The only thing Americans are good at is missing the mark.
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-report-trafficking-persons-2018
Still large areas of impunity
While most countries have had comprehensive trafficking in persons legislation in place for some years, the number of convictions has only recently started to grow. Pronounced increasing trends in the numbers of convictions were recorded in Asia, the Americas, and Africa and the Middle East. The increased number of convictions broadly follows the increases in the number of detected and reported victims, which shows that the criminal justice response is reflecting the detection trend. However, many countries in Africa and Asia continue to have very low numbers of convictions for trafficking, and at the same time detect fewer victims.
Reporting limited numbers of detected victims and few convictions does not necessarily mean that traffickers are not active in these countries. In fact, victims trafficked from subregions with low detection and conviction rates are found in large numbers in other subregions. This suggests that trafficking networks operate with a high degree of impunity in these countries. This impunity could serve as an incentive to carry out more trafficking.
More trafficking of domestic victims, while the richest countries are destinations for long-distance flows
Most trafficking victims are detected in their countries of citizenship. Detections of domestic victims have increased over the last 15 years. In addition to domestic and subregional trafficking, wealthy countries are more likely to be destinations for detected victims trafficked from more distant origins. Western and Southern Europe and countries in the Middle East, for example, record sizable shares of victims trafficked from other regions; whereas such detections are relatively rare in most other parts of the world.
Furthermore, detected trafficking flows towards richer countries are also more geographically diverse. Affluent countries in Western and Southern Europe as well as in North America detect victims originating from a large number of countries around the world.
Traffickers are mainly targeting women and girls
Most of the victims detected across the world are females; mainly adult women, but also increasingly girls. Almost three-quarters of the detected victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation are females, and 35 per cent of the victims trafficked for forced labour are also females, both women and girls. At the same time, more than half of the victims of trafficking for forced labour are men.
There are considerable regional differences in the sex and age profiles of detected trafficking victims, however. In West Africa, most of the detected victims are children, both boys and girls, while in South Asia, victims are equally reported to be men, women and children. In Central Asia, a larger share of adult men is detected compared to other regions, while in Central America and the Caribbean, more girls are recorded.
Trafficking for sexual exploitation continues to be the most detected form Most of the victims detected globally are trafficked for sexual exploitation, although this pattern is not consistent across all regions. Trafficking of females – both women and girls - for sexual exploitation prevails in the areas where most of the victims are detected: the Americas,
Europe, and East Asia and the Pacific. In Central America and the Caribbean, more girls are detected as victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation, while women are more commonly detected as victims of this form of exploitation in the other subregions.
Trafficking for forced labour is the most commonly detected form in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Middle East, forced labour is also the main form of trafficking detected, mainly involving adults. In Central Asia and South Asia, trafficking for forced labour and sexual exploitation are near-equally detected, although with different victim profiles.
The few national studies that have been carried out in European countries to estimate the total number of trafficking victims and their profiles have revealed that trafficking for sexual exploitation is the most prevalent form of trafficking. At the same time, they show that trafficking for forced labour may be less readily detected there.
Main forms of exploitation and profiles of detected victims in subregions
Different patterns of trafficking emerge in different parts of the world along with different forms of exploitation.
While forms other than sexual exploitation and forced labour are detected at much lower rates, they still display some geographical specificities. Trafficking for forced marriage, for example, is more commonly detected in parts of South-East Asia, while trafficking of children for illegal adoption is recorded in Central and South American countries. Trafficking for forced criminality is mainly reported in Western and Southern Europe, while trafficking for organ removal is primarily detected in North Africa, Central and South-Eastern Europe, and Eastern Europe. Many other forms, such as trafficking for exploitation in begging or for the production of pornographic material, are reported in different parts of the world. The detection of other forms of trafficking may partly reflect the ways in which countries have chosen to criminalize different forms of exploitation.