A new report by the 2025 Freedom Collaborative warns that perpetrators of human trafficking are pushing into new territory, funneling victims from East Africa and Horn of Africa into Southeast Asia, including the countries of Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand. Ethiopia is also emerging as a key transit hub in this shift, linking victims from countries like Kenya to longer, more complex trafficking routes.
New distances of trafficking across continents signal an alarming expansion. The farther victims are taken from home, the greater the risks they face including long journeys, multiple border crossings and dangerous isolation, without access to support. A lack of repatriation funds from East African governments unfortunately means that East Africans have more difficult times returning home. Some survivors choose to plead guilty to immigration offenses, so that they can return home more quickly on deportation flights, and perhaps more troubling, if they are unable to return home, they may go back to a situation of being trafficked to get basic needs met.
"Traffickers still move people across borders, but they now also weaponize technology to more efficiently target the vulnerable and reach new buyers. The same tools that connect the world also connect traffickers to victims and abusers, removing barriers to exploitation with a mouse click,” said John Trenary, Our Rescue’s VP of Mission in Asia.
The internet is both the fuel and the super highway making victims more vulnerable across global distances as traffickers move recruitment online. New advancements in deepfakes, encryption, and artificial intelligence allow traffickers to hide and recruit through fake accounts. Add on social media, gaming sites, and dating apps, perpetrators now have a high speed route to lure victims into trafficking, controlling them virtually across space and time.
FALSE EMPLOYMENT SCHEMES
Other emerging human trafficking schemes include false employment opportunities, often through sites like Facebook and Telegram, to trap unsuspecting people in dangerous situations, often abroad and working in informal sectors (e.g., agriculture or tourism), according to a Europol report. Many of them are carried out by highly organized criminal networks.
A trafficking survivor from an Our Rescue documentary When Survivors Speak: The Light in the Darkness of Human Trafficking provided her own story of this happening, lured to Dubai under the premise she would work as a massage therapist. Instead she was forced into sex work, leaving her family behind. She feared what would happen after she flagged down the police to rescue her.
Traffickers can still track someone’s movements using GPS or location-sharing apps, keeping them under constant surveillance. Crimes are hidden within digital wallets, cryptocurrency, and underground banking systems to hide transactions that could be used as evidence.
Even when a survivor escapes, the danger continues. Traffickers can repost old exploitative videos, photos, or recorded chats to retraumatize survivors and even lure them back. Nearly half of survivors in cases studied by the Freedom Collaborative had been trafficked before. In 73% of those cases, the trafficker was not a stranger, but a family member, romantic partner, or someone from their own community.
FORCED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY, FUELED BY ONLINE SCAMS
Another emerging concern is trafficking for forced criminal activity on the rise, jumping from about 1% of detected cases in 2016 to 8% in 2022, according to new findings by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Victims are coerced into crimes like theft, fraud, drug distribution, and money laundering, sometimes even targeting children. The survey of child victims increased by 31% between 2019 and 2022, says the UNODC.
A newer twist is the explosion of online scam operations in Southeast Asia. Traffickers lure people with promises of high-paying jobs, then trap them in casinos, resorts, or office buildings where they’re forced to run illegal gambling, investment fraud, and romance scams. Victims often have their passports confiscated. They are denied basic needs and face abuse and grueling hours to uphold these scams. The Freedom Collaborative points to six confirmed cases involving victims in Southeast Asia, most often young, educated men.
Migrants are also at heightened risk when they arrive in new places without social networks or support systems, making them more likely to accept unsafe or underpaid work, according to the International Organization for Migration, or IOM. While anyone can be targeted by traffickers, global challenges like poverty, inequality, conflict, climate change, displacement, and lack of education present greater risks. The findings tell us:
- Education matters: Most trafficking victims had no schooling or only primary education. Lower education levels are also linked to higher risk of being trafficked again, in the report by the Freedom Collaborative.
- Women and girls are disproportionately affected: They made up 61% of detected victims in 2022, with sexual exploitation accounting for 66% of women and 60% of girls, according to UNODC.
- Men and boys face higher labor trafficking risk: Forced begging is a growing pattern, with some traffickers deliberately injuring or drugging victims to gain sympathy, in the IOM’s latest report.
- Africa sees higher rates of child trafficking: 50% of victims there are children, often forced into fishing, farming, begging, or criminal activities, says the IOM.
With victims from more than 160 nationalities found in 128 countries, UNODC urges expanding anti-trafficking strategies beyond sexual exploitation to address forced labor and protect children. The Freedom Collaborative also shares moments of hope. Survivor-led groups are offering mentorship, mental health care, and job training, helping survivors break cycles of exploitation and lead advocacy efforts of their own.
With global perspective and urgency to act on these new distances to Africa and Asia, Our Rescue is tackling evolving threats head-on, with the ability to train immigration and airport security personnel on pre-departure screening and advocate with tech companies to better regulate fraudulent job postings.
“The anonymity and speed of online communication have turned trafficking into a borderless, transnational enterprise, with routes that exist as much online as they do across physical borders. To fight these crimes, we must confront exploitation both on the ground and in the fourth dimension of cyberspace,” Trenary added.
Our Rescue partners with communities to raise awareness, train people to spot trafficking risks, develop collective advocacy agendas, and provide resources. We work with law enforcement worldwide bringing innovative investigative technology, specialized ESD (Electronic Storage Detection) K9 units, and survivor-centered care to every case such as providing therapy, education, job resources and healing tools to begin a new chapter of life.
The most effective tool to combat human trafficking is prevention. Our Rescue co-develops prevention solutions, alongside communities and partners. Together, we create a community-based prevention system that reduces risks and vulnerabilities while increasing supports, resources, services, and connectivity. Through this system, Our Rescue prevents human trafficking and fosters resilience,” said Amy Bruins, Vice President of Community Impact with Our Rescue.
Trafficking adapts quickly across miles and continents and Our Rescue knows we need to meet every shift in these crimes with urgency, and see these disturbing trends as another chance to protect the vulnerable and bring hope to survivors. We invite you to learn more about our ongoing efforts to empower survivors and join our fight against exploitation.