Human trafficking

Definition

The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defines human trafficking or trafficking in persons: 

“Trafficking in Persons”… mean[s] the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. (Article 3, paragraph (a)).

The Protocol further elaborates that the consent of a trafficked person may be rendered irrelevant when obtained through improper means:

The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used; (Article 3, paragraph (b)).

In the case of trafficked children, the Protocol elaborates that the vulnerable status of children makes it impossible for them to consent regardless of whether any improper means were used or not: 

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered "trafficking in persons" even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article; (Article 3, paragraph (c)).

 

"Child" shall mean any person under eighteen. (Article 3, paragraph (d)).

Data sources

The main sources of data on human trafficking globally are based on information provided by identified victims. These are usually collected by a range of different actors, including law enforcement, the judiciary, and non-governmental organizations providing protection and assistance to victims. 

Several UN agencies and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have collaborated to produce data sources on the profiles of victims of human trafficking, the prevalence of human trafficking, and on related phenomena such as forced labour and forced marriage.

 

Operational case data and victim profiles

In the course of protecting and providing services to victims, counter-trafficking actors frequently collect individual-level, operational case data. IOM has been providing direct assistance to victims of human trafficking since the mid-1990s and assists approximately 4,000 victims each year globally. Through its case management activities, IOM and partner organizations have developed the largest database of victim of trafficking case data in the world, with information on over 206,000 individual cases. 

Operational data from counter-trafficking organizations are often highly sensitive and pertain to individuals, which raises a range of privacy and civil liberty concerns where the risk of identifying data subjects can be high and the consequences severe. While many organizations and governments around the world collect data on cases of human trafficking, disaggregated data has not been easily accessible to external stakeholders or has not been frequently shared between relevant actors in the past due to the sensitivity of its content, and data protection and confidentiality considerations.

To overcome these challenges, in 2017, IOM made its own data publicly available online through the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC), along with combined data from other leading counter-trafficking organizations with significant case-level datasets. 

National reporting mechanisms

Another key source of trafficking information is official reports on administrative data compiled by governments (or other central reporting bodies) on human trafficking cases within their national jurisdictions.

UNODC surveys governments on trafficking victims identified in their respective countries for the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, using a common questionnaire with a standard set of indicators, and then aggregates the results.  The most recent global report was produced in 2022. From 2003 to 2021, this exercise produced data on more than 450,000 identified victims of trafficking from 141 governments, a peak compared to previous years. Data are largely published in the form of total numbers disaggregated by variables such as sex, age, and type of exploitation, wherever possible. In addition to government surveys, UNODC collects official information such as police reports that are available in the public domain, and some information from inter-governmental organisations and NGOs. 

Estimating prevalence of human trafficking

There are currently no global or regional estimates of the prevalence of human trafficking. 

Some national estimates have been developed, including using human trafficking administrative data:

Multiple Systems Estimation is the methodology used to estimate the total (unidentified and identified) victims of trafficking at country level. This is based on the analysis of the overlap of multiple lists of human trafficking cases provided by different actors in the counter-trafficking field, such as NGOs, law enforcement, other authorities and international organizations. MSE depends upon the existence of various databases of identified victims of human trafficking in the country of implementation. A number of other technical assumptions should also be met. For example, it must be possible for more than one entity recording administrative data to be able to independently identify a victim of trafficking. Researchers developing the method have estimated that it could potentially be used in approximately 50 countries around the world. Initial estimates have already been conducted in several countries, including the UK and the Netherlands.

Relatively few examples of estimates of related forms of exploitation exist:

• Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage - This is a global estimate of the prevalence of the human-trafficking-related crimes of forced labour and forced marriage, produced by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), IOM and the Walk Free Foundation (WFF). The 2022 report estimates that 50 million people were victims of modern slavery in any given day in 2021. Out of these, an estimated 27.6 million people were in situations of forced labour and another 22 million people were in a forced marriage. The Global Estimates are derived from multiple data sources, including about 70 nationally representative household surveys and the CTDC dataset on victims of trafficking. Data from CDTC were also used to estimate forced labour exploitation of children, forced commercial sexual exploitation of adults and commercial sexual exploitation of children.
• NO ESCAPE: Assessing the relationship between slavery-related abuse and internal displacement in Nigeria, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  IOM, ILO, and WFF have provided prevalence estimates of various forms of slavery-related abuse, including forced labour, forced marriage, forced recruitment into armed groups and human trafficking among Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and their families. This report was published in 2023, and it focuses on Nigeria, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In addition to estimating prevalence, this report sought to better understand the nature of assessed forms of slavery-related abuse in relation to displacement experiences, and to explore the relationship between individual-level and external factors associated with these forms of slavery-related abuse.
• From Evidence to Action: Twenty years of IOM child trafficking data to inform policy and programming. IOM collaborated with the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University on this report published in 2023. By leveraging IOM's case data, the report presents new insights into trafficking dynamics, including that close to 50 per cent of child trafficking cases take place within victims’ own countries. It also shows that no age range, no gender, and no nationality is immune to child trafficking; it is a truly global phenomenon. The study reinforces the need for evidence informed responses.
• Economic Shocks and Human Trafficking Risks: Evidence from IOM's Victims of Human Trafficking Database. IOM and World Bank (2022) verify that economic shocks are significant risk factors that increase vulnerability to human trafficking. The report shows that economic vulnerabilities in origin countries—especially those caused by global commodity price shocks— are strongly positively correlated with observed cases of trafficking.

