Some estimates put the total number of women and children transported from their homes and sold into slavery throughout the world at approximately 1 million per year. At least four factors are facilitating the increase of this phenomenon: the globalization of the economy, the increased demand for personal services in the developed world, the continuing increase in unemployment among women, and the rapid and unregulated enticement and movement of human capital via the Internet. The author presents the Russian Federation as a case study of these larger global trends. Currently, the market for Slavic women and children in the "developed" countries of North America, Europe, and North Asia is among the largest and is drawing on a vast supply of impoverished and vulnerable citizens of the former Soviet Union. In considering the case of the Russian Federation, attention is given to the social costs of economic transition, deceptive recruitment and procurement, and routes through penetrable national borders. Combating human trafficking effectively requires a comprehensive, transnational strategy. Such a strategy should involve methods for preventing women and children from being drawn into these criminal schemes, investigating and prosecuting the crimes effectively, and protecting the victims of these crimes, who often end up in foreign countries as illegal aliens without rights. 52 notes