"Human trafficking is a human tragedy," American columnist Mark Shields once said. And the recently released UN report on the issue perfectly encapsulates columinst's views.

"In 2018, for every 10 victims [of human trafficking] detected globally, about five were adult women, and two were girls. About one-third of the overall detected victims were children, both girls and boys."

The findings are a part of the new United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report on human trafficking for 2020, which confirms a 15-year tragic trend: children are more and more the victims of this crime.

According to official data, in 2004, children represented 13 percent of the trafficked persons, a share that grew substantially to 34 percent in 2011, only decrease to 28 percent in 2014. But after that, the numbers continued to climb all through 2018, when again both boys and girls represented 34 percent of the detected victims.

The UNODC pinpointed that the share of boys has increased when compared to girls, accounting for 15 percent, while girls stand at 19 percent.

Data indicates that 66 percent of the boys are trafficked for forced labor, while girls (72 percent), just like women (77 percent), for sexual exploitation.

In Sub-Saharan countries, children (1,558 girls and 1,275 boys) were the most trafficked, surpassing adults, to be used for forced labor.

On route to sexual exploitation

Of the 48,478 victims reported, 46 percent were women, and 20 percent men. In North America and Western and Southern Europe regions, the majority of the cases involved women.

Only in North Africa and the Middle East, the highest number of cases were men, but an increasing number of male victims was detected in Central and South-Eastern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean, and South America, the report said.

Most victims, 50 percent, were trafficked for sexual exploitation and 38 percent for forced labor. 

The records also show that six percent were for criminal activities, ranging from pickpocketing to drug cultivation or drug trafficking, with boys being a more common target. 

Exploitative begging represented 1.5 percent of the cases in 19 countries. The UNODC stated that this is a “less commonly reported form of trafficking,” with most of these cases happening in North Africa and the Middle East, accounting for about 30 percent of the victims.

Less frequently detected, but still in existence, are cases of trafficking for forced marriage and a few others of trafficking of pregnant women and/or infants, both for illegal adoption.

Male perpetrators

When it comes to people investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for these crimes, men dominate, with 67, 64, and 62 percent, respectively. Investigations led to scrutiny of 9,429 individuals, but in final verdicts, only 3,553 were convicted, the report concluded. 

In the court cases analyzed by the UNODC, 151 cases involved organized criminal groups that operate like business enterprises and might have three or more traffickers systematically working together. The second-highest number of the cases, 122, was related to the “opportunistic association of traffickers,” meaning the two traffickers or more worked together. 

The report says there is evidence of large territorial criminal organizations that engage in many forms of illicit trafficking, like the Mara Salvatrucha group in Central America or the Supreme Eiye Confraternity in France that traffics people along the West Africa-Europe route.

Putting a price on human life and dignity

An analysis of court cases that reported monetary exchanges revealed that in 26 out of the 30 recorded cases, women and girls were sold to their future exploiter for less than $5,000, while eight victims were traded for less than $1,000, intermediaries sold 22 of them for less than $2,000.

In cases of domestic trafficking, the monetary values were even less, a maximum of $600, with an average value of $250. In East Asia, a trafficked bride can be sold for about $10,000, cheaper than 15 kilograms of ivory, but in South East Asia, it might be $3,000.

The organization admits there is little information available on traffickers’ profits and estimations on the global size of the market remain “challenging given the lack of a reliable estimate of the global number of victims.”

In Belgium, a criminal group paid $2,800 for each woman recruited and then the victims had to pay off a debt of $12,000. The network trafficked about 50 victims in two years, resulting in a rough estimate of $450,000 for the traffickers. 

"Traffickers trade their victims as commodities," the UNODC stated, stressing that even though the size of the criminal market may be smaller than other markets, like drugs, “the harm associated to trafficking in persons has no comparable metrics.”