The United States is again ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for human trafficking. According to a recently released report by the State Department, the top three nations of origin for victims of human trafficking in 2018 were the United States, Mexico and the Philippines.

According to the 2026 UN and Organized Crime Index reports, the nations with the most "alarming" rates of human trafficking remain Afghanistan, Eritrea, Myanmar, and North Korea, largely due to state-sponsored forced labor or a total breakdown of law and order. In 2026, a specific, high-value "emerging crisis" is concentrated in the Mekong region (Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) and the Philippines, where hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked into "entrenched scam centers" to conduct cyber-fraud under threat of torture. These "water prisons" and fortified compounds have also been documented in the UAE and parts of West Africa. For 2026 global observers, the "worst" countries are often those where border officials are complicit in the recruitment process. While many nations have high "Criminality" scores, these specific regions are the premier focus of international human rights groups due to the "industrial scale" of the exploitation and the extreme brutality used to ensure compliance among the victims.