Top 10 Worst Countries for
Human Trafficking
10.
Algeria
Algeria is the largest country in Africa, and because of its location, it’s a hotbed
for human trafficking.
It’s a North African country and is the gateway to Europe for migrants from Mali,
Niger, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nigeria.
It’s common for people to voluntarily enter Algeria so they can take a boat to Europe.
However, many times after entering Algeria their journey to Europe is thwarted; usually
they run out of money, or their money is stolen.
Being in a foreign country with no money means that these people are sometimes left with
no choice but to work as sex workers, laborers, domestic servants, or they are forced to beg
until they collect enough money to pay traffickers to get them to Europe.
Another possibility is that they are brought into Algeria by traffickers, and then owe
a debt that needs to be paid before they can continue on to Europe.
The problem is that it’s very hard to get out of debt because they don’t make a legal
wage, while interest on the debt always makes the debt larger.
Or the employer could give them a place to live and food to eat, and that adds to the
debt, essentially making them slaves.
For years, Algeria denied that they had a human trafficking problem, despite being a
Tier 2 or 3 country on the Department of Justice’s Trafficking In Persons report (TOP) since
2004.
It wasn’t until 2015 that they acknowledged the problem, and in December of that year,
the Algerian government rolled out a plan on how to deal with human trafficking.
However, in the year that followed, no one was convicted of human trafficking related
crimes.
9.
Venezuela
Since 2002, Venezuela has drifted between Tier 2 Watch List, and Tier 3 on the TIP report,
which is like hovering between a D- versus an F. However, things got really bad in 2015
when the Venezuelan economy had a downturn.
When it did, the rates of human trafficking tripled.
Among the people who are trafficked out of the country, 55 percent are adults, 26 percent
are young girls, and 19 percent are young boys.
Often, they are lured into trafficking by the promise of high paying jobs.
Instead, they are sent to countries in the Caribbean, where they are forced into the
sex trade or domestic servitude.
The main reason that Venezuela is constantly on the bottom of the list when it comes to
worst countries for human trafficking is because they do very little to combat it.
They have strict laws surrounding it, but it’s rare if anyone is prosecuted under
the laws.
Since 2013, only three people have been convicted under the human trafficking laws in Venezuela.
Unless the government cracks down on human trafficking, it will continue to be a plague
on the country.
8.
Sudan and South Sudan
Two civil wars between Muslims, who live in northern Sudan, and Christians and Animists,
who live in the south, led to South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011.
When South Sudan seceded, they were debt free and it was a middle income country because
they exported oil.
However, within just five years, thanks to corruption, South Sudan is now impoverished
and the 16th poorest country in the world.
Sudan is a little better off, but it’s still the 52nd poorest country.
Both countries also have a horrible problem with human trafficking.
Both countries are source and destination countries for human trafficking, and Sudan
is also a transit country.
People are brought into countries by Sudanese and South Sudanese employers, especially those
who own restaurants, construction companies, and hotels.
They lure people from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Democratic Republic of the
Congo with the promise of work and then enslave them.
A big market in both countries is child slaves.
Children, as young as 10, are used for a whole series of jobs, including construction, market
vending, shoe shining, car washing, rock breaking, brick making, delivery cart pulling, and begging.
Girls are also subject to sex work in restaurants, hotels, and brothels.
7.
Belarus
Belarus is a country in Eastern Europe that is landlocked between Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania,
and Latvia.
It is different than many of the other countries on this list, because in a lot of countries,
human trafficking is usually controlled by organized crime syndicates.
However, in Belarus, it is state-sponsored.
There are several ways the Belarus government can enslave people.
One is through a 2015 presidential decree that makes unemployed people pay a fee to
the state or they are forced to do community service.
If you’re unemployed, there is a good chance you can’t pay the fee, so this leads to
community service, meaning unemployed people are forced to work for the government without
being paid.
Another presidential decree ordered that workers in the wood processing industry would be given
bonuses every month.
However, if they resigned, then they would have to pay back the bonuses.
If they don’t repay the bonuses, the courts can force them to continue to work in the
industry while being watched by law enforcement.
A third decree that is troubling to the DOJ and the UN is that alcoholics and drug addicts
can be detained for 12 to 18 months in something called “medical labor centers.”
At these centers, people are forced to work, and if they don’t, they can be locked into
solitary confinement.
Other laws in Belarus that show the systematic use of human trafficking is that high school
and university students are forced to work on farms without pay.
Parents who had their paternal rights taken away are subject to compulsory labor, and
the government keeps 70 percent of their wages.
