“Most Victims Are Trafficked into the Sex Industry”

No. Trafficking of women and children (and, more rarely, young men) for prostitution is a vile and heinous violation of human rights, but labor trafficking is probably more widespread. Evidence can be found in field studies of trafficking victims across the world and in the simple fact that the worldwide market for labor is far greater than that for sex. Statistics on the “end use” of trafficked people are often unreliable because they tend to overrepresent the sex trade. For example, men are excluded from the trafficking statistics gathered in Thailand because, according to its national law, men cannot qualify as trafficking victims. However, a detailed 2005 study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that, of the estimated 9.5 million victims of forced labor in Asia, less than 10 percent are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. Worldwide, less than half of all trafficking victims are part of the sex trade, according to the same report.

Labor trafficking, however, is hardly benign. A study of Burmese domestic workers in Thailand by Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research found beatings, sexual assault, forced labor without pay, sleep deprivation, and rape to be common. Another study by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) looked at East African girls trafficked to the Middle East and found that most were bound for oppressive domestic work, and often raped and beaten along the way. Boys from Cambodia and Burma are also frequently trafficked onto deep-sea commercial fishing boats, some of which stay at sea for up to two years. Preliminary research suggests 10 percent of these young crews never return, and boys...

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