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 ranked as a "Tier 1" country by the US Department of State, which issues an annual report on human trafficking.^[1] "Tier 1" countries are those whose governments fully comply with The Trafficking Victims Protection Act's minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The TVPA is a federal statute of the United States.^[2] It is believed that some victims, including minors from the UK, are also trafficked within the country. It is also believed that 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,^[3] Lithuania, Russia, Albania, Ukraine, Malaysia, Thailand, the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), Nigeria, and Ghana. Precise details about the extent of human trafficking within the UK are not available, and many have questioned the validity^[4][5] of some of the more widely quoted figures (such as the 'police estimate' that there are up to 4,000 trafficking victims in the United Kingdom at any one time). In 2020, the US State Department estimated that there were 13,000 trafficking victims in the UK.^[6]

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.^[7] 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.^[8] 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. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 1" in 2017.^[9]