Central America – Fertile Ground for Human Trafficking

Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking - the third largest crime industry in the world - as a major source of migrants heading towards the United States.

Human trafficking: A Disorganised Response to an Organised Crime

Human trafficking is perhaps one of the most well-organised crimes being committed in India. How else do we explain the phenomenon of adolescent girls and young women from remote villages across India being found in brothels in our cities?

VIDEO: World Day against Trafficking in Persons

The darkest underbelly of human existence hides right in front of us – modern day slaves are the foundation of the third largest criminal economy on the planet.

Asia’s Expanding Illicit Market: Brides

Paradoxically, the world’s most populated countries are facing a population crisis: a woman shortage. And it’s women who are paying a brutal price for it.

Recorded Increase in Human Trafficking, Women and Girls Targeted

Human trafficking is on the rise and it is more “horrific” than ever, a United Nations agency found. In a new report examining patterns in human trafficking, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that the global trend has increased steadily since 2010 around the world.

India Cracks Down on Human Trafficking

The Indian Union Cabinet has cleared the long-awaited Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, which proposes an imprisonment of 10 years to life term for those trafficking humans for the purpose of begging, marriage, prostitution or labour, among others. The bill will become a law once cleared by both houses of Parliament.

Migrants Are Up Against Nicaragua’s “Containment Wall”

Nicaragua’s "containment wall", aimed at bolstering internal security, has been successful with regard to the fight against transnational crime. But its victims are migrants who are relentlessly blocked from passing through the country en route to their destination: the United States.

One Migrant’s Brutal Odyssey Through Libya

Thirty-year-old Nazir Mohammed sits on one of the two sofas in his single room in Kwame Danso, a small town about 290 kilometres north of Ghana’s capital Accra, reflecting on life back in Libya.

Rohingya Refugees Face Fresh Ordeal in Crowded Camps

Mariam Akhtar, 23, is desperately searching for her young daughter two weeks after arriving from Myanmar in Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern coastal district in Bangladesh.

Latin America Lacks Clear Policies to Tackle Human Trafficking

Each year, some three million undocumented immigrants enter the United States, half of them with the help of traffickers, as part of a nearly seven-billion- dollar business, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Children of a Lesser God: Trafficking Soars in India

Sunita Pal, a frail 17-year-old, lies in a tiny bed in the women’s ward of New Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Her face and head swathed in bandages, with only a bruised eye and swollen lips visible, the girl recounts her ordeal to a TV channel propped up by a pillow. She talks of her employers beating her with a stick every day, depriving her of food and threatening to kill her if she dared report her misery to anybody.

Cubans Seeking the American Dream, Stranded in Costa Rica

Thousands of Cubans heading for the United States have been stranded at the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border since mid-November, waiting for the authorities in Managua to authorise their passage north.

Opinion: Mexico’s Gruesome War Against Migrants

“Pray for me.” Those are the last words Eva Nohemi Hernández Murillo told her mother, Elida Yolanda, through a patchy phone line on the evening of Aug. 22, 2010.

Museums Taking Stand for Human Rights, Rejecting ‘Neutrality’

An exhibition on modern-day slavery at the International Slavery Museum in this northern English town is just one example of a museum choosing to focus on human rights, and being “upfront” about it.

In Search of Jobs, Cameroonian Women May End Up as Slaves in Middle East

Her lips are quavering her hands trembling. Susan (not her real name) struggles to suppress stubborn tears, but the outburst comes, spontaneously, and the tears stream down her cheeks as she sobs profusely.

The U.N. at 70: Drugs and Crime are Challenges for Sustainable Development

With terrorism, migrant smuggling and trafficking in cultural property some of the world's most daunting challenges, "the magnitude of the problems we face is such that it is sometimes hard to imagine how any effort can be enough to confront them. But to quote Nelson Mandela, 'It always seems impossible until it is done'. We must keep working together, until it is done."

EU to Focus on Human Smuggling Amid Mediterranean Crisis

Speaking at the U.N. Security Council, Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, called on the international community to take urgent steps to end the Mediterranean crisis and dismantle the human smuggling rings that facilitate it.

Opinion: War on Wildlife Crime – Time to Enlist the Ordinary Citizen

It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing a “wildlife crisis”, and it is a crisis exacerbated by human activities, not least criminal ones.

OPINION: The Survivors

Oct. 18 is the EU’s Anti-Trafficking Day, as well as the United Kingdom’s Anti-Slavery Day. These events offer a good opportunity to talk about human trafficking within Europe’s borders, but we should not forget that there are victims and survivors all over the world.

Child Trafficking Rampant in Underdeveloped Indian Villages

In a country where well over half the population lives on less than two dollars a day, it takes a lot to shock people. The sight of desperate families traveling in search of money and food, whole communities defecating in the open, old women performing back-breaking labour, all this is simply part of life in India, home to 1.2 billion people.