Facts About Human Trafficking

As many as 27 million people are victims of modern-day slavery (human trafficking). The majority—an estimated 18 million—are from India, Nepal, and Pakistan. (Free the Slaves)

Approximately 80 percent of human trafficking victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors (International Justice Mission)

In 2009, the head of India’s Central Bureau of Investigations estimated that there are more than one million children in prostitution. (IJM)

The majority of trafficking victims are used for sexual exploitation; others for bonded labor, domestic work, military conscription, marriage, illicit adoption, sport, begging, or organ harvesting (Combating Child Trafficking, UNICEF 2005).

Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing transnational crimes generating an estimated $10 billion per year (Combating Child Trafficking, UNICEF 2005).

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 makes trafficking illegal in the United States. It defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:

  1. “sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age”; or
  2. “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.”

The primary international law against trafficking is the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children

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