Sex Trafficking Globally

SCOPE OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING GLOBALLY AND NATIONALLY1
Human trafficking includes both sex trafficking and labor trafficking and is the second largest – and fastest growing – criminal industry in the world. In 2008, traffickers made $31 billion buying and selling humans. Different sources estimate this figure to be as high as $32 billion.2
The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial sexual servitude at any given time. Of these victims, the ILO estimates that at least 1.39 million are victims of commercial sexual servitude, both transnational and within countries. According to the ILO, 56 percent of all forced labor victims are women and girls.3

Methods of Movement
Entry points for trafficked women into the United States are strategic sites along the U.S.-
Canadian and Mexican borders and international airports. These entry points for trafficking are fluid,
shifting to other locations when there are crackdowns.
Many of the U.S. (62%) and international (29%) women are domestically trafficked inside the
United States. These trafficking patterns are diverse with international women transported from the
East to the West coast, from the South to the Northeast, and from urban to rural and rural to urban
districts. Similarly, U.S. women are domestically trafficked across city, state and even national
borders.

Methods of Initiation
Twenty percent of the international and 28 percent of the U.S. women had intimate relationships
with the men who pimped them. They and other victims described classic dynamics of battering that
evolved into pimping. Emotional and physical coercion were used to break the women’s resistance to
entering prostitution. Pornography was used as an “educational tool” with many (50%) of the
international women. For some, stripping was the entrance point into the sex industry, after which
they were constantly pressured into...