Child trafficking, trafficking for forced labour and forced criminality are rising as poverty, conflict and climate leave more people vulnerable to exploitation, according to the 2024 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons published today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The Report records a 25 per cent increase in the number of trafficking victims detected globally in 2022 compared to 2019 pre-pandemic figures. Between 2019 and 2022, the global number of victims detected for trafficking for forced labour surged by 47 per cent.
The global number of detected child victims increased 31 per cent in 2022 compared to 2019, with a 38 per cent rise recorded for girls. More boy victims have been detected in areas where increasing numbers of unaccompanied and separated children had been recorded. Child trafficking is also on the rise in high-income countries, often involving girls trafficked for sexual exploitation.
“As conflicts, climate-induced disasters and global crises exacerbate vulnerabilities worldwide, we are seeing a resurgence of detected victims of human trafficking, particularly children who now account for 38 per cent of detected victims,” said UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly. “Criminals are increasingly trafficking people into forced labour, including to coerce them into running sophisticated online scams and cyberfraud, while women and girls face the risk of sexual exploitation and gender-based violence. We need to step up criminal justice responses to hold those at the top of the criminal chain accountable, work across borders to rescue victims and ensure survivors receive the support they need.”
The Report finds that women and girls continue to account for the majority of victims detected worldwide (61 per cent in 2022). The majority of girl victims (60 per cent) detected continue to be trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Some 45 per cent of detected boys are trafficked for forced labour and another 47 per cent are exploited for other purposes, including forced criminality and begging.
Trafficking for forced criminality, including into online scams, ranks third in the number of victims detected, and has gone from accounting for one per cent of total victims detected in 2016 to 8 per cent in 2022.
The 2024 Global Report features a special chapter on Africa, a region that has often been neglected in trafficking studies due to the difficulties in obtaining data.
UNODC made extensive efforts to gather data from all regions of Africa, including with the help of UNODC field offices and joint initiatives with International Organization for Migration (IOM), the African Union Institute for Statistics (STATAFRIC), the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as national authorities in many African countries.
As a result, the UNODC Report offers the most detailed picture to date of trafficking patterns, flows and trends for Africa.
According to the Report, detected African victims account for the highest number of destinations reached. In total, at least 162 different nationalities were trafficked to 128 different countries of destination in 2022. Of the cross-border flows detected, 31 per cent involve citizens of African countries.
Most African victims are trafficked within the continent, where displacement, insecurity and climate change are exacerbating vulnerabilities. Children are more frequently detected than adult trafficking in most parts of the continent, particularly for forced labour, sexual exploitation and forced begging. A contributing factor to the global rise in child victims detected is the overall increase of the number of cases detected in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Report offers policy recommendations for responding to all forms of trafficking persons, including to improve victim identification and protection.
The 2024 edition of the Global Report covered 156 countries from all regions and subregions of the world, the best country coverage by the UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons since its first edition in 2009.