"The trafficking of persons, particularly women and children, for forced and exploitative labor, including for sexual exploitation, is one of the most egregious violations of human rights which the United Nations now confronts."
- Kofi Annan, Secretary General, United Nations

According to the US State Department, more than a million human beings are trafficked each year, mainly women and children of both sexes. They are tricked or kidnapped, smuggled across borders, brutalized, drugged, raped and forced to sell their bodies for sex. Perhaps best understood as modern-day slavery, human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world, reaping billions in profits.

Traffickers subject their victims to slave-like conditions and horrific violence. If they manage to escape, victims are usually left with lifelong physical and mental scars. Many do not get that far. Some are murdered. Others commit suicide, even after escaping: they do not believe they will ever again be able to lead a normal life.

There are different types of trafficking. People are trafficked as forced labor in factories, on farms, in domestic servitude as nannies or housekeepers, even into forced marriages.

STOP focuses on sex trafficking because it is the most pernicious of all these forms of slavery – it affects the most children, employs the most violent methods, and leaves the worst after-effects of any of these forms of slavery. Moreover, this is the area in which our team has the greatest expertise.