Downtown Santigo in Chile. Image by Human trafficking cases in Chile have increased alongside rising migration in recent years, but the country’s institutions are struggling to tackle the problem, according to a new report.
The number of human trafficking cases has exploded by more than tenfold over the past decade. The Attorney General’s Office identified 104 victims in sexual exploitation cases in 2023, compared with just nine in 2013.
Chile’s Centro de Politícas Migratorias, a think tank focused on migration policy, analyzed trends in the country’s human trafficking dynamics since 2011 to explain how this criminal economy has evolved.
Below, InSight Crime highlights some of the key findings about the rise of human trafficking in Chile and what needs to be done to combat it.
- Traffickers Have Exploited Migration Trends
Human traffickers have taken advantage of migration trends, with migrants accounting for the vast majority of victims.
The report found that regions of the country where Chile’s Attorney General’s Office identified the highest numbers of human trafficking victims largely align with those with high migrant populations, such as the Santiago Metropolitan region, as well as the northern regions of Antofagasta and Tarapacá.
The presence of informal, unregulated migrant crossing points in the latter two regions allow traffickers to transport victims into the country without passing through passport control.
The trend of migrants becoming human trafficking victims is evidenced in the case of Venezuelans, whose population in Chile more than doubled from 345,000 to 729,000 between 2018 and 2023, according to figures from Chile’s National Statistics Institute.
The authorities identified 29 Venezuelan victims in human trafficking cases where charges had been formalized in 2022, compared with 11 victims in the ten previous years combined.
Many victims may arrive in Chile under the belief that they are being smuggled into the country, often by transnational criminal organizations involved in human smuggling, as well as other criminal economies such as drug trafficking, according to the report’s co-author and executive director of Centro de Politíca’s Migratorias, Juan Pablo Ramaciotti.
“People may be deceived when coming to Chile,” Ramaciotti told InSight Crime. “They may emigrate out of necessity and leave their countries with gangs that operate not only in Chile, but throughout the regions, gangs that take people to Chile and mix [human trafficking] with other illicit business.”
SEE ALSO: El Salvador Tops Security Perceptions While Chile and Ecuador See Declines
- Institutional Challenges Hinder Anti-Trafficking Efforts
The relative rarity of human trafficking cases in Chile, especially until recently, when compared with other crimes such as drug dealing or homicide, means law enforcement and the members of the judiciary still lack expertise in tackling it, resulting in many identified cases failing to lead to formal charges.
Some judges incorrectly mistake human trafficking for labor exploitation, according to Ramaciotti, leading to defendants being acquitted of charges against them.
“Some people have mentioned to us examples of cases in which there were people who were sleeping in a container without basic services,” said Ramaciotti.
Police and other government officials may also either lack the ability to identify trafficking victims or, if they do identify so, are unaware of which bodies they should refer trafficking cases and victims to.
Additionally, while the state can assist victims in finding housing, a lack of state funds means there are few shelters tailored for victims of sexual exploitation or labor exploitation, especially outside the capital. So victims remain in a vulnerable position even after the authorities have identified them.
“We do not have sufficient means to protect them and to give them options that would allow them to viably live their lives while the investigation or judicial procedure is carried out,” said Ramaciotti.
SEE ALSO: The State of Emergency Strategy: Why Latin American Leaders Keep Turning to It
- Insufficient Awareness Allows Human Trafficking to Continue Unnoticed
Despite an increase in the number of cases of human trafficking detected, and the influx of vulnerable migrants entering Chile recently, this criminal economy is not very prominent in the public debate.
There are few information campaigns targeted at victims, vulnerable populations, and municipal and health officials, the report found. This is partly due to the low number of cases detected and prosecuted before the upward trend that began in 2017.
“There’s a problem of misinformation and lack of knowledge,” said Ramaciotti. “People don’t know how big it’s gotten, how to know who is a victim and what to do if they run into one.
“It’s one thing to get police who are well-trained [to detect human trafficking cases], but it’s different with municipal officials or health workers who might be running into victims of trafficking and don’t have the elements to identify them.” Ramaciotti explained.
Funding campaigns aimed at increasing public awareness of human trafficking and how to report it would improve Chile’s ability to detect cases and avoid revictimizing survivors, as well as fostering cooperation between different institutions, Ramaciotti believes.
He also called for more clearly defining labor exploitation in the country’s penal code, since not typifying human trafficking for labor exploitation as a crime has led to cases being dismissed before even going to trial.
“Incorporating labor exploitation [in the penal code] could help us advance on this problem we have in formalizing cases,” he said.
