Trafficking in Persons to Europe for Sexual Exploitation
Data on clandestine markets are limited. The information that does exist is often out-of-date and frequently conflicting. This report represents the best reading of the available data, but is only as strong as the information on which it is based. Quantitative estimates, in particular, are necessarily imprecise, offered only to give a sense of the relative order of magnitude of these problems.
With regard to human trafficking, a greater variety of nationalities of victims have been detected in Europe than in any other region. After a strong increase at the end of the Cold War, human trafficking to Europe for the purpose of sexual exploitation appears to have stabilized, with women from a wide variety of countries displacing the Eastern European victims that formerly dominated this market.