The business brings in more than $150 billion annually in 145 countries, containing 94% of the world’s population. Two-thirds of profits come from sexual exploitation, according to the 2014 ILO document “Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labor.”
Trafficking operates through the recruitment, transportation, transfer, and/or harboring or reception of people, under threat, use of force, or other forms of coercion, kidnapping, fraud, deception, abuse of power, taking advantage of vulnerability, to receive payment or benefits to have control over another person for the purpose of exploitation, as explained by the Palermo Protocol of 2000.
Human trafficking is a reality that occurs on all continents. In Latin America, women in particular are the victims of slavery: “More than 80% of the victims of human trafficking in Latin America are women and girls who, for the most part, are found in countries in the same region,” stated U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres on July 31, 2019, World Anti-Trafficking Day, according to Voice of America (VOA).
“According to a U.N. report, 92% of victims in South America and 75% of victims in Central America and the Caribbean are trafficked to neighboring or nearby countries,” the VOA stated.
Modern-day slavery can take several forms: farm work, servile marriages, child marriages, victims forced to be hitmen or “mules” to transport drugs, children sold through catalogs for “pedophile sex tourism,” and more.
According to IOM data, there are more than 600 million international tourist trips annually; 20% of travelers acknowledged that they travel looking for sex and 3% acknowledged they travel looking for sex with children, a figure that translates into 4 million people looking for pedophile sex. Several Latin American countries are the focus of this tourism.