Sex trafficking in El Salvador

The majority of foreign victims of sex trafficking in El Salvador come from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

[2] Victims experience mental health problems, including depression, suicidal thoughts, and persecutory delusions.

[7] Drug gangs in El Salvador engage in sex trafficking as an alternative source of profit.

[2][8] Vulnerable young girls, with an average age of nine to 15 years old, are often targeted and recruited from schools and communities then led into a life of sexual violence and exploitation.

Research by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley indicates that an estimated 15,000 children in Guatemala fall victim to child sex trafficking networks.

In addition to sex trafficking, children in the Northern Triangle are also subjected to forced labor, such as selling drugs for the gangs, further perpetuating the cycle of exploitation.

[11] El Salvador's police reports that sexual exploitation has been involved in 97 percent of the human trafficking cases registered.

Citizen and foreign victims, including indigenous peoples, are sex trafficked into and out of the departments of El Salvador . They are raped and physically and psychologically harmed in locations within these administrative divisions.