of “The Human Trafficking Crisis” (Elms, July/August) claims the International Labour Organization says 40 million people are “victims of human trafficking, forced into providing labor and sex.”

But the ILO number is 25 million for forced labor—and that is a stretch for “human trafficking” because under the ILO definition, about half are people who are not moved (or trafficked) at all. The ILO confusingly has a figure of 40 million in “modern slavery,” reached by adding in 15 million in child marriages. Frankly, all these numbers are pretty suspect.

Glenn Kessler ’81 The writer is fact checker for the Washington Post.

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