We need to target sex trafficking all the time
By: Yasmin Vafe
Your Turn
Guest columnist
..... For six weeks this summer, [2026] the entire world fixed its attention on America. As our nation hosted the 2026 FIFA World Cup, millions traveled to host cities - filling hotels, restaurants and stadiums with energy that only a Global tournament can generate.
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Rights4Girls was there, too. But we weren't in the stands cheering for nay team or nation. Rather, we took to the roads toward the arenas with billboards across several host cities, spreading the message that buying sex is not entertainment, not harmless and not a game.
..... Our national campaign sought to turn the global glare of these games onto sex buyers. Because while they're the ones who fuel this multi-billion-dollar industry, they almost never get named, held accountable or asked to examine their behavior that fuels lifelong devastation.
.... Our billboards - in Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City, Boston, Seattle and the New York - New Jersey market - rotated thorough a series of soccer-themed messages like, "buying Sex? get an Automatic Red."
..... Tourists or drives would then be directed to our website, where hey would see additional stats and information such as "Eight states have elevated sex buying offenses to felony-level crimes, while eight additional states have strengthened laws by increasing fines that fund victim services, requiring buyer education programs, or both."
..... Other billboards are paired on our site with quotes from sex buyers taken from our recent report Buyers Unmasked, such as "Has a handler staying in the room with her, not independent, watched him leave he hotel and wait in a car facing the door before I went in."
..... That quote highlights a reality often ignored in conversations about the sex trade: Buyers frequently recognize signs of coercion or exploitation and choose to participate anyway.
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Over the past two years, we've placed similar billboards during other big-ticket events such as March Madness, the NFL Draft, the MLB All-Star Game, the Kentucky Derby and the Daytona 500.
..... Each time, our goal has been to challenge a dangerous assumption held by too many men: that a major sporting event or celebration creases an opportunity to purchase a vulnerable human being for sex without consequence.
..... We are brining much-needed visibility to the often-overlooked role of sex buyers in fueling the cycle of exploitation. Because trafficking is driven by demand, so long as there are people willing to buy other human beings for sex, marginalized people - especially women and girls of color - will continue to be targeted, exploited and sold for profit.
..... Ask most people who;s responsible when a victim is recovered, and they'll name the trafficker. But almost no one names the man who paid for the transaction in the first place ... even though without him, there is no transaction to prosecute. No industry to begin with. The buyer isn't a bystander to the exploitation, but the actual engine that runs it. and according to research, they enact just as much violence and harm to sex trade survivors as other exploiters.
..... And this year, [2026] the numbers bore that out. In just the six World Cup host markets we targeted with our campaign, state and federal anti-trafficking operations recovered more than 270 trafficking victims, including over 50 children. in addition, more than 280 individuals were arrested on trafficking and exploitation-related charges. In Atlanta alone, authorities recovered 54 trafficking victims.
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In New York, 43 victims were recovered, including seven children, alongside 89 arrest of exploiters.
..... New Jersey identified 97 suspected trafficking victims and made 71 arrests - 40 of them sex buyers.
..... Kansas City, Seattle, Massachusetts and Texas each ran their own operations, turning up more of the same grim pattern.
..... And this doesn't even count the other 10 host cities where we did not engage in education, advocacy or proactive deterrence with our campaign.
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These were not isolated incidents. they were are of a broader and unmistakable pattern: When demand spikes, traffickers follow.
..... Major sporting events bring millions of people together, and they also cerate opportunities for those who profit from exploitation.
..... The World Cup, like the events before it, brought visibility to the demand that too often remains hidden.
..... But trafficking doesn't spike and vanish on a schedule tied to a kickoff or a tipoff. It is a year-round crisis rooted in poverty, housing instability and he exploitation of already-marginalized women and girls.
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Sporting events don't cause trafficking, but they do exacerbate it.
..... That is precisely why our campaign exists, and why proactive deterrence and community education matter as as much as enforcement.
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A billboard that a buyer sees on his way into a city - one that bluntly tells him buying sex will get him in trouble - is designed to stop the transaction before it happens.
..... That's the difference between responding to exploitation and actually preventing it.
..... Though the final whistle has blown on the World Cup, the demand these games exposed has not disappeared. The cites that hosted matches this summer [2026] will go on to host conventions, concerts and sporting events for years to come. The question is whether we will continue allowing these moments to cerate opportunities for exploitation - or whether we will use them as opportunities for preventing and accountability.
..... That is the work ahead: not waiting for the next tournament OT prove the point again, but building a culture where exploitation in no longer overlooked and challenging the conditions that allow trafficking to thrive. Through awareness, accountability and prevention, we can build a future where major events are remembered for celebration - not for the exploitation that too often hides along side them.
..... Yasmin Vafa is co-founder and executive director of Right4Girls.