From marginalisation to exploitation
Every January organisations committed to fighting modern slavery and human trafficking commemorate Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Yasmina Nuny Silva of Anti-Slavery International discusses the fight against human trafficking and how we can mobilise for change.
We all want to live our lives with dignity and be able to move safely, both nationally and internationally. But with rising global insecurity, fuelled by issues like the cost-of-living crisis, increasing conflicts, the climate emergency and political polarisation, the risk of people being trafficked is increasing. And it is exacerbated by hostile migration policies and racial and socio-economic disparities around the world.
Human trafficking is a serious human rights violation – it includes different forms of exploitation that can affect people of all ages, genders and backgrounds. It can happen within and across national borders.
Despite some efforts worldwide to tackle this crime, there are still significant gaps in the development and implementation of strong prevention and protection measures to support those affected. In fact, in many cases, governments are creating the conditions that make people vulnerable to being trafficked in the first place.
While anyone can become a victim of trafficking, people who experience social inequalities and discrimination, particularly migrants and people who are socially isolated, are at increased risk. To confront human trafficking effectively, we must understand how different communities are marginalised and ensure our fight for freedom is based firmly in anti-racism and human rights.
What is human trafficking?
Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that involves the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. For children, it is considered human trafficking regardless of whether coercion or force is used.
According to the 2024 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Trafficking in Persons report, 202,478 were detected as victims of human trafficking globally and, among them, 38 per cent were children. This is a 25 per cent increase in the number of people detected since before the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is still likely to be an underestimation of the actual number.
People are often trafficked for the purpose of forced labour, sexual exploitation, forced criminality, and other forms of exploitation, including forced begging and forced marriage. In the UK, we rely on the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) to understand the extent of modern slavery (including human trafficking) in the country. In 2024, 19,125 potential victims were referred into the NRM, the highest number of referrals up to that point. The most represented nationalities were British, Vietnamese and Albanian nationals. (The full-year summary for 2025 is expected in February.)
Root causes and risk factors
Poverty, social inequalities and marginalisation are some of the root causes of human trafficking. Across the world, we know that communities have been discriminated against along the lines of race, gender, disability, indigeneity and more. This manifests as people not having access to the same educational opportunities, having fewer options for work, taking on more debt and experiencing homelessness, and traffickers are more likely to exploit these vulnerabilities.
In terms of border securitisation, we have seen a rise in hostile immigration laws around the world in recent years, including in the UK. When immigration laws penalise people for the way they enter a country, regardless of whether they are seeking safety or were trafficked – and when access to support and protection are limited – the state itself creates systemic vulnerabilities that further expose people to exploitation.
When people who have experienced trafficking are met with hostility, denied support, criminalised or have insecure immigration status, they are less likely to seek support from authorities and are more easily targeted by exploiters.
How the UK is failing trafficking victims
Over the last few years, the modern slavery sector (and overlapping sectors like migration and asylum rights) have been warning against the hostile rhetoric and policies against migrants pushed by the current UK government and its predecessor. And while migration and trafficking are separate phenomena, they are interrelated and, in the context of current UK rhetoric, dangerously conflated.
We have seen how the government (and the media) has prioritised immigration enforcement over safeguarding, with survivors of trafficking consistently being criminalised or placed in immigration detention, which denies them access to specialist modern slavery support.
This hostile approach, including criminalisation, has created a system where people who are trafficked and being exploited may be too afraid to come forward and identify themselves to authorities due to their immigration status. And the system does nothing to address root causes or even target the perpetrators. This only pushes survivors further into the hands of perpetrators who can use their precarious immigration status to continue to coerce them.
The government must put human rights and safeguarding at the core of its policies. We need stronger legal protections to ensure that people trafficked to the UK are identified and protected from exploitation. And for survivors who have found freedom, we must ensure that they are adequately supported to decrease their risk of re-exploitation.
What can we do?
Now is not a time to feel hopeless. Nor should we feel that modern slavery and human trafficking do not affect us. We all have a role to play in eradicating slavery, including by:
- Learning more about modern slavery and raising awareness in our communities
- Amplifying the voices of survivors
- Supporting anti-slavery organisations
If you are in the UK and suspect someone might be in slavery, you have several options:
Anti-Slavery International is the world’s oldest human rights organisation. It has existed since 1839 to ensure that all people everywhere are free from slavery, challenging slavery in all its forms. Anti-Slavery International hosts and chairs the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG), a coalition established in 2009 to monitor the UK’s implementation of European anti-trafficking legislation. The group examines all types of human trafficking, including internal trafficking and the trafficking of British nationals.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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Photo © Jess Turner for Anti-Slavery International
