Informant38

Human trafficking involves controlling and exploiting people after transporting them to a new location, often beyond the borders of their homeland. In this modern form of slavery, traffickers use threats, intimidation, and violence to break their victims' will and resistance.

This trafficking in humans has become a global business, reaping huge profits for traffickers and organized crime syndicates, generating massive human rights violations, and causing serious problems for governments. Despite the magnitude of the problem, however, it has only recently seized policy makers' attention. As recently as 10 years ago, the expression "human trafficking" rarely appeared in migration policy debates. Today, however, trafficking is one of the major concerns of both governments and organizations active in the migration field, and has become a priority for those working in many other policy areas such as human rights, health, law enforcement, and social services.

There is still very limited information on the scale of trafficking, how it works, and the most effective means to halt it. One of the biggest knowledge gaps lies in the area of data collection. Despite the growing literature on trafficking, relatively few studies are based on extensive research, and information on the actual numbers of people trafficked remains very sketchy.
"Few governments systematically collect trafficking data."
{surely, Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Ridge, Mr. Bush..........}