Human trafficking in Myanmar is among the worst crises of its kind in the world, and it has deepened sharply since the February 2021 military coup. The U.S. State Department placed Myanmar on Tier 3 — the lowest ranking — in its 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report and named it one of only 13 countries with a documented government “policy or pattern” of trafficking.1United States Department of State. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report The crisis spans forced labor in cyber scam compounds, sexual exploitation, forced marriage to men in China, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Behind all of it: millions of displaced people with no safe way out.
What the Coup Changed
The coup broke what was left of Myanmar’s governance and economy. Fighting between the military regime, ethnic armed organizations, and pro-democracy resistance forces has internally displaced more than 3.3 million people, with at least 176,000 more having fled to neighboring countries.2The United Nations Office at Geneva. Still Reeling: Myanmar Quakes Worsen Humanitarian Crisis in Fractured Country Traffickers go after those populations hardest: people in camps, ethnic minorities, migrant workers who need any income at all. Recruiters approach them with fraudulent job offers promising high wages in Thailand, China, or elsewhere in the region.
Then the regime closed the exits. In early 2024, it activated the People’s Military Service Law, imposing conscription on men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27. Around the same time, it suspended overseas employment recruitment agencies, cutting off one of the few legal paths to leave. With emigration blocked and the draft hanging over them, many people turned to smugglers. Many of those smugglers were traffickers.
Cyber Scam Compounds
The fastest-growing form of exploitation is forced labor inside cyber scam compounds — fortified facilities where trafficked workers are coerced into running online fraud. The United Nations estimates at least 120,000 people are held in these operations in Myanmar alone, with similar numbers in Cambodia.3Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Hundreds of Thousands Trafficked to Work as Online Scammers in SE Asia, Says UN Report UNODC estimates the criminal networks behind cyber-enabled fraud across Southeast Asia generate between $27.4 billion and $36.5 billion a year.4United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Inflection Point: Global Implications of Scam Centres, Underground Banking and Illicit Online Marketplaces in Southeast Asia
Victims are lured by fake job ads for technology, customer service, or online marketing roles, usually posted on social media or messaging apps. On arrival, their passports are taken and they are confined inside heavily guarded compounds, many clustered in special economic zones along the Thai-Myanmar border, particularly around Myawaddy. Inside, workers are forced to run romance scams, cryptocurrency fraud, and bogus investment schemes for 14 to 17 hours a day. Those who miss revenue quotas face beatings and electric shocks. Workers who cannot generate enough money are sometimes sold to other compound operators.
The victims are not only from Myanmar. People from China, India, the Philippines, and other countries have been trafficked in after answering job postings abroad. In early 2025, roughly 7,000 people were rescued from compounds after a crackdown involving Thai and Myanmar authorities. Aid workers said the operations simply moved. When high-profile sites were raided, operators paid local armed groups to help relocate into Myawaddy town itself, where new facilities opened almost immediately.
Labor, Sex Trafficking, Forced Marriage, and Child Soldiers
Older trafficking patterns continue alongside the scam industry. Men and boys are trafficked to Thailand, China, and Malaysia for agriculture, fishing, construction, and factory work under debt bondage or outright coercion. Thailand alone hosts hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrant workers, many of whom entered through irregular channels that leave them exposed to exploitation.
Women and girls are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation both inside Myanmar and across borders. Forced marriage trafficking into China is a persistent problem, with women recruited mostly from northern Kachin and Shan States and moved across the border into Yunnan and onward to provinces where gender imbalances drive demand. Victims are sold as brides, usually to rural men, and face sexual violence and effective imprisonment.
Forced recruitment into armed groups also qualifies as trafficking. Both the military regime and some ethnic armed organizations have unlawfully recruited children. The U.S. Secretary of State included Myanmar on the 2025 Child Soldiers Prevention Act list, identifying the government’s armed forces and government-supported armed groups as having used child soldiers during the most recent reporting period.1United States Department of State. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report
The Rohingya at Sea
No group is more exposed than the Rohingya. Stripped of citizenship, barred from most formal employment, and confined to displacement camps in Rakhine State or refugee settlements in Bangladesh, they have almost no legal way to move or earn. Traffickers sell them passage by sea across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea toward Malaysia, Indonesia, or Thailand.
The crossings are deadly. By mid-2025, UNHCR reported at least 457 Rohingya dead or missing at sea, with other agencies putting the figure above 600. Boat attempts had surged 174 percent compared with the three-year average, and more than 3,100 people embarked in the first five months of 2025 alone. Boats are overcrowded, unseaworthy, and sometimes abandoned by their crews. Survivors who reach land are often handed straight to traffickers who demand ransom from their families or force them into labor.
