Religion & Liberty Online

7 Figures: Trafficking in Children on the Increase

UntitledToday the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released their 2014 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.

“Unfortunately, the report shows there is no place in the world where children, women and men are safe from human trafficking,” said UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov “Official data reported to UNODC by national authorities represent only what has been detected. It is very clear that the scale of modern-day slavery is far worse.”

Here are seven figures you should know from the latest report:

1. 72 percent of convicted traffickers are men, and 28 percent are women. 64 percent of convicted traffickers are citizens of the convicting country

2. 49 percent of detected victims are adult women, while 18 percent are men.

3. 33 percent of detected victims are children: 21 percent are girls and 12 percent are boys. This is a 5 percent increase compared to the 2007-2010 period.

4. Sexual exploitation is the dominant form of trafficking in Africa and the Middle East (53 percent), the Americas (48 percent), and Europe and Central Asia (66 percent). Forced labor and servitude is the dominant form in East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific (64 percent).

5. 9 countries still lack legislation against trafficking while 18 others have partial legislation that covers only some victims or certain forms of exploitation. Because of this, more than 2 billion people lack the full protection of the Trafficking in Persons Protocol.

6. 30 percent of convicted traffickers worldwide between 2010 and 2012 were women, whereas the average female conviction rate for other
crimes is usually in the region of 10-15 per cent.

7. Across the globe, convictions of human trafficking remain extremely low. Between 2010 and 2012, some 40 percent of countries reported less than 10 convictions per year. Some 15 percent of the 128 countries covered in the report did not record a single conviction.

Other entries in this series:

Family Structure and Economic Success •  Mortality in the United States • Prevalence of Violence Against Children • Hunger in America • As the Nation Ages, Seven States Become Younger • Trafficking in Persons Report • American Time Use Survey • The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the U.S. • Inmate Sexual Victimization by Correctional Authorities • Tax Day Edition • Wages and Employment in America

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).