UN Warns Afghan Trafficking Risk Is at Unprecedented Level
The United Nations has issued one of its starkest warnings in years on the human cost of Afghanistan’s collapse, as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) cautioned on July 30, 2026, of an “unprecedented rise” in Afghans’ vulnerability to trafficking, exploitation and forced labour.
In the joint statement issued on the occasion of World Day against Trafficking in Persons, the spike was explicitly connected to Afghanistan’s overlapping humanitarian, economic, and political crises that had undermined people’s livelihoods, displaced millions, and left whole communities vulnerable to predatory networks. The organizations made it clear that the fight against trafficking cannot be tackled unilaterally by Afghanistan and demanded coordinated efforts involving Afghan entities, neighboring countries, and international bodies to detect, prevent exploitation, and provide protection and assistance to victims. Practically speaking, it means that trafficking in Afghanistan has become an international protection problem because of forced repatriation, decreased aid, gender limitations, and breakdown of rural economies.
How Afghanistan’s Crises Are Converging on Vulnerable Populations
A series of factors, as identified by UNODC and IOM, has recently made the risk of trafficking from Afghanistan much higher than before. Massive return of Afghans from neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan and Iran, is placing heavy pressure on fragile communities within the host environment and reducing the number of available resources.
Decline in the rural opium-based economy without alternative sources of livelihood has deprived many people of their means of subsistence while exposing them to criminal exploitation. Reduction in humanitarian aid money, natural calamities and restrictions placed on women’s and girls’ freedom are other aspects which are limiting people’s choices and compelling them to adopt negative coping strategies, such as dangerous migration, exploitive employment arrangements and debt bondage. All these factors do not work independently; rather, they interact in order to form a vicious circle of desperation that makes people more vulnerable and exposed to the risk of trafficking due to lack of viable livelihood options.
Returnees at the Centre of the Crisis
Returnees are central to the present warning. According to recent assessments referred to in the joint statement, including the Returnee Resilience Overview, the situation faced by Afghans who have been forced or compelled to return from Pakistan and Iran is characterized by extremely precarious circumstances. Only 11 percent of respondents report being fully employed or running a business, whereas 56 percent of returning households are not able to cover their basic needs. Almost half of those households depend on credit or gifts in order to sustain themselves. Such statistics clearly imply protection concerns.
Households unable to provide for themselves or pay rent are more likely to enter exploitative labour agreements, send children to work, marry their children off early or sell identity papers in return for money and prospects for employment abroad. Specifically, it was stated in the assessment that the above-described factors make Afghan returnees vulnerable to debt bondage and forced labour in dangerous industries like brick kilns, agriculture, mining, carpet weaving and domestic work, as well as forced marriages and organ removals.
Polleak Ok Serei, UNODC Country Representative for Afghanistan, framed the situation in stark terms, noting that
”current pressures—mass returns, opium eradication without alternative livelihoods, aid cuts, natural disasters and restrictions on women—have increased the vulnerability of men, women and children to trafficking and exploitation.”
He added that the response must go beyond rhetoric, stressing the need to
”strengthen prevention, carefully identify potential victims and ensure access to protection and assistance.”
His remarks underscore that the Afghan trafficking risk is not abstract; it is being reproduced daily in returnee settlements, informal labour markets and debt-ridden households.
Women, Children and the Most Vulnerable
While the crisis affects all Afghans, the agencies made clear that some groups face disproportionately higher risks. Women and children are singled out as particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, forced marriage, child labour and trafficking for domestic work. Restrictions on women’s right to work and to education have not only reduced household income but also limited safe spaces and mobility for women, making them more dependent on informal and unregulated arrangements where abuse is harder to detect and report.
Children, especially unaccompanied boys migrating irregularly, are at heightened risk of trafficking for agricultural and construction work and of abuse by smugglers. The European Union Agency for Asylum has previously documented how children in Afghanistan are exposed to hazardous labour, recruitment by armed groups and trafficking for sexual exploitation, with weak birth registration and civil documentation complicating efforts to trace and protect them. In this context, the agencies’ warning should be read as an alert that the Afghan trafficking risk is increasingly a child-protection emergency, with long-term consequences for education, health and social cohesion.
Indebted households also emerge as a critical risk category. When families cannot service loans or cover basic expenses, they may resort to sending children to work or agreeing to exploitative labour contracts that bind them to employers through debt. This dynamic is the essence of debt bondage: a form of modern slavery in which work is demanded to repay a loan, but the terms are manipulated so that the debt never decreases, trapping generations in exploitation.
