America’s Global Leadership on Combating Human Trafficking

American leadership is critical to combatting human trafficking, a global crisis that knows no borders and devastates individuals and families. Trafficking also undermines the global economy and threatens our national security. In 2016, the International Labor Organization estimated that 40.3 million people live in modern slavery, controlled and forced to work by others and sold as commodities (24.9 million in forced labor and sex trafficking, and 15.4 million in forced marriage). Trafficking is estimated to have grown into a $150 billion business, one of the world’s biggest illicit industries that undermines economic growth and traps victims and their families in inter-generational cycles of debt bondage.