Metrics details. Human trafficking is a human rights violation and urgent public health challenge. It involves the exploitation of a person by means of force, intimidation or deceit and causes severe health risks.
Though it occurs all over the world, its true extent is still unknown. Refugees are especially vulnerable to human trafficking due to language barriers and difficult living conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence and design a screening tool to identify survivors of all forms of human trafficking among refugees in a German state registration and reception centre.
In total, 13 of the refugees had experienced trafficking, which corresponded to a prevalence of 7. Across all languages the questionnaire had a sensitivity of The recommended cut-off differed slightly for the Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, and English version.
In an exploratory descriptive analysis on subregions, refugees from West Africa had a substantially higher prevalence However, when we excluded this region from our analysis, we found no significant gender difference for the rest of the sample. The high prevalence of trafficking in most regions, regardless of gender, suggests that more effort is needed to identify and protect all trafficked persons.
The designed screening tool seems to be a promising tool to detect an especially vulnerable group of refugees and provides assistance in identifying survivors of human trafficking. Peer Review reports. Human trafficking involves the recruitment, movement or harbouring of persons by deception, the use of threats, coercion or a position of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation [ 1 ]. Different forms of exploitation are forced labour, sexual exploitation, slavery or servitude, forced criminal activity as well as the removal of organs.
