How is trafficking different from people smuggling?
Like trafficking, people smuggling involves the movement of people. Unlike trafficking, people smuggling does not involve moving people for the purpose of exploitation after arriving in the destination country. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes states one of the major differences between trafficking and people smuggling is that smuggled migrants consent to the smuggling, while trafficking victims ‘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’. People trafficking can occur when people are forced, deceived, coerced into exploitative situations. While most reported cases of trafficking in Australia involve the movement of people into Australia from South-East Asian region, trafficking can also occur within Australian borders.
