A new study conducted by IOM and the Catholic University of Peru sheds new light on human trafficking for labour exploitation in illegal logging and gold mining in the Madre de Dios region of the country. Peru is a country of origin, transit and destination for human trafficking with a predominance of internal trafficking of women for sexual exploitation. However, children and men are often trafficked to work in the mining, logging and agricultural industries. The Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru bordering Brazil and Bolivia is a sparsely populated and isolated area with vast natural resources, including precious woods and gold. In the past five years the area has received more than 20,000 internal migrants, leading researchers to believe that attractive job offers are leading poor Peruvians from neighbouring regions to fall prey to human traffickers. The study confirmed that 90 per cent of the victims are men from the high-Andean region who are trafficked to work in illegal logging activities and the informal gold mining sector. Twenty per cent of the males trafficked are boys between 12 and 14 years old. “The men receive false employment offers and end up incurring large debts that force them to work indefinitely without any salary in order to pay off the supposed debt,” explains Dolores Cortés, coordinator of the research and IOM’s Regional Counter-Trafficking Specialist. The same tactics are employed to entrap victims who are exploited to work in the chestnut harvest, as well as for sexual exploitation and organ removal.