Colombia creates 'elite unit' of labour inspectors to combat human trafficking

Colombia is training dozens of inspectors to hunt down cases of labour trafficking and exploitation, in response to an influx of over 1 million Venezuelan migrants whose dire straits make them vulnerable to forced labour

Top mobile company Telefonica Brasil found guilty of slave labor

The company and its contractors will be fined R$200,000 ($53,167), but also risk being added to a 'dirty list' of companies found guilty of slave labor

Fear of authorities, deportation is silencing trafficking victims, U.S. group says

An estimated 400,000 people are believed to be trapped in modern slavery in the United States, according to the Global Slavery Index

Visitors to U.S. under visa program at risk of trafficking, research says

Victims included women from Kazakhstan who were sex-trafficked in Florida, according to the report

Former sex slave leads Uruguay's first march against human trafficking

'Human trafficking happens every day, but people don't want to see it. We are seen as numbers. We want to be seen as people,' - Sandra Ferrini who was sold to traffickers by her mother

Hundreds of trafficking victims denied right to remain in Britain

Government data found that between 2015-17 Britain's Home Office did not allow 752 people to remain after they were recognised as being trafficked

Malaysian court sides with forced labour victims over unpaid wages

Malaysia has said this year that it was ready to "declare war" on human trafficking and forced labour

Freedom, money, babies: Indian women rescued from slavery count their losses

Hundreds of pregnant and lactating women work in brick kilns, rice mills and on farms across India, often to pay off debts they did not incur

Companies must use buying power to root out slavery, says UK official

About 25 million people worldwide were estimated to be trapped in forced labour in 2016

India ruling could allow millions of home workers to access benefits

The ruling could affect millions of women not given employee status because they work from home, a common practice in India's garment sector

Sewing a way out of sex work in Spain

Paid work - making clothes - is a path back to normality, they say, a way to feel useful, not used, and learn how to fit into society after being trafficked underground

* Feel free to republish the stories above as long as credit is given to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Jeffrey Epstein could face sex trafficking trial next June

Prosecutors have accused Epstein of arranging for girls under the age of 18 to perform nude 'massages' and other sex acts, and of paying some girls to recruit others

Protests over worker deaths paralyse production at some Coal India mines

Workers have been staging sit-down protests and waving flags at state-run Coal India Ltd's mines in the eastern state of Odisha, demanding a safety audit of all mines in the region

Sixteen U.S. Marines arrested on suspicion of human trafficking

The precise nature of the alleged wrongdoing was not disclosed, but the troops were suspected of involvement in the smuggling of undocumented immigrants into the U.S. from Mexico

OPINION: Migration in Southeast Asia should be an opportunity for workers, communities and economies – not traffickers

Human trafficking – as well as forced labour - is a crime of opportunity. Victims are in situation of vulnerability as they attempt to build a better life for them and their families

OPINION: UK government must stop detaining victims of trafficking under immigration powers

Victims of trafficking are part of a Home Office pattern of maintaining detention of vulnerable people even when detention medical staff show concern

OPINION: Child sex trafficking in the high-speed internet era

Please remember that the children who are falling prey to online child sex trafficking are our children and we have to act now to save them