Human trafficking in the United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom (UK) is a destination country for men, women, and children primarily from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe who are subjected to human trafficking for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced labour, including domestic servitude. It is also a source country since some victims, including minors from the UK, are also sex trafficked within the country. British citizens accounted for 25% (4,299) of all recorded potential victims in 2023, when they represented the most frequently referred nationality. The majority (78%; 3,350) of UK nationals were child potential victims.
Precise details about the extent of human trafficking within the UK were not available in 2009, and the validity of some of the more widely quoted figures was questionable (such as the police estimate that there were up to 4,000 trafficking victims in the United Kingdom at any one time). Since then, the United Nations estimates that approximately 136,000 people were trafficked in the UK up to 2018.
According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), human trafficking in the United Kingdom is rapidly increasing. The number of potential victims referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) rose from 2,340 in 2014 to more than 10,000 in 2020. There was also an increase in convictions from 71.9% in 2019 to 73.8% in 2020. In 2020, the US State Department estimated that there were 13,000 trafficking victims in the UK.
UK nationals were the most common potential victims in 2020, accounting for 34% (3,560) of all referrals. The second most referred nationality was Albanian (15%; 1,638), followed by Vietnamese nationals (6%; 653). UK nationals were most often referred for criminal exploitation, whilst both Albanian and Vietnamese nationals were most often referred for labour and criminal exploitation. Sexual exploitation was also commonly reported for Albanian nationals.
The fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism has been identified as one of the main contributing factors in increases in human trafficking from Eastern Europe. It provided both human capital and new regional opportunities to fuel the expansion. After this period, trafficking expanded, aided by the rise of organised crime, porous borders and close proximity to Western Europe, making it easier and cheaper to transport victims within the region and abroad.
Migrant workers are trafficked to the UK for forced labour in agriculture, construction, food processing, domestic servitude, and food service. Source countries for trafficking victims in the UK include the United Arab Emirates, Lithuania, Russia, Albania, Ukraine, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Nigeria, and Ghana.
The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons report placed the United Kingdom in "Tier 1" in 2017 and in 2023, fully compliant with The Trafficking Victims Protection Act's minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.
UK authorities began to launch aggressive anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts to uncover trafficking and identify victims. During 2009, a six-month investigation into human trafficking by all 55 police forces of the United Kingdom failed to find a case of human trafficking. In May 2012, a cross-border operation involving police forces from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which included the raiding of more than 130 premises, resulted in eight arrests. Three of these arrested persons were thought to be trafficking victims. It emerged that the women were not victims of human trafficking, and they were consequently charged with running a brothel. Each woman received a suspended sentence, and forfeiture orders were made for cash found at the premises during the raid. It was stressed that human trafficking did not feature in the eventual court case. Many believe that the repeated failure of large-scale police operations to find any evidence of trafficking exemplifies the inaccuracy of the human trafficking statistics often quoted by NGOs and the media, while others insist that failure to find human trafficking is merely indicative of its underground nature.
In 2023, the International Organization for Migration published a report on human trafficking between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland; it noted that increasing numbers of east Africans were entering the Republic and using the Common Travel Area to travel to Northern Ireland and enter the UK, and recommended all-island training and closer information systems between the two countries.