Trafficking in humanitarian settings and large-scale migration flows

Humanitarian crises such as those associated with conflicts or natural disasters may exacerbate pre-existing trafficking trends and give rise to new ones. While some forms of trafficking could be a direct result of crises, such as exploitative sexual services demanded by armed groups or the forced recruitment of child soldiers, others are less evident, with traffickers thriving on the widespread human, material, social and economic losses caused by crises and the inability of families and communities to protect themselves and their children.  

IOM works to combat trafficking and protect trafficked persons in humanitarian settings. To address the acute need for data for evidence-based programming in these location, IOM has been using its Displacement Tracking Matrix to regularly collect data on risks and issues relevant to human trafficking and exploitation in crises. In addition, IOM and its partners are also working to produce prevalence estimates on issues related to human trafficking. 

Locations of recent regular data collection with human trafficking indicators include Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, North-East Nigeria, Ukraine, Central and South American countries. The data gathered during these operations can be used to better understand risks to trafficking, vulnerability to exploitation, gaps in assistance and to identify areas of further research. 

IOM, through DTM, also produces primary data on the migrants’ vulnerability to human trafficking, abuse, exploitation and violence on different migration routes, for example on the main migration routes to Europe. Data with trafficking indicators are collected in countries like Italy, Libya, or Greece. Further similar data collection is planned in other countries.

Data strengths & limitations

Operational case data and victim profiles

The availability of data on identified victims of trafficking depends on a range of factors, for example on whether counter trafficking organizations are operational or able to consistently collect or share data in any given country/location. Therefore, data coverage is not always comprehensive. Presence of large quantities of human trafficking data may not necessarily indicate higher prevalence, and a paucity of data in certain contexts may be due a lack of effective counter-trafficking responses.  Identified cases are better understood as a sample of the unidentified population of victims. This sample may be biased if some types of trafficking cases are more likely to be identified (or referred) than others. Even if this is the case, the extent of the bias is rarely known, since the unidentified population is, by definition, unknown. Nevertheless, where available, these data are indispensable, as they provide detailed insight into the profiles and experiences of the victims, the forms of human trafficking, and information on perpetrators.

As a consequence, IOM, together with UNODC, is working to support member states to safely and ethically leverage these data for evidence through initiatives such as the International Classification Standard for administrative data on Trafficking in Persons (ICS-TIP). The ICS-TIP, accompanied by the guidance manual "Making Each Case Count" aims to support governments in collecting and analyzing high-quality, internationally comparable data on human trafficking, thus enhancing the evidence base for effective interventions.

Additionally, IOM's Human Trafficking Case Data Standards (HTCDS) provide front-line counter-trafficking organizations with a toolkit for consistently defining and managing human trafficking cases. This includes fields to screen for risk factors and referral details, thus supporting organizations in providing comprehensive assistance to survivors and improving the overall quality of data collected on human trafficking.

 

National reporting mechanisms

While data from National Reporting Mechanisms are not detailed and generally only available as high-level aggregates, limiting their use, they have the widest geographical coverage and therefore provide useful baseline information on human trafficking at the global level. Furthermore, in the absence of publicly available disaggregated data, official reports may be the only source of data on identified victims available in a given country or region.

Estimating prevalence of human trafficking

National estimates of trafficking prevalence have been produced in several countries. However, they are commonly based on modelling of existing administrative data from identified cases and should therefore only be considered as basic baseline estimates. Historically, producing estimates of the prevalence of trafficking based on the collection of new primary data, for example through surveys, has been difficult. This is due to trafficking’s complicated legal definition and the ethical challenges of addressing sensitive questions to household survey respondents. Not all countries can be sampled due to resource constraints, security reasons, or the presence of large-scale humanitarian emergencies. There are also ethical considerations and further challenges related to large-scale household surveys in terms of the sensitivity of certain questions (for example, questions related to sexual exploitation or violence) and the difficulty of collecting data about children. This makes the case data mentioned above more valuable, both to gain insights on these specific profiles and to support estimations.

Trafficking in humanitarian settings and large-scale migration flows

Finally, humanitarian settings are often highly pressurized and fast changing environments, where conducting rigorous and ethical data collection can be challenging. For example, access to affected populations for data collectors can rapidly change, and services relevant for assistance of victims of human trafficking might not initially exist in crisis-affected locations.  Therefore, the methods of data collection need to avoid causing harm, and they need to be time-sensitive and adaptable. Sampling best practices can also be challenging to implement in some environments.

¹ _{Global Report on Trafficking in Persons}