You can read more about efforts from Denmark's official side, the state, in the latest strategy and action plan for 2026-2029 here.

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You can read about efforts from the EU here.

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Trafficking can generally be combated in typically four areas

 

As in many other industries, trafficking has four components: a product (the female victim), a wholesaler (the smuggler), a retailer (the 'slave owner'/stall owner) and a consumer.

 

The product is, roughly speaking, the female victim aka the prostitute or the trafficked woman. The typical cost associated with the product is the cost of moving the woman from her country of origin to the location from where the customer can consume the woman's body.

 

The wholesalers are modern 'slave traders' who may be integrated and well-organized criminal networks that are compensated for e.g. the transport of the traded sex slave.

 

A tactic that focuses on disrupting the wholesalers is mostly quite ineffective, as the movement of the women from place to place is too easy, cheap and invisible. The wholesalers are usually always one step ahead of the police's attempts to prevent the women's movement. Therefore, the authorities can achieve a much more effective fight against human trafficking if they instead focus on the other links in the chain, e.g. the 'slave owners' and the consumers.

 

The 'slave traders' can be brothels, clubs, massage clinics, apartments or other places where the prostitutes (the product) are consumed. As it is illegal to exploit the woman, guards often keep an eye on the mentioned places - and in some countries the police are bribed to turn a blind eye to the exploitation of the trafficked women.

 

The 'slave owners' keep the price for the sexual services as low as possible in order to secure as many customers as possible - both new and repeat customers. And this is possible because operating costs associated with a trafficked woman are relatively low, the primary costs being the purchase of women and perhaps the purchase/rent of the property or apartment from which the business is run. This includes the purchase of beds, sheets, alcohol, drugs, snacks, condoms, make-up and clothes.

 

The consumer is the customer who buys sex from the trafficked woman. Thanks to the trafficked women, he can afford sex from young women that he couldn't afford before - or he can afford it more often. The demand for sex - be it violent, degrading or "just for fun" - drives many consumers to visit prostitutes and the demand for 'low cost' sex drives the consumer to exploit sex slaves in the form of trafficked women.

 

The individual customer often does not know that he is buying sex from a slave, but he knows that he is buying cheap sex, and that alone could indicate that the woman may have been trafficked.

 

The table below summarizes the four components of the trafficking industry and the primary efforts deployed to thwart the industry. The table below is by no means an exhaustive list of current efforts to combat sex trafficking, but it summarizes the key initiatives.

 

Trafficking efforts and their possible influence can be seen in the overview below.