From Forced Labour to Forced Criminality
All the types of exploitation identified by the UNODC and IOM cover all forms of contemporary slavery. These include the exploitation of the victims in the form of debt bondage and forced labor in brickmaking, agriculture, mining, carpet weaving and domestic work. Also, forced begging, forced marriage, child exploitation and sexual exploitation of victims has been observed. An especially disturbing trend pointed out in the UNODC statement is that of trafficking for forced criminality in which the victims are compelled to engage in online frauds and scams.
It was stated by the agencies that this type of trafficking is highly related to cyber-crimes, financial fraud, money laundering and corruption and victims are generally deceived, coerced and forced to be involved in such crimes. Although this problem is not exclusive to Afghanistan, but due to the factors of economic despair, poor digital literacy and lack of regulatory supervision, Afghan migrants and returnees become easy targets for criminal organizations to employ in their online scams.
This shift matters because it expands the geography of Afghan trafficking risk beyond physical worksites and border crossings into virtual spaces where victims may be held in compounds abroad, forced to run scams under threat of violence, and hidden from traditional anti-trafficking mechanisms focused on labour inspection and border control.
Regional Dynamics: Returns, Aid Cuts and the Neighbourhood Factor
The agencies’ warning cannot be understood without reference to regional dynamics. More than 2.5 million Afghans have returned from Pakistan under its repatriation plan since late 2023, many involuntarily, adding strain to already fragile host communities and services. The UN has identified more than 70,000 Afghan refugees who could face serious risks if returned to Afghanistan, yet deportations and pressured returns have continued, often with limited screening for protection needs.
These flows interact with severe aid cuts and economic contraction inside Afghanistan. As humanitarian funding shrinks, livelihood programmes, protection services and basic social support are scaled back precisely when they are most needed. Restrictions on women’s work and education further reduce household income sources, indirectly increasing trafficking risk by narrowing the set of “acceptable” survival strategies available to families. In this environment, smuggling and trafficking networks find fertile ground: they offer cash, transport and promises of work, but at the cost of exposing migrants to exploitation, abuse and sometimes death.
Mihyung Park, IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission, captured this dynamic when she said that
”the scale of returns currently exceeds what Afghan communities can absorb without significant international support.”
She warned that
”without viable opportunities at home, people will again be forced into dangerous and irregular migration, fuelling the cycle of trafficking, smuggling and exploitation.”
Her statement makes clear that the Afghan trafficking risk is being driven in part by policy choices outside Afghanistan’s borders, particularly around forced returns and aid conditionality.
What the UN Is Calling For: Prevention, Protection and Cooperation
UNODC and IOM have called for a set of policies that go beyond raising awareness and include efforts in prevention and protection. They appeal to the relevant Afghan authorities, the neighboring states and international stakeholders to improve mechanisms for identification and protection of victims, including providing them access to vital services, civil registration and livelihoods. Furthermore, they suggest the creation of safe migration routes and proper recruitment procedures, along with the provision of livelihoods, education and basic services aimed at addressing the underlying causes of vulnerability.
Regional cooperation becomes a key element of such approach. Both agencies urge states to increase cooperation to identify vulnerable people through cross-border flows, to dismantle trafficking rings and to provide necessary assistance to victims irrespective of their legal status. Public awareness campaigns should also be launched, particularly among those communities experiencing extreme economic and social difficulties, informing people on the dangers of irregular migration and methods of traffickers and smugglers.
These recommendations align with broader international obligations under anti-trafficking treaties, but their implementation in the Afghan context is fraught. The de facto authorities face severe capacity constraints, while many donors have reduced or suspended engagement, limiting the resources available for protection programming. Neighbouring states, meanwhile, are balancing domestic political pressures with protection obligations, often opting for restrictive border policies that can inadvertently increase the Afghan trafficking risk by pushing movement further underground.
The Crime Nexus: Drugs, Arms and Human Exploitation
The warning on trafficking also sits within a wider picture of transnational crime in Afghanistan. UNODC has separately cautioned that drug production and trafficking remain primary income sources for criminal networks, with profits fuelling arms smuggling, human trafficking, migrant exploitation, corruption and terrorism. While opium cultivation has reportedly decreased, synthetic drug trafficking, particularly methamphetamine, is rising, further entrenching criminal ecosystems that facilitate human trafficking.
This nexus matters for policymakers because it means that anti-trafficking efforts cannot be siloed from drug control, border management and anti-corruption strategies. Trafficking networks often share routes, contacts and financial channels with drug smugglers and arms dealers, making them more resilient and harder to disrupt. At the same time, communities dependent on illicit economies are more vulnerable to exploitation when those economies are targeted without adequate alternatives, as has been seen in the aftermath of opium eradication campaigns.
