Unreported World

Reporter Ramita Navai and director Talya Tibbon travel to Central America to investigate the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of young Honduran women. They discover that many of them have been enticed to travel to Mexico with the promise of jobs but end up trafficked to brothels and forced to work in the sex industry.

The Unreported World team begin their journey in the Honduran town of Progreso after reports that hundreds of young women have disappeared. They meet the mothers who, frustrated at a lack of interest from the authorities, have set up a group to try to trace their daughters. One of them tells Navai how occasionally a mother receives an anguished call from a missing daughter but then the phone is snatched away, and the fate of the missing girls sinks back into mystery.

The mothers who collate possible sightings of the missing girls have come up with a clue. Most of the girls have been offered well-paid jobs in nearby Mexico, sometimes even the United States. Since a military coup three years ago, the Honduran economy has collapsed, the drug cartels have gained ever more power, and Honduras has become the most murderous country on earth. It's no surprise the girls were tempted by promises of work and better opportunities abroad.

The team travel through Guatemala to the Mexican border. At the illegal crossing next to the official border at Tecun Uman there's no need for visas - all it takes is the equivalent of fifty pence to pay a ferryman. But crossing illegally means that once in Mexico, there is no record of the women's existence.

A short drive from the border is the town of Tapachula, and the team visits the red light district there. It's soon apparent that most of the women working in these brothels and bars are Honduran. The owners keep a constant watch on them and the women are far too scared to talk. However, the next day Navai is able to meet one - Ashley - who says she crossed the river two years ago with her sister. She was 17 and has left her two young children behind after being promised a well-paid waitressing jobs. Instead, the traffickers delivered them to a brothel and threatened to hurt their family if they refused to do what they were told. Eventually, she managed to call the Honduran consulate and was rescued. But she's still in Mexico as she can't face telling her parents what has happened.

Ashley says she was too scared to call the local police as many were regular clients. The former Honduran Consul in south Mexico Patricia Villamil tells Navai that she'd been fired - she believes for criticizing the Honduran and Mexican authorities for failing to rescue more missing girls. She says in the eight months she was consul the Mexican authorities received over 200 calls from missing Honduran girls trapped in brothels. Only a fraction were rescued. Human rights activist Luis Villagran campaigns against the traffickers. He claims the authorities do little to combat the trade and often that local authorities are part of it. The Honduran and Mexican authorities declined to comment on the allegations.

Travelling further into Mexico, the team are able to talk to a former Honduran trafficker. He tells Navai he'd started out smuggling drugs but then his bosses decided his charm made him an ideal recruiter of women. He says at times he sold up to 40 girls a day for 100 US dollars each. While he waited to sell the girls, he kept them in captivity.

Those fighting to save the missing girls say the official incompetence and corruption that allows the traffickers to operate has to end. There are some people working to achieve that, but they need help if they are to make a real difference.

Clips from Episode 8

• Honduras: The Lost…

• All Clips (1)