page_title: Human trafficking in Venezuela
section_title: Political causes
hierarchical_section_title: Human trafficking in Venezuela / Causes / Political causes
caption_attribution_description: Español: Posesión de Nicolas Maduro como Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela. English: Nicolás Maduro assuming office as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
context_page_description: Venezuela is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Venezuela's political, economic, and social concerns contribute to the factors and types of human trafficking in the country. In particular, the severe poverty in Venezuela has increased the rate of human trafficking. Venezuelan women and girls are trafficked within the country for sexual exploitation, lured from poor regions in the nation's interior to urban and tourist areas. Victims are recruited through false job offers and subsequently forced into prostitution or conditions of labor exploitation. Child prostitution in urban areas and child sex tourism in resort destinations such as Margarita Island appear to be growing. Venezuelan women and girls are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation to Western Europe and Mexico, in addition to Caribbean destinations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, and the Dominican Republic.
context_section_description: Politically, in order for human trafficking to "thrive the slave trade requires the direct or indirect involvement of national governments, at both the source and the destination."  In addition, according to a statistical study conducted by Kevin Bales, a scholar of modern slavery and trafficking,  the level of corruption and instability in a country is a major factor in the rate of human trafficking.  Venezuelan policy on human trafficking, therefore, impacts the overall rate of the issue and the regulation of it.  In addition, as political instability in Venezuela persists, and the opposition party to Nicholås Maduro continues to "openly and repeatedly [push] for regime change by any means necessary," the policy platform on human trafficking is not being dealt with.
  According to the U.S. Department of State, Venezuela has released minimal information on its efforts to combat the issue.  Public corruption "especially complicity between law enforcement and border agents with traffickers and alien smugglers," make it difficult to enact legislation on the issue because of its current governmental instability.  After the reelection of Maduro, the Venezuela's political climate is creating drastic partisanship, causing many policy issues to be ignored.
  In addition, while political measures have been introduced in Venezuela to combat sexual violence and human trafficking, many of these measures have not been enforced and implemented throughout the country.  As a result, political efforts to combat human trafficking, or lack thereof, can serve as a factor in itself on one of the reasons human trafficking continues to persist throughout the country.  Unless Venezuela takes a definite effort to combat human trafficking through political platforms, it is likely that the country will remain a tier 3 country on the U.S. State Department's report for the worst countries of human trafficking in the world.
caption: Nicolås Maduro, the current President of Venezuela
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