Almost 50 million people are currently living under human trafficking conditions, a form of modern slavery that includes forced labor, forced marriages, and sexual exploitation. Of the 28 million people living in forced labor conditions, women and children are disproportionately affected, with one-in-eight trafficked persons tragically being children.
Unfortunately, human trafficking is also not simply a human rights crime, it is also a financial crime that undermines economies and national security. It touches upon various sectors, from transportation to hospitality and into finance and maritime operations. After drugs and arms trafficking, forced labor is the world’s third-most lucrative criminal activity, generating an estimated $150 billion of illicit revenue annually in the private and shadow economies throughout the world.
Indeed, the backbone of human trafficking is the generation of illicit proceeds and the resulting money-laundering activities to disguise, move, and conceal the illegal profits, all being conducted on a massive global scale. To even start to combat this problem, financial institutions need to be better trained, armed, and empowered to deny traffickers access to legitimate financial systems around the world.
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