Finally, government workers and private businesses are forced to work occasionally on Saturdays
and then donate all their earnings on those days to state projects.
If they don’t, they can face fines, or lose their business licenses or government contracts.
Due to the conditions in Belarus, people try to leave the country, making it a source country
for human traffickers, while others are lured there with the promise of work and then they
are subjected to forced labor.
6.
North Korea
North Korea has one of the most unique human trafficking situations in the world.
One reason is that it is almost exclusively a source country for people to be trafficked
out of.
That’s because of how terrible the conditions are in the country, which includes forced
labor camps that house 80,000 to 120,000 people – many of whom have not been charged with
a crime.
This means that North Koreans fleeing the country can be highly susceptible to human
traffickers.
Another way that North Korea is unique in the human trafficking industry is that they
also deploy 110,000 to 120,000 forced laborers to 20 to 40 other countries.
This apparently makes the Kim Jong-Un regime anywhere from $150 million to $2.3 billion
a year.
However, the workers only receive 10 percent of their pay after they return to North Korea,
usually after a three year stint.
One of these countries that rent slaves is Qatar, who are preparing their country for
World Cup 2022.
5.
Russia
By surface area, Russia is the biggest country in the world, and is home to 140 million people.
It is also the only G8 country that is a Tier 3 country when it comes to human trafficking.
It’s believed that anywhere from 5 to 12 million migrants are working in Russia in
conditions that are close to slavery, if not outright slavery.
This includes working in underground garment factories, being public transport drivers,
and working in construction and agriculture.
Also, women and children are forced into prostitution.
How it usually works in Russia is that wages are withheld, or come extremely late.
This makes the migrants incur a debt that is impossible to get out of.
Employers will also take away migrant workers’ passports, so they can’t leave.
One reason that human trafficking in Russia is such a problem is because of corruption
within the Russian government.
There are allegations that Russian officials facilitate the entry of migrants into the
country for exploitation, and other officials receive bribes to not investigate human trafficking
crimes.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Russian government is also directly involved in human trafficking.
In the last entry, we talked about how North Korea deploys workers to other countries for
slave labor.
One of those countries that “lease” North Korean slaves is Russia.
In a state-to-state agreement, 20,000 North Korean workers every year are sent to Russia
to work in different industries, especially logging.
Since the Russian government is benefiting from human trafficking, don’t expect Russia
to move up any tiers on the TIP report any time soon.
4.
Syria
Something that helps human trafficking flourish is instability in a country, which makes Syria
one of the worst places for human trafficking.
Of course, the source of their instability is the most devastating war of the 21st century,
so far.
The civil war got its start in March 2011, after 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15
were brutally tortured, one to the point of death, for writing graffiti supporting the
Arab Spring.
This led to protests, and to quash the protests, President Bashar al-Assad’s government ordered
hundreds of protesters to be killed and imprisoned.
This led to defections in the army, and the defectors organized rebellion forces to bring
down the Assad government.
The war, which is still ongoing, displaced half of Syria’s population, which is 12
million people.
Four million were able to flee the country, but 7.6 million are still displaced inside
Syria.
People fleeing from dangers, like a civil war, create ideal conditions for human trafficking
because traffickers are parasites that thrive on desperation.
It makes victims easy to lure into slavery.
Imagine if your home was destroyed by a missile, and the only thing you had were the clothes
on your back?
Not even the government can help you, because they could have been the ones that fired the
missile at your home.
What choice do you have when someone comes up to you and says that they can help?
Unfortunately, this is a reality for many Syrians who were forced to flee their homes.
Once in the custody of the traffickers, the people, especially women and girls, are shipped
out to neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where they are forced
into prostitution, labor, and domestic servitude.
What makes the human trafficking situation so much worse in Syria is that it is also
a destination country.
During the civil war, the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),
also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), was able to seize two areas
of the war torn country.
Women and children are trafficked into these two areas.
The woman and girls are forced into marriages with ISIL fighters, where they become domestic
slaves and face abuse and sexual violence.
Boys as young as 6-years-old are used in warfare.
Sometimes they are sent to school and taught how to use weapons or they are trained to
be suicide bombers.
Others are used as human shields and executioners; ISIL has been known to get Syrian children
to behead Syrian soldiers.
Besides ISIL, other armed groups, like Ahrar Al-Sham, Jabhat Al-Nusra, and Kurdish forces
control different areas of the country, and they also trafficks in women and children.
Needless to say, the situation in Syria is horrifying.
Until there is peace, human trafficking in the country will be impossible to stop.
3.
