Jewel (pseudonym) faced severe economic insecurity in her home country of Nigeria. When she heard of the opportunity to work in Denmark as a caregiver for senior citizens, she felt incredibly fortunate.
“I was thanking God for the opportunity to be in this country. I was looking forward to starting work,” she recalled.
When she arrived in Denmark, she was met by another Nigerian woman, who brought her to Copenhagen’s red-light district. “This is where you’ll be working,” the woman said.
Initially confused, Jewel looked around for a hospital or something reminiscent of a caregiving facility. She quickly realized that the opportunity she had been promised was a hoax.
In that moment, Jewel’s heart shattered into a million pieces. For several years to follow, Jewel was serially raped by sex buyers and experienced repeated threats to her life from her sex traffickers.
Her sex traffickers also imposed immense fees that she was demanded to pay. It is typical in cases of international sex trafficking for traffickers to demand payment for travel and living expenses. In Jewel’s case her traffickers even went to her house in Nigeria, threatening her family members’ lives if she did not pay them.
Jewel is just one of thousands of immigrant women who have been trafficked into the sex trade. Europe provides a particularly tragic example. According to the International Organization for Migration, it is estimated that 80% of women and girls arriving to Europe from Nigeria are trafficked into the European sex trade.
Ukrainian refugees who have fled the country following Russia’s invasion are also frequently trafficked into the European sex trade.
One Ukrainian refugee who volunteered at the Ukrainian border to help other refugees described her feeling of vulnerability to BBC News. “The women and children come here from a terrible war. They don’t speak Polish or English. They don’t know what’s going on and they believe what anyone tells them.”
“The first day I volunteered, I saw three men from Italy. They were looking for vulnerable women to sell into the sex trade,” she recalled.
Further, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024, reports that international trafficking inflows are increasingly geographically complex, with victims from 162 different nationalities being trafficked to 128 different countries.
Why Are Immigrants Vulnerable to Sex Trafficking?
Across the globe, sex traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of immigrants, especially since being able to legally immigrate for lucrative work in a foreign country is often a lengthy and laborious process that many cannot afford to undertake.
In a world plagued by war, political instability, poverty, and an array of other calamities, it is common for those from affected regions to seek refuge in foreign countries. Tragically, unscrupulous individuals often leverage the desperation and vulnerabilities of those seeking to flee such circumstances as a means of trafficking them into prostitution. These vulnerabilities can include limited economic resources, inability to speak the native language, or unfamiliarity with the laws of the country they are residing in.
Evidence of this vulnerability was provided by researchers who studied the demographics of women exploited in 280 illicit massage businesses (IMBs) in the United States. Of the 1,629 women who were identified to have been sex trafficked, only four of them were from the United States, with the vast majority being from Asian countries. Seventy-nine percent of the women were lodged overnight in the facility where their sexual exploitation occurred, revealing an epidemic of homelessness among sex trafficked individuals, especially those from foreign countries.
Further, the U.S. Department of State reported that “unaccompanied foreign national children without lawful immigration status are among one of the most vulnerable groups to sex trafficking.”
Methods of Coercion by Sex Traffickers
The promise of economic opportunity is one of the most common ways that sex traffickers entrap immigrants within the sex trade, according to the 2023 Federal Human Trafficking Report.
Sex traffickers also frequently exploit the difficult nature of regaining lost identification documents in a foreign country as a way to control victims. In a study conducted in the Netherlands about the different methods sex traffickers use to control their victims, 32% had their travel documents confiscated and many of them were financially dependent on their traffickers.
This same study also showed that sex traffickers frequently preyed on individuals who did not know the languages commonly spoken in the Netherlands: 78% of victims did not know Dutch, 45% did not speak German, and 26% did not speak English. Twenty-seven percent listed having little knowledge of their rights as a method by which their trafficker controlled them.
The Undeniable Link Between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking
Many deny the linkage between prostitution and sex trafficking, but the truth is that the two cannot be separated.
Legalizing or fully decriminalizing prostitution is often touted as a remedy for sex trafficking and an inhibitor to violence faced by people in prostitution. In reality, the opposite is true. An analysis of data from 150 countries found that nations where prostitution is legal reported higher inflows of human trafficking than in countries where it was partially or fully prohibited.
Legalization or full decriminalization increases the demand for prostitution because sex buyers no longer fear criminal penalties. This uptick in demand creates a profitable supply shortage, which sex traffickers are motivated to fill by pushing more vulnerable people into the sex trade.
In order to stop sex trafficking, we must put responsibility on those who keep the prostitution marketplace afloat: sex buyers. Without the dollars of sex buyers to fuel the commercial sex industry, it will have no choice but to collapse. No buyers=No business.
See how law enforcement and communities across the country are working to combat demand and encourage your own community to do the same!
