What Black Widow Can Teach Us About Human Trafficking Law

[Samantha Franks is an associate at a law firm in Washington D.C., where she specializes in international trade. She is a former Frederick Douglass Fellow, a former Fulbright postgraduate scholar, and a current member of the Department of Health and Human Services Office on Trafficking in Person’s working group.]

For many fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the 2021 release of Black Widow felt like a breath of fresh air. After twelve years on the sidelines, the film finally gave the first female Avenger, portrayed by Scarlett Johansson, a story of her own.

The plot centers around the titular character’s revenge on the organization that transformed her into a superspy. The film’s opening credits roll as little girls are dragged screaming from the back of a truck, organized into factions by a white Russian mobster, and subsequently subjected to brutal training in an unknown facility. A haunting cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit plays as the girls grow into beautiful assassins, shown manipulating pivotal moments of history. Later in the film, it’s revealed that Johansson’s character was stolen in infancy from her birth mother in order to be trained as an uber-sexualized spy. The trafficking ring is (spoilers) eventually taken down by Black Widow herself.

The film garnered more than $250 million in its opening weekend and was praised for its willingness to tackle uniquely gendered forms of darkness, including human trafficking. Cate Shortland, the director, said the goal of the movie was to show the Marvel universe ‘intersecting with reality…so we talked about trafficking’. In the same interview, Florence Pugh said she cried watching the opening credits scene. She went on: ‘I never would have assumed that a film like this would be dealing with such deep and painful story lines, especially the abuse of the women and especially the capturing of young girls’.

There’s a problem, though: Black Widow gets human trafficking horribly, dangerously wrong. 

Misconceptions Surrounding Forced Labor

Arguably, it isn’t Black Widow’s fault for getting trafficking wrong – or at least, it isn’t only Black Widow’s fault. Despite increasing attention in domestic and international politics, as well as the media, human trafficking is a widely misunderstood crime. Widow isn’t alone in its shoddy depiction; instead, it fits into a pattern of films like Taken and shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The Wire, and even a 1966 episode of Star Trek.

In order to understand the problem of pop culture’s representation of human trafficking, it’s easiest to start with the myth: Human trafficking is when (predominately white) women and girls are stolen from safety and sold into grotesque sexual exploitation.

To combat that myth, there are three important questions to answer: what form does trafficking take, who is impacted by trafficking and where does trafficking occur?

What is Human Trafficking?

Human trafficking is global crime, governed by an extensive network of international instruments. Most notably, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (“Palermo Protocol”), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000 and now ratified by 179 parties, defines “trafficking in persons” as the following:

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs…

In shorter parlance: Human trafficking is when a person uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit another individual’s labor. Here, Black Widow’s depiction of mind control over its female assassins arguably fits the bill.

Who is Impacted?

Trafficking is an economic crime. While forced labor labor is frequently violent and may include sexual abuse, the sexual exploitation isn’t always the goal; profit is.

According to the International Labor Organization, there were almost 28 million people living under conditions of forced labor in 2021. 17.3 million of those are thought to be in the private sector; 6.3 million in forced commercial sexual exploitation; 3.9 million in forced labor imposed by a state government.  In reality, trafficking numbers are notoriously difficult to record, and are likely to be much higher. While the majority of those in forced commercial sexual exploitation are women and girls, the majority of those living in conditions of forced labor are men and boys.

Unlike what one might see in the movies, victims of human trafficking are rarely abused by strangers. Instead, they are generally people made vulnerable by poverty, who are largely exploited by family members, friends, or trusted acquaintances. Many are immigrants; many are people of color. Unlike in Black Widow, very few are babies, and even fewer are kidnapped from their mothers’ unwilling arms.

Where Does It Occur?

Human trafficking happens in every country. Most countries have imposed domestic trafficking laws; however, there is a dearth of both enforcement and understanding in how the crime operates.

A common misconception is that trafficking must involve a border. As above, human trafficking occurs when a trafficker uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person into work or into engagement in a commercial sex act.  Accordingly, it can include, but does not require, movement across international or domestic borders. It can, and often does, happen in one community. While someone who is smuggled across a border may be a victim of human trafficking, smuggling and trafficking are distinct.

Despite the depictions in media like Black Widow, the majority of trafficking is not organized by an international mob boss. Instead, trafficking is more commonly about small-scale exploitation of individuals who are already known to the trafficker.

Roots of the Myth

Human trafficking is not a new crime. While the Palermo Protocol now governs trafficking internationally, law relating to trafficking began much earlier. While some are obvious, and relate to the destruction of the transatlantic slave trade or migrant smuggling, others are more surprising: they include they include the International Agreement for the Suppression  of the White Slave Traffic (1904), the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (1910), the Convention on the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921), the Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933), and the Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of Prostitution of Others (1949).  

The basis of these conventions is complicated (and for a deeper dive on the first two, I highly recommend this piece). Some are dual purpose; they seek to prevent prostitution as a moral sin, but also because it very practically contributed to gruesome venereal diseases. At the 1902 International Conference on the White Slave Traffic, the language for the 1904 Agreement on the Suppression of White Slave Traffic was formalized, and included the following:

Penalties shall also be inflicted on any person who, to satisfy the passions of another has by fraud, violence, threats, abuse of authority, or any other means of compulsion procured, enticed, or led astray a woman or girl over age, with immoral intent, even where the various actions constituting the offence have taken place in different countries.

It is not hard to see the parallels to modern trafficking law: This language involves force, violence, and compulsion, just as we do today.

The sexual exploitation of women and girls is a global problem, and is a topic worthy of extensive discussion. However, these legal instruments convey an obvious hypocrisy: After centuries of exploiting people of color for their labor, the west spent the first half of the 20^th century obsessed with the protection of (largely white) women and girls from the so-called slave trade. By equating prostitution with slavery, the early conventions also undermine efforts to understand the nature of forced labor.

Why Does it Matter?

More than a hundred years after the Convention Against White Slave Traffic was written, media like Black Widow still conveys a world in which human trafficking is a dramatic, complicated crime committed against white women and girls by complex criminal masterminds. This obfuscates reality; it prevents people from easily understanding that trafficking is frequently small scale and local, committed against vulnerable peoples. Labor trafficking more commonly impacts men, and yet even the Palermo Protocol invokes “women and girls” as the primary beneficiaries of its protection.

There are concrete ramifications to this misrepresentation: As the Special Rapporteur for Trafficking explained in 2021, victims of trafficking are arrested and denied assistance, and sometimes even forcibly returned to dangerous situations, because of racial profiling and xenophobia. When we do not understand what trafficking looks like, we do not see its victims.

Representation like Widow’s – like Taken’s, and Grey’s Anatomy – is innocuous on its face. But in the context of history and reality, it’s dangerous. Trafficking victims deserve better, and we must know enough to ask for the same.