The critique is offered from the perspective that research on human trafficking should be conducted by independent scholars; the field is currently crowded with advocacy researchers pushing specific political agendas. While the author does not question that the problem of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation exists, he does challenge the way in which the problem has been constructed by activists and he questions the estimates provided for the magnitude of the problem. Politicians and groups of all ideological perspectives have embraced the campaign presented by the feminist and anti-prostitution movement, although the campaign has failed to achieve any of its three instrumental purposes of preventing trafficking, prosecuting traffickers, and protecting victims. The campaign has succeeded however, in gaining widespread support for feminist issues and anti-prostitution agendas. As empirical knowledge of human trafficking in women grows, the success of the campaign will wane as the discrepancy between the reality of human trafficking and the image created by the campaign becomes more visible. Moreover, the campaign is not without internal tensions as moral entrepreneurs within the campaign struggle against one another. The author asserts that the sustainability of the campaign rests on its ability to bolster its central image of naïve and impoverished young women being lured unknowingly into transnational sex slavery. This central campaign image, however, has already begun to crumble in the face of new empirical evidence on the reality of the human trafficking problem. Notes, references