Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're going to talk about the horrifying world of human trafficking with one of the world's great experts on the topic.

A Rhodes Scholar, a Truman scholar, former partner of a major law firm, and since 2012, the founder

and president of the human trafficking pro bono legal center. She has testified before the

Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and has personally represented victims of trafficking.

Through her organization, H.T. Pro Bono, she and her colleagues have trained more than 2,000 pro bono

attorneys nationwide to handle these difficult cases. Thank you for joining me, Martina Vandenberg.

Thank you, Alexandra. It's such a delight to be talking to you about this because I really don't

know anybody who has more knowledge about this subject. It's a grim subject, to be sure.

This is a podcast about financial crime, and some of the people listening won't be familiar

with the scope or nature of this crime. So maybe you could help us at the outset by starting

with some definitions, distinguishing human trafficking from human smuggling, and then talking a little bit

about the distinction of indentured labor, although, of course, the lines can eventually blur.

The scope of the problem is in dispute that at a minimum, the International Labor Organization

estimates that there are approximately 20.9 million people around the globe held in all forms of forced labor.

That includes forced labor in the private sector. It also includes sexual slavery.

But when we look at the data, what the ILO has been very clear about is that the vast majority of

people, more than 14 million people, are held in forced labor for labor exploitation in the

private sector. So across the globe, this is an enormous problem. And I feel like there's a lot of conceptual difficulty in understanding what this is.

So when I talk about forced labor, I am talking about using the services or labor of a person through the means of force, fraud, or coercion.

That can take the form of violence. That can take the form of violence.

That can take the form of threats of violence.

That can even take the form of threats of abuse of the legal system,

...