Human Trafficking: An Organized Crime Challenge in Contemporary Latin America

In his foreword to the 2000 United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan noted the imperative of effective cross-border law enforcement to counter transnational crime: “If the enemies of progress and human rights seek to exploit the openness and opportunities of globalization for their purposes, then we must exploit those very same factors to defend human rights and defeat the forces of crime, corruption and trafficking in human beings.” Annan’s observation highlights one of the central challenges still facing law enforcement agents in an era of globalization, when human mobility is increasingly regarded as central to economic development and the realization of individual opportunity. How can criminal exploitation of vulnerable migrant populations be prevented without excluding them from the potential benefits of international migration?