Some causes of trafficking include:

• Profitability
• Growing deprivation and marginalisation of the poor
• Insufficient penalties against traffickers
• According to the UN a major factor that has allowed the growth of sexual trafficking is "Governments and human rights organizations alike have simply judged the woman guilty of prostitution and minimized the trafficker's role." [[17]]

Trafficking in people has been facilitated by porous borders and advanced communication technologies, it has become increasingly transnational in scope and highly lucrative. Unlike drugs or arms, people can be "sold" several times. The opening up of Asian markets, porous borders, the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the former Yugoslavia have contributed to this globalization.

In the United Kingdom people trafficking by the Vietnamese have been discovered in the past few years. Vietnamese are trafficked from Vietnam to work in illegal Vietnamese cannabis factories throughout the country, as the recent police Operation Keymer showed. Another recent police Operation Pentameter discovered Vietnamese people smugglers to operate widely in prostitution. Illegal Vietnamese are also smuggled in to work in Vietnamese nail salons. Recently the UK authority planned to deport over 500 children back to Vietnam who had been smuggled into the country.