FIFA World Cup conjures familiar, largely unfounded, sex trafficking fears

With the FIFA World Cup around the corner, sex workers and the support groups that serve them have felt a growing sense of unease.

“People are definitely nervous,” said Aja Lamb-Hartley, operations manager at the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, an organization that offers various services for Vancouver’s street-based sex workers. 

The increase in visitors to the city means greater risk of negative interactions; closures of roads around major arenas may disrupt areas where some sex workers normally work; and the increased traffic through East Hastings between downtown and the fan festival at the PNE will cut through hubs for vital services for WISH’s clients, Lamb-Hartley told Vancity Lookout. 

However, she added that the biggest concerns ahead of the international sporting event have to do with law enforcement. “We definitely hear concerns about the increased police presence for sure…It’s going to impact the community in a big way.”

While selling sex is not illegal in Canada, it is illegal to purchase sex work services or offer third-party support, such as running ads or renting space for sex workers. 

With a significant increase in police presence, Lamb-Hartley said that sex workers typically go to greater lengths to avoid detection, often resulting in riskier situations with less ability to screen clients and restricted access to their usual supports. 

Of particular concern, said Lamb-Hartley, is the return of a familiar campaign: An increased crackdown on “sex trafficking” ahead of the games. 

“[Claims of increased sex trafficking] have been repeated regularly for a long time, especially in the past 20 years,” said Lamb-Hartley. Since the adoption of the UN protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in 2000, the sex worker community has seen a huge “increase in harassment and arrest,” she said.

Several anti-trafficking campaigns, tied directly with law enforcement and non-governmental organizations, have recently launched in Vancouver. The “It’s a Penalty” campaign began May 14 and will run throughout the World Cup events to "mobilize governments, law enforcement, businesses and civil society to prevent abuse, exploitation and human trafficking.” 

Many local organizations have already joined the campaign, with plans to run ads at Vancouver International Airport. The RCMP has also recently released plans for a human trafficking awareness initiative aimed at BC’s restaurant and hospitality sector. 

But Lamb-Hartley said the campaigns have little credible evidence behind them. Worse, they often work to “conflate sex work with sex trafficking,” she added. 

“It’s intentionally confusing and obtuse, and it may lead to the incorrect assumption that sex work is trafficking. That just further marginalizes sex workers.”

The largely unfounded sex trafficking warnings ahead of major world events are not a new phenomenon. 

During the 2010 Olympics, public awareness campaigns launched primarily by non-government organizations and faith-based groups, including Christian-based organization REED (Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity) and the Salvation Army, were heavily promoted ahead of the event. 

Despite significant media and government attention to the issue, a 2013 Public Safety Canada report found that “there was no concrete or verifiable evidence of trafficking in persons for the purposes of sexual or labour exploitation linked to the 2010 Olympic Games.” 

It also noted that by August 2010, no human trafficking incidents connected with the 2010 Olympics had reached the level of investigation. Another report found that from 2006 to 2018, there were only 92 prosecuted human trafficking cases in Canada. 

The Public Safety Canada report stated that there was also no significant “spike in demand for paid sexual services during the Olympic Games” nor at “less family-oriented events” like the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups, where the “anticipated or forecasted level of demand did not materialize.” 

Finally, it cautioned that “divergent understandings of what constitutes human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and differing strategies to combat it produced a critical challenge to the development of coordinated and… balanced public awareness and media campaigns.” 

News coverage at the time showed that many of the anti-trafficking campaigns ahead of the Olympics often used outlandish imagery and frequently blurred the lines between trafficking and consensual sex work. 

The Salvation Army ran a controversial ad campaign called “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” that advocates called “misleading” and “degrading to sex workers.” The Salvation Army’s website even encouraged participants to dress mannequins in bloodied dresses and host prayer walks outside of strip clubs and massage parlours. 

The Salvation Army has again signed on to the “It’s A Penalty” campaign ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. 

There is stronger evidence for trafficking of labour ahead of major world sporting events. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was a notable example of this. For this tournament, advocates have raised concerns related to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program.

