Human Trafficking is modern day slavery. It is the trade in and exploitation of human beings for profit and involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labour or commercial sex act.

Sex Trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It often affects the most vulnerable, whether it is the homeless teenage girl living on the streets of Dublin; the Syrian woman fleeing to Europe as a refugee or the child brought to Ireland from Nigeria with false promises of education and employment. Sex trafficking continues to be the fastest growing criminal industry in the world and much work must be done at a global and domestic level in order to eradicate this crime.

Each year, millions of men, women, and children are trafficked in countries all over the world. It is estimated that human trafficking generates many billions of dollars in profit per year, second only to drug trafficking, as the most profitable form of transnational crime.

Some Global Statistics:

(Source: International Labour Organisation Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Geneva, September 2017)

• Human Trafficking makes $150.2 billion profit per year ($99 billion from sex trafficking)
• At any given time in 2016, 40.3 million people were in modern slavery
• 1 in 4 victims is a child
• Main Types of Exploitation: Sexual & Labour
• In Europe, 80% of trafficking victims are women and girls, the majority of whom are trafficked for sexual exploitation.