Where Victims End Up
Most cross-border trafficking moves through poorly monitored border regions. Thailand is the main destination, reached by overland routes through border towns like Myawaddy and Kawthaung. Myawaddy is both a transit point and a destination, hosting many of the scam compounds. Kawthaung connects to the Thai town of Ranong and feeds workers into Thai agriculture, fishing, domestic work, and the sex industry.
China is the main destination for forced marriage and also receives victims for forced labor, with routes crossing at Muse on the Myanmar side and Ruili on the Chinese side into Yunnan. Trafficking to Malaysia, Laos, and India occurs at smaller volumes. Internal trafficking is easy to overlook but significant: people from rural and conflict-affected areas are moved into urban centers, mining sites, industrial zones, and military camps for forced labor and sexual exploitation.
Who Runs the Networks
The perpetrators sit at the intersection of organized crime, armed groups, and corrupt officials. Transnational crime syndicates, many of them Chinese-led, run the largest scam compounds; they have the money to build fortified facilities, bribe local power brokers, and move victims across borders. They typically operate with the tacit or active cooperation of the armed groups that control border territory.
The military regime is itself implicated. Elements of the armed forces are directly tied to forced labor through conscription and the use of civilians as porters and support in conflict zones. Reports of sexual violence by military personnel are persistent. Regime officials have also been accused of taking payments to look away.
Some ethnic armed organizations and border guard forces play their own roles. The Karen State Border Guard Force has been accused of facilitating scam compound operations around Myawaddy and collecting payments from operators who relocate after raids. Others profit by controlling the smuggling routes traffickers rely on. The overlap between armed conflict and organized crime is what makes these networks so hard to break: the people who would need to enforce the law are often the people profiting from the crime.
The Law on Paper, and in Practice
Myanmar’s main legal tool is the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Law, enacted in 2005 and amended in 2022. It criminalizes trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, debt bondage, forced marriage, and organ removal.5United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The Anti Trafficking in Persons Law Myanmar has also ratified the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons.6United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons
The written penalties are heavy. Trafficking of women, children, or youth carries a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life. Trafficking of other victims carries 5 to 10 years. When an organized criminal group is involved, the minimum rises to 20 years, with a maximum of life. In cases involving serious bodily harm or death, the law permits a sentence up to and including the death penalty. Public officials who accept bribes connected to trafficking investigations face 3 to 7 years.5United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The Anti Trafficking in Persons Law
Those numbers mean little when the government writing them controls a fraction of the country. By credible estimates, the regime holds roughly a fifth of Myanmar’s territory, with resistance forces and ethnic armed organizations controlling or contesting the rest.7Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar Beyond regime-held areas, the law is effectively a dead letter. Even inside those areas, enforcement is minimal: in the most recent reporting period covered by the U.S. State Department, the regime’s Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division investigated 27 cases, initiated 92 prosecutions, and secured 111 convictions, down from 170 the year before. An additional 78 traffickers were convicted only in absentia, meaning they were never apprehended.8United States Department of State. 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report – Burma Those are tiny figures against a victim population in the hundreds of thousands.
Victim identification and assistance are no better. Law enforcement is widely distrusted, and victims in conflict zones have no safe way to report. Military personnel implicated in trafficking, forced labor, or sexual violence face no accountability, despite persistent reporting.
International Response
The Tier 3 designation carries real consequences. It triggers restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance and signals to other governments and international financial institutions that Myanmar is failing minimum anti-trafficking standards. The report also identifies Myanmar as having a government “policy or pattern” of state-sponsored trafficking.1United States Department of State. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report
The U.S. runs an active sanctions program against Myanmar’s military regime and its financial networks. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control was still issuing new Burma-related designations as of November 2025, covering entities tied to the military, arms procurement, and related finance.9U.S. Department of the Treasury (Office of Foreign Assets Control). Burma-Related Sanctions Earlier sanctioned entities include the Ministry of Defense, the state oil and gas enterprise, military holding companies, state-owned banks, and jet fuel and military aircraft suppliers.
Regionally, ASEAN member states have begun working together more directly on scam compounds. UNODC has hosted Emergency Response Network meetings bringing law enforcement from across Southeast Asia together to plan cross-border investigations and share operational intelligence on forced criminality networks.10United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Southeast Asia Strengthens Regional Cooperation to Combat Trafficking in Persons for Forced Criminality Thailand, both a destination and a rescue corridor, has moved to set up a permanent national task force on scam compound trafficking and victim protection. The early 2025 Myawaddy rescues came partly from this cooperation. The scale of the criminal operations still outpaces the response.
If you’ve lost money to a scam that may have originated from one of these compounds, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center accepts reports of cyber-enabled fraud regardless of where the operation is based.11Internet Crime Complaint Center. IC3 Home Page Filing lets the FBI track patterns and, in some cases, freeze stolen funds, though the volume of complaints means not every submission gets a direct response.