7 in 10 Victims of Human Trafficking Are Women and Girls

Children make up almost a third of all human trafficking victims worldwide, according to a recent  report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Additionally, women and girls comprise 71 per cent of human trafficking victims, the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons states.

Credit: UNODC

“Trafficking for sexual exploitation and for forced labour remain the most prominently detected forms, but victims are also being trafficked to be used as beggars, for forced or sham marriages, benefit fraud, or production of pornography,” on 21 December 2016 said UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov in presenting the 2016 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.

The report found that while women and girls tend to be trafficked for marriages and sexual slavery, men and boys are typically exploited for forced labour in the mining sector, as porters, soldiers and slaves.

While 28 per cent of detected trafficking victims worldwide are children, in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America and the Caribbean children comprise 62 and 64 per cent of victims, respectively.

Fedotov emphasized the link between armed groups and human trafficking, noting how armed groups often engage in trafficking in their territories of operation, coercing women and girls into marriages or sexual slavery, and pressing men and boys to act as forced labour or combatants.

In this regard, Nadia Murad, UNODC Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, has told her heartbreaking account of being enslaved by ISIL terrorists who took her and thousands of Yazidi women captive in Iraq.

This year’s report includes a thematic chapter focusing on the connections between trafficking in persons, migration and conflict.

“People escaping from war and persecution are particularly vulnerable to becoming victims of trafficking,” said Fedotov.