Save the Children's new Report Piccoli Schiavi Invisibili 2025 (Little Invisible Slaves 2025) provides an up-to-date picture of one of the most serious emergencies affecting children and adolescents, with a focus on the role of digital technologies, which are radically transforming the ways in which children and young people are groomed, controlled and exploited.

In the world, one in four people in a state of modern exploitation or slavery is a minor. The number of children identified as trafficking victims, in fact, increased by 31% compared to 2019, mainly due to the increase in sexually exploited girls, forced labour child victims (especially in Europe and North America), and the growth of victims in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Moreover, nowadays, digital technologies are increasingly being used systematically by criminal networks for recruitment, control, and exploitation, and migration crises make many minors extremely vulnerable, exposing them to circuits of sexual exploitation, forced labour, or criminal economies. Even Europe is not exempt: child victims were particularly identified in France (29.4%), Germany (17.7%) and Romania (16.3%). In Italy, a transit and destination country, child trafficking and exploitation is a hidden reality that involves migratory flows and internal contexts of vulnerability.

The Report is available on the Save the Children website.

Additional materials and news can be found on this website under Trafficking of human beings, accessible from the “Topics” navigation menu.