Afghanistan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Internal trafficking is more prevalent than transnational trafficking. The majority of Afghan victims are children subjected to human trafficking in carpet-making and brick kiln factories, domestic servitude, and in commercial sexual exploitation, begging, transnational drug smuggling, and assistant truck driving within Afghanistan, as well as in the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia.
Most Afghan victims exploited in Iran are boys under age 18 who are compelled to work in forced labor in the construction and agricultural sectors upon their arrival. The majority of Afghan victims in Pakistan are women and girls who are trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, including by forced marriages. Some Afghan families knowingly sell their children into prostitution, including for bacha baazi — where wealthy or influential men, including government officials and security forces, use young boys for social and sexual entertainment.
Other families send their children to obtain employment through labor brokers, but the children end up in forced labor. Opium-farming families sometimes sell their children to settle debts with opium traffickers.
According to the government and the UN, insurgent groups use children as young as nine years old as suicide bombers. Boys from Badakhsan, Takhar, Baghlan, Kunduz, and Balkh provinces in the north region of Afghanistan, as well as those travelling unaccompanied, were reportedly at the highest risk of trafficking.
Exploiters often used drugs to control their victims. Sometimes entire Afghan families, including children, are trapped in debt bondage in the brick-making industry in eastern Afghanistan.
