ABSTRACT
Introduction In a recent article, Professor Donna Hughes argued that ‘the sexual exploitation of women and children is a global human rights crisis that is being escalated by the use of new technologies’.4 Her employment of the language and discourse of human rights is remarkable, in that from a legal point of view, commentaries on the detrimental uses of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are usually framed in terms of criminality rather than human rights, and are also rarely gendered.5 Hughes’ argument is that ICTs are being used as facilitators for the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children in various ways, and her article is devoted to uncovering and cataloguing these digitally mediated abuses.6
In this chapter, I wish to use Hughes’ arguments as a point of departure for my own