Yemen
As we mentioned in the opening, based on the DOJ’s TIP report, the worst offenders of
human trafficking are considered Tier 3.
However, there is another category called “special cases.”
They’re “special” because the countries are so unstable that it’s hard to get any
real figures to understand the true scope of the human trafficking problem.
The first of those countries is Yemen, which is an Arab country found at the southern end
of the Arabian Peninsula.
For the past five decades, there have been several civil wars in Yemen.
In 2011, the country became more tumultuous after President Ali Abdallah Saleh stepped
down after being injured in a rocket attack.
The hope was that his resignation would end the civil unrest, but it didn’t work and
in March 2015, civil war broke out between forces that are loyal to the government of
President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, which is internationally recognized, and forces that
are loyal to the Houthi rebel movement.
Added to the mix is that ISIL and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an Al-Qaeda
franchise, both control areas of the country.
Before the civil war, Libya had a terrible track record for human trafficking as a destination
and transit country for migrants from the Horn of Africa.
It was also known as a sex tourist area for people from the Gulf.
Child labor was also fairly common, as there were 1.7 million children under the age of
14 who were subject to forced labor.
Experts believe a lot of those activities are still going on, but they have no official
data because of how unstable the country is.
What they do know is that, due to the conflict, over 3 million people have been displaced,
and much like in the case of Syria, human traffickers prey upon those displaced people.
Children are particularly hard hit in Yemen.
Boys are forced to be laborers, work in shops, or beg, while both boys and girls are shipped
to Saudi Arabia, where they are forced to work as prostitutes.
Boys, sometimes as young as 10, are also used as soldiers by government forces (yes, the
same one that is internationally backed), the Houthi rebel forces, and the AQAP.
2.
Libya
The second special case is Libya, which is found in northern Africa between Algeria and
Egypt.
Libya is an oil rich country that was controlled by dictator Muammar Gaddafi before a civil
war led to Gaddafi being ousted and killed in 2011.
However, even before his downfall, Libya was a magnet for human traffickers because of
its position between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, and because Gaddafi’s regime profited
from trafficking.
However, after Gaddafi’s ousting, no real government has taken its place and different
areas of the country are controlled by different armed groups.
This includes ISIL and Al-Qaeda, and has led to an explosion of human trafficking.
It’s the second biggest industry in Libya, just behind oil.
Many people are detained on their way from Africa to Europe and held for ransom.
During detainment, people are held in overcrowded centers where they’re tortured, arbitrarily
murdered, and sexually assaulted.
The conditions are so horrendous that before women head to Libya, they take contraceptives
to avoid getting pregnant by rapists.
Sometimes these detention centers are state-sponsored, while others are controlled by militias.
Besides the horrid detention centers, like many other countries on this list, men are
forced to become laborers, women and girls are forced into the sex trade, and boys are
recruited by militia groups.
Unfortunately, until Libya starts to get some stability, their nightmarish human trafficking
problem will only get worse.
1.
Somalia
If you were hoping that “special cases” were just temporary designations for a country
because something horrible and unforeseeable happened that would dramatically increase
the amount of human trafficking, like a natural disaster, war, or genocide, and the label
would go away once that issue was dealt with… well, the African country of Somalia should
demystify any notions of that.
In 2016, Somalia was labeled a special case for a 14th consecutive year.
Somalia is at the tip of the Horn of Africa and is one of the poorest countries in the
world.
A lot of problems in the country stem back to 1991, when President Mohamed Siad Barre,
who assumed power in 1969 after a military coup, was ousted.
After that, the country fell into anarchy.
Different areas of the country were controlled by warlords who ruled over clans.
Since then, there have been attempts at peace, but the war is still ongoing 26 years later.
A new government was finally elected in 2012, after 21 years without a central government,
and they have been slowly moving towards stability.
However, the government doesn’t have much control over the six states that make up the
country.
Also, Al-Shabaab (a terrorist organization) controls some rural areas of the country.
Of course, since Somalia had the same amount of laws as the world of The Walking Dead for
over two decades, human trafficking has been pretty rampant there.
It’s hard to verify any of the trafficking problems, but it’s believed that men, women,
and children are used for forced labor, domestic servitude, and the sex trade.
Things are so bleak in the country that sometimes parents are forced to give their children
up to traffickers.
Child soldiers are also quite common, as the Somali government uses them, as do two states.
To be fair, the Somali government doesn’t issue birth certificates, so it’s hard to
verify ages.
However, Al-Shabaab has been known to recruit neglected children and use them as soldiers,
assassins, suicide bombers, to plant roadside bombs and other explosives, and finally, as
human shields during incursions.