2025-12-10
9 分钟The Economist Hello, Rosie Bloor here,
co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
Welcome to Editors Pics.
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Isabel was twenty-five when she left Medellin in Colombia for what she thought was a job at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic.
The advert on Facebook had promised good pay and said recruiters would cover her flight.
She saw it as a way to support her daughter and unemployed parents.
But when she arrived a man took her passport and said she owed six thousand dollars for the journey.
The debt he said could be repaid only through sex.
Night after night she was forced to work in brothels as her debt kept growing.
Expenses were added each day.
She was never paid a cent.
Humans are trafficked for two main reasons.
Sexual exploitation, mostly of women and girls, had forced labour,
which ensnares men in mines, farms and factories.
Isabel is not alone.
The number of people tricked or forced into work increased by 89 per cent between 2018 and 2022 in the Latin American countries for which the International Labour Organization,
or ILO, has up-to-date statistics, including Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.
Across the Americas, the ILO reckons, 3.6 million people are forced to work,