There are different types of trafficking. People are trafficked for forced labor, domestic servitude and into forced marriages.
Trafficking is a low-risk, high-profit industry that operates through elaborate international criminal networks all over the world. It is one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world, victimizing millions of people and reaping billions in profits.
STOP focuses on sex trafficking because it is the most pernicious of all these forms of slavery – it affects the most children, employs the most violent methods, and leaves the worst after-effects of any of these forms of slavery. This is the area in which our team has the greatest expertise.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that throughout the world there are more than 40 million victims of trafficking globally every year, almost 20% are children;
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) figures indicate that almost 80% of identified victims had been trafficked for sexual exploitation; The majority of trafficking children were used for sexual exploitation, according to UNODC statistics from 2019.
Unfortunately, no child is immune. Children are being trafficked and exploited in every region of the world, both girls and boys.
This is not about prostitution. It is about young women and children being sold as sex slaves: they are tricked or kidnapped, smuggled across borders, raped, beaten, drugged, and forced into sexual slavery.