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While much attention has been paid to trafficking in drugs and smuggling of illegal aliens,
trafficking of women and children for slavery purposes still remains an issue with which the
average citizen is less familiar.   The fact is that trafficking of women has accelerated over
the last ten years, as Dona Hughes, director of Women Studies Program at the university
of Rhode Island, points out.1 Moreover, human trafficking is the third most profitable
criminal activity in the world after drugs and arms trafficking, bringing in about US$7 billion
in profits every year.2 Globalization has posed new economic and social challenges for
women who have become more vulnerable to the inequities of the world. This vulnerability
has, in turn, increased migration of women around the world in the hope of finding work to
sustain themselves and their families. This economic necessity has placed women at
greater risk of being the target of transnational organized crime, given that the latter
usually feeds on human misery and economic crisis. Children, especially street children
who have been subjected to abuse, have also become victims since they fall to the same
type of predators. The result has been an increase in prostitution and other slave-like
conditions for women and children in search of work.

Geographically speaking, Eastern Europe and Asia have generated the greater number of
women who fall victims to trafficking to the United States (U.S.).   In spite of being highly
educated, Russian and Ukrainian women have been victimized by organized criminal
networks that capitalize on the financial crisis that is affecting their countries. Further,
Thailand and the Philippines have traditionally been hubs for organized crime. Both of
these locations have attracted men from all over the world as these cities have played a
central role in the sex-tourism industry. Latin America on the other hand, has remained in
the back burner because there has been a smaller number of documented incidents in the
U.S. as well as limited information on the subject, especially in South America. However,
with the current economic and political crisis in South America, the trafficking of persons
could soon take on increased momentum. Today, there are an increased number of
economic refugees desperate to leave their country evidencing the worse economic
recession the region has seen in over a decade. The countries that have been hit the
worse are Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela and Paraguay. For
example, in Argentina there is a mass emigration that is currently taking place. In Colombia
during the past twelve months 120,000 people have fled to the U.S. on six-month tourist
visas.3 In Peru, the embassies have recorded a 53% increase4 in the request for tourist
visas. Moreover, in March a boat carrying 250 Ecuadorians was caught off the California
coast5. This data evidences the largest exodus from South America since the 1980s.
Globalization has hit Latin America hard. After a decade of free market reforms and
tightening of the public and private sectors, people in economic necessity are willing to
emigrate and look for job alternatives such as prostitution.