Colombia faces human trafficking crisis: 19% surge in cases, girls from poorest communities targeted

Colombia is on track to record 240 human trafficking cases by the end of the year—a nineteen percent jump from the previous twelve months. The projection comes from the Ombudsman's Office, which presented the figures at the Second International Congress Against Human Trafficking in Cartagena. What makes the numbers even more stark is not just their size, but the profile of those being trafficked: eighty-four percent come from the poorest economic strata, and the vast majority are girls and young women.

So far this year, the Ombudsman's Office has documented one hundred sixty-one trafficking cases. Of those, one hundred fifty-five involve girls, adolescents, and women as direct victims. The Ombudsman, Iris Marín, framed this plainly: human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents represents a human rights crisis rooted in inequality and exclusion. Sexual exploitation dominates the criminal purpose—it accounts for eighty percent of the cases the office has accompanied. The gender dimension is unmistakable. This is not random violence; it is systematic violence against women and girls, enabled by poverty and the absence of state protection.

The geography of trafficking tells its own story. Seventy percent of documented cases concentrate in Norte de Santander, followed by La Guajira, Antioquia, Nariño, and Quindío. These are regions where armed illegal groups—the ELN, the Clan del Golfo, dissident factions of the former FARC—exercise territorial control. The Ombudsman's Office has issued forty-seven early warning alerts between 2022 and 2025. The most recent, issued in 2024, warned of enslavement risks facing women, LGBTIQ+ persons, ethnic communities, and migrants under the control of these groups in areas like Catatumbo and border municipalities including Cúcuta, Puerto Santander, and Villa del Rosario. Migration—both internal displacement and movement across the Venezuelan border—combined with the state's absence in peripheral territories, creates the conditions where criminal networks recruit victims and treat them as commodities.

But the crisis extends beyond the street and the border. Recent investigations have revealed that child sexual exploitation operates as an industry worth billions of dollars, benefiting not only organized crime but also legitimate businesses that profit directly or indirectly from these grave rights violations. The Ombudsman's Office is calling for corporate accountability: companies must move beyond statements of disagreement and conduct due diligence in their supply chains, closing spaces where trafficking can occur within their operations. The fight, in other words, is also a financial one.

Trafficking has infiltrated everyday life and digital spaces. It no longer confines itself to tourist zones. It operates in neighborhood shops, at public events, in shelters, and in invisible digital networks that have become primary tools for recruiting girls and adolescents. A deeper cultural current runs beneath this: the persistent idea that women exist only as reproductive or sexual subjects, which enables the reduction of their bodies to commodities and justifies this structural violence.

International scrutiny has intensified. The U.S. State Department's most recent annual report on human trafficking places Colombia at Tier Two—acknowledging significant efforts but flagging critical gaps: persistent underreporting of victims, limited prosecution of labor trafficking cases, insufficient penalties for complicit officials, and inadequate attention to adult victims. These findings align with the Ombudsman's warnings and underscore the need for the justice system to move beyond prosecuting intermediaries. The real work requires identifying and prosecuting both independent traffickers and organized networks, recognizing and punishing complicity with other criminal activities and the financial structures that masquerade as legitimate business.

The challenge is constitutional. Colombia is obligated to eradicate these extreme violations, which breach the rights to dignity, equality, and non-discrimination. Ethnic communities bear particular weight—the Nukak people of San José del Guaviare, for instance, have seen their children treated as merchandise in hostile conditions. Congress faces a fundamental task: updating the 2005 Anti-Trafficking Law to address transnational criminal cartels, emerging forms of exploitation like illegal adoption and forced pregnancy, and digital methods that multiply risk. The National Police announced during the congress that Interpol will establish a headquarters in Cartagena, equipping the city with international intelligence tools to combat the transnational criminality that uses the Colombian Caribbean as an operational platform. The infrastructure is being built. Whether it will be enough remains an open question.