Transnational Crime and the Developing World

IV. Human Trafficking
A. Overview
Human trafficking is one of the fastest-growing transnational organized crime (TOC) markets and has the
greatest direct impact on individuals. For all the brutality and ruined lives it brings, human trafficking is
motivated by profit maximization: exploiting vulnerable people for labor or sex for money. 88 Strong profits
and weak penalties have attracted a wide variety of illicit actors, from organized crime groups (OCGs) to
terrorist organizations, operating both domestically and transnationally.
Human trafficking refers to the “recruitment, transportation, harboring or receipt of persons, by means
of coercion, abduction, deception or abuse of power or a vulnerability, for the purpose of exploitation,”
with exploitation including, at a minimum, “sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery or slavery-like
practices.” 89 An estimated 21 million men, women, and children around the world are victims of human
trafficking. 90
B. Value
Human trafficking is an extremely profitable business. The International Labor Organization (ILO)
estimates that human trafficking generates US$150.2 billion in profits each year. 91 As shown in
Figure I, two regions—Asia-Pacific and Developed Economies and the European Union (EU) 92 —are
each responsible for approximately one-third of the global profits, US$51.8 billion and US$46.9 billion
respectively, while the four remaining regions are responsible for the final third. There are approximately
11.7 million victims in the Asia-Pacific region, nearly eight times greater than Developed Economies and
the EU (1.5 million), yet the average annual profit per victim in the former is US$5,000 whereas the latter
is US$34,800. 93
Figure I. Estimated Annual Profits from Human Trafficking by Region (US$ billion)
60
50
40
30
13.8
6.3
20.5
0.2
20
10
0
31.7
Asia-Pacific
1.0 3.9
0.5
0.6
0.3 0.4
10.4 8.9 7.5
La6n America and
the Caribbean
3.6
14.3
0.1
Africa Middle East Central and
South-eastern
Europe and CIS
26.5
Developed
Economies and
EU
Forced Sexual Exploita6on Forced Domes6c Labor Forced Non-Domes6c Labor
Source: International Labor Organization
88
Siddharth Kara, “Supply and Demand: Human Trafficking in the Global Economy,” Harvard International Review 33, no. 2 (2011): 66.
89
United Nations, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 1953, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolTraffickingInPersons.aspx.
90
International Labor Organization, Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour (Geneva: International Labor Organization, 2014), 17, http://
www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_243391.pdf.
91
Ibid., 13.
92
All developed and developing economies of the European Union plus all other developed countries in the world.
93
International Labour Organization, Profits and Poverty, 14, 17.
Transnational Crime and the Developing World 21