However, fears of mass sex trafficking remain largely unsupported, said Crystal Laderas, communications manager at SWAN Vancouver, an organization that supports migrant women in the indoor sex industry. 

“This myth has been debunked over and over, but we continue to see cities across North America that are hosting FIFA invest in these anti-trafficking approaches that often just target sex workers, including immigrant and migrant sex workers,” Laderas said. 

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women has called the anti-trafficking campaigns a “familiar moral panic,” saying the campaigns’ aims are “ineffective” at reducing actual human trafficking and instead largely work to “eradicate the sex industry.”

The Vancouver International Airport partnered with the Not In My City organization in November 2023 to develop anti-trafficking measures and awareness campaigns, which they plan to scale up during the FIFA World Cup. 

But Laderas said she is concerned that many of these approaches will just “encourage people to profile others” using ambiguous evidence such as “someone carrying too much baggage or not enough, people with tattoos or someone with two cell phones.”

A report released by SWAN warns that many of these campaigns backfire against marginalized groups by encouraging hypervigilance, excessive surveillance, and racial profiling of suspected victims and offenders. 

During the FIFA World Cup, Laderas said that many of the sex workers that SWAN works with plan to avoid the downtown core entirely. “They just don’t want any interactions with the police,” she said. 

For migrant sex workers and those on temporary visas, there is an additional layer of risk. “If they’re found to be doing sex work, they can be deported,” Laderas said. 

A recent investigation by De Facto found that collaboration between police and the Canada Border Services Agency has increased, with the Vancouver Police Department calling the CBSA for immigration checks 80 per cent more in 2023 than the previous year. 

Migrant sex workers in particular are especially reluctant to call the police if they have been the victim of a crime, and are even hesitant to seek medical attention, Laderas said. “Even if women are attacked on the job and require urgent care, they won’t go to an emergency room.”

In March, the Richmond RCMP and the BC Counter Human Trafficking Unit made multiple arrests after undercover officers identified more than 100 people using online platforms to arrange sexual service transactions. 

According to the Richmond RCMP’s press release, the recent sting operation was purported to target people purchasing sex work to “reduce the demand” that “fuels human trafficking.” 

But for Laderas, what these operations do is “blur the lines” between consensual sex work and trafficking and “increase marginalization for sex workers in the Lower Mainland.”

“The police continue to say they understand the difference between sex work and human trafficking, but they demonstrate time and time again that they do not treat the two issues very differently at all,” Laderas said. “Usually [these raids] just end up impacting consensual sex workers.”

At the same time that organizations have seen an increase in anti-trafficking investment, there have been continued cuts to sex worker safety policies. 

For the first time in a few years, the provincial budget had no recommendations for sex work support or support organizations. 

“As we face austerity measures in all kinds of government budgets, often, sex work supports are on the list of some of the first to be reduced,” Lamb-Hartley said. 

In August 2025, the PACE Society, an organization that had served Vancouver’s sex work community for over 30 years, shut its doors. In the last year, the WISH Drop-in Centre had to temporarily shutter its drop-in program, gradually reopening at reduced hours last fall. 

In April, the City of Vancouver also eliminated one of two sex worker liaison positions, which had been created as a recommendation from the 2012 report from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. 

“It’s not clear why this position specifically needed to be cut,” Laderas said. “It’s an important liaison between sex worker organizations, the city and the police, and any cut to services that help prevent violence against sex workers is going to be devastating.” 

Ahead of the games, SWAN and WISH told Vancity Lookout that they are still in contact with the City of Vancouver’s FIFA Committee about how the city can support “the community we support because of disruptions caused by the World Cup.”

To address the disconnection from vital services, SWAN has secured a second location outside downtown Vancouver to host its in-person English classes, STBBI (sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections) testing drop-ins, and other in-person support services during the games. WISH said it will likely also extend the hours of its outreach services during the games. 

The two organizations, alongside PACE Society, Living in Community Society, and RainCity Housing, released a joint statement in April demanding that the city reinstate the sex worker planner position. 

The decision on whether to reinstate the position will be raised during the city council meeting on Wednesday, May 20. 

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