Regional Profiles
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia combines labour trafficking, sexual exploitation, and trafficking for forced criminality in scam compounds, with victims recruited through online job fraud and moved across land and maritime routes. The ILO's July 2025 ASEAN update says 5.6 million children in ASEAN countries remain in child labour, underlining how trafficking risks overlap with weak labour protections and informal work.
ASEAN Guideline
South Asia
South Asia continues to face bonded labour, child exploitation, trafficking for marriage, and deceptive recruitment of workers moving within the region and to Gulf labour markets. UNODC reported in January 2025 that more than 8,000 victims were detected in South Asia in 2022, with another 2,200 South Asian victims identified in Europe and the Middle East.
UNODC South Asia
East Asia and the Pacific
East Asia and the Pacific includes state-imposed forced labour, marriage trafficking, abuse of migrant workers in destination economies, and growing vulnerability in Pacific island states facing climate and displacement pressures. UNICEF's 2026 regional summary puts the subregion at 92 million child brides, showing the scale of marriage-related exploitation alongside labour abuse and displacement risk.
Pacific Framework