By Sobhan Lawler, Samantha Lyneham, Christopher Dowling

Over the past decade, cyber-scam centres dedicated to running online scams at a massive scale have proliferated across areas of South-East Asia, partly fuelled by a workforce of persons who have been trafficked for the purpose of forced criminality. Alongside the scams, which affect victims globally, these centres themselves have become sites of significant exploitation. Historically, women and girls constitute the majority of victim-survivors of trafficking overall, but the extent to which gender shapes pathways into, and experiences of, exploitation in this context is only beginning to be explored. To understand women and girls’ experiences of trafficking into cyber-scam centres for forced criminality, the research involved qualitative consultations with 86 stakeholders in the South East Asian region and in-depth interviews with three victim-survivors.

Women and girls are predominantly recruited into cyber-scam centres through someone they know, using strategies that exploit relational trust. Women in cyber-scam centres commonly experience compounded forms of exploitation, most often forced criminality (online scamming) as well as sexual exploitation. Sex work, threats and extreme forms of violence are routine control mechanisms used by criminal organisations to make people of all genders perform and conform in this environment. Gender-responsive approaches are imperative for addressing the complex and multiple forms of exploitation that women experience while inside cyber-scam centres and post-release. Recommendations are made for developing gendered awareness campaigns, trauma-informed victim identification processes and aftercare, and strengthening partnerships across the region.

By Samantha Bricknell and Amy McDonald

The Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery National Minimum Dataset is anational data collection on modern slavery events. This study describes modern slavery reports received between July 2024 and June 2025, the characteristics of victim-survivors and perpetrators, the nature of Australia Government-funded support provided to victim-survivors and the outcomes of modern slavery prosecutions.

By Alagie Jinkang

Italy’s illegal commercialised sex industry is estimated to be worth 90 million Euro and involves up to 9 million clients annually. The industry depends on migrants from Nigeria, Romania and Albania, many of whom are victims of human trafficking, abuse, exploitation, oppression, extreme educational and economic poverty, and non-integration in Italy. But despite legal and policy interventions, sexual exploitation of migrants is highly tolerated, goes largely unpunished and is increasingly threatening to migrant women's wellbeing throughout the peninsula, as in the case of migrant women from Nigeria. This brief focuses on the NigerianItalian HTSE for two main reasons: (a) Italy’s proximity to the central Mediterranean route serving as key irregular route for migrant smugglers and human traffickers; (b) Italy’s dysfunctional and emergencial asylum systems coupled with its insufficient, untimely and inefficient policy intervention on migrants' sexual exploitation, and; (c) perceptions and misinformation about Europe as source of economic and social opportunities and prestige, which all provide a fertile ground for mafia activities and organised crime to flourish. Therefore, coupled with PERCEPTIONS findings, this brief draws political attention to the intersections between irregular migration and asylum, mafia activities and organised crime, targeted deception and misinformation, abject poverty and traditional practices within the discourse of NigerianItalian HTSE.

By The International Organization for Migration

This report, Climate Chains: Mapping the Relationship between Climate, Trafficking in Persons and Building Resilience in the Philippines, explores the complex links between climate change, livelihood, vulnerability, migration and human trafficking in the Philippines. Commissioned by IOM under the Climate Resilience Against Trafficking and Exploitation (CREATE) project, this study forms part of a broader research focusing on Ethiopia and the Philippines – two countries facing distinct climate challenges: slow-onset droughts and sudden-onset typhoons, respectively.  

The research used a mixed-methods approach including household surveys, interviews and focus group discussions. The report puts forward a conceptual model that links climate events and trafficking through a series of intertwined steps. It identifies a causal chain where climate events disrupt livelihood, increase vulnerability and heighten migration intentions, which can lead to exploitation and trafficking. The research explores how factors linking climate and trafficking operate in the Philippines. 

This study provides critical insights and recommendations for policymakers, donors and organizations in the Philippines and internationally that are working to combat human trafficking and exploitation, while strengthening resilience to climate change

By The International Organization for Migration

This report, Climate Chains: Mapping the Relationship between Climate, Trafficking in Persons and Building Resilience in Ethiopia, explores the complex links between climate change, livelihood, vulnerability, migration and human trafficking in Ethiopia. Commissioned by IOM under the Climate Resilience Against Trafficking and Exploitation (CREATE) project, this study forms part of a broader research focusing on Ethiopia and the Philippines – two countries facing distinct climate challenges: slow-onset droughts and sudden-onset typhoons, respectively.  

The research used a mixed-methods approach including household surveys, interviews and focus group discussions. The report puts forward a conceptual model that links climate events and trafficking through a series of intertwined steps. It identifies a causal chain where climate events disrupt livelihood, increase vulnerability and heighten migration intentions, which can lead to exploitation and trafficking. The research explores how factors linking climate and trafficking operate in Ethiopia. 

This study provides critical insights and recommendations for policymakers, donors and organizations in Ethiopia and internationally that are working to combat human trafficking and exploitation, while strengthening resilience to climate change.

By Luca Giommoni, Ruth Ikwu

   This study identifies the presence of human trafficking indicators in a UK-based sample of sex workers who advertise their services online. To this end, we devel oped a crawling and scraping software that enabled the collection of information from 17, 362 advertisements for female sex workers posted on the largest dedicated platform for sex work services in the UK. We then established a set of 10 indicators of human trafficking and a transparent and replicable methodology through which to detect their presence in our sample. Most of the advertisements (58.3%) contained only one indicator, while 3,694 of the advertisements (21.3%) presented 2 indicators of human trafficking. Only 1.7% of the advertisements reported three or more indica tors, while there were no advertisements that featured more than four. 3, 255 adver tisements (19.0%) did not contain any indicators of human trafficking. Based on this analysis, we propose that this approach constitutes an effective screening process for quickly identifying suspicious cases, which can then be examined by more compre hensive and accurate tools to identify if human trafficking is occurring. We conclude by calling for more empirical research into human trafficking indicators

Trends in Organized Crime. 2024, 14pg