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Quantifying Human Trafficking, its Impact and the Responses to it. Background Paper

Document number
1460
Date
2008
Title
Quantifying Human Trafficking, its Impact and the Responses to it. Background Paper
Author/publisher
Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations (UN)
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Meeting Documentation/Conference Reports,
Keywords
UN GIFT, United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, The Vienna Forum to fight Human Trafficking
Summary
While many ofthe reports provide valuable qualitative insights into trafficking patterns, researchshould also be based on hard data. However, there is still a lack of quantitativeinformation or understanding regarding the scope and development of the crime ofhuman trafficking around the world. Even basic criminal justice data on trafficking inpersons (TIP) offences is not publicly available for many countries and regions of theworld, making the compilation of accurate statistics on human trafficking elusive andunreliable at any level. In the absence of systematic and reliable statistical time series,we do not even know with any degree of precision if the number of reported traffickingcases is increasing or decreasing and why this might be so. Compiling reliable andcomprehensive statistical time series on the criminal justice response to humantrafficking is thus a first step towards a more global understanding of the phenomenon.It is also, as this paper will try to show, quite a challenging task.The difficulties connected with researching human trafficking are related to the natureof the subject itself. Like in many other areas of criminal justice studies, research onthe nature and scope of trafficking in persons is considered inherently difficult as itinvolves hidden populations.
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