Trafficking 101 Quick Guide Released! World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is July 30
 

Every year, millions of men, women, and children are trafficked worldwide – including right here in the United States.

Trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel a person to engage in commercial sex. It can happen in any community. Victims can be any age, race, gender or nationality.

Traffickers can be anyone: a boyfriend/girlfriend, employer, gang member or family member, often inducing a young person into a life of commercial sex through a slow process of coercion. 

July 30 is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, the international day to raise awareness about how human trafficking impacts our communities and what can be done to combat the crime. We encourage you to take a few moments to learn about human trafficking, how to recognize it, and how to report any suspicious incidents of trafficking.

To help you, we've just released our Sex Trafficking 101 Quick Guide for Parents and Educators! You can download your copy now, for free!

Everyone can play a role to combat human trafficking.

Learn more about the signs and the red flags of sex trafficking, as well as ways traffickers groom and lure victims at our Trafficking 101 section located at InternetSafety101. Plus, learn tips parents should teach their children. Most importantly, demonstrate what healthy relationships look like!

• Call the National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free hotline at 1-888-373-7888: Anti-Trafficking Hotline Advocates are available 24/7 to take reports of potential human trafficking.

• The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that nearly 80% of detected trafficking victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation, with women and girls accounting for the majority of victims.

• UNICEF estimates that about 1 in 4 victims of human trafficking are children. Many children are trafficked for various purposes, including sexual exploitation, forced labor, child soldiers, and domestic servitude.

• Nearly 26,500 runaways were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2020. 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking. 

•  Since 2000, traffickers have recruited 55% of sex trafficking victims online, usually through social media platforms, web-based messaging apps, online chat rooms, dating apps, classified advertisements, or job boards (Federal Human Trafficking Report, 2020)