Trafficking in Persons

The 2022 UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons is the seventh of its kind mandated by the General Assembly through the 2010 United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. This edition of the Global Report provides a snapshot of the trafficking patterns and flows detected during the COVID-19 pandemic. It covers 141 countries and provides an overview of the response to the trafficking in persons at global, regional and national levels, by analysing trafficking cases detected between 2018 and 2021. A major focus of this edition of the Report is on trends of detections and convictions that show important changes compared to historical trends since UNODC started to collect data in 2003.

The findings are further informed and enriched through the analysis of summaries of 800 court cases adjudicated between 2012 and 2020, providing closer insights into the crime, its victims and perpetrators, and how trafficking in persons comes to the attention of authorities.

As with previous years, this edition of the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons presents a global picture of the patterns and flows of trafficking (Chapter 1), alongside detailed regional analyses (Chapter 2) and country profiles.

For the first time, this edition of the Report presents contributions from early career and young academic researchers, as part of UNODC’s Generation 30 initiative, aimed at building new connections between the UN and academia, while expanding research opportunities for young people. The contributions featured in the report, submitted in response to a call for proposals issued on the UNODC website in 2021, look at trafficking of men and the possible impact of international standards on the detection of victims of trafficking.

In addition, the data collected by UNODC since the first edition of the Global Report in 2009, the largest existing dataset on trafficking in persons, with information on more than 450,000 victims and 300,000 (suspected) offenders detected worldwide between 2003 and 2021, is now available on the UNODC data portal.

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Selected by Virginie GASTINE MENOU