The definition of trafficking in persons, as set out in the
Palermo Protocol, was an unstated invitation to legislators
around the world to modify its provisions.34 This is so as the
definition is a flawed piece of drafting. The provisions of the
Palermo Protocol were always destined to be incorporated into
domestic legislation; this is the essence of both it and the
Convention-that the State parties adopt legislation, which
establishes trafficking as a criminal offense. Yet the definition,
as set out in the Palermo Protocol is, in the main, three sets of
categories: "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring";
"of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception"; and forced
labour, slavery, servitude, removal of organs." For the members
of legislatures around the world, this raised more questions than
it answered as the Protocol off-loaded the need to define these various terms to domestic legislators.36 The invitation was
further extended by the fact that the category of types of
exploitation was left open-ended by the phrase "[e]xploitation
shall include, . . . ."" As a result, it was left to each country to
determine what type of exploitation it would seek to suppress in
the context where the very term "exploitation" was ill-understood
and nowhere defined in law.