The Global Report on Trafficking of People 2012, presented by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), revealed that children represent about 27% of all victims of human trafficking.
Out of every three child victims, two are girls and one is a boy. The figures refer to human trafficking victims officially detected through 132 countries worldwide, between 2007 and 2010, with an estimate that 20.9 million people are victims of forced labour globally, according to the UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov.
The report goes on to say that women account for 55-60% of all trafficking victims detected globally. When adding the figures for women and girls together, the total rises to 75%. Relative to this is the key figure, detailed in the report, that trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation accounts for 58% of all human trafficking cases detected globally, with trafficking related to forced labour accounting for 36%.
Trafficking for sexual exploitation is more common in Europe, Central Asia and the Americas. Trafficking for forced labour is more frequently detected in Africa and the Middle East, as well as in South and East Asia and the Pacific. Geographically, the trafficking flow originating in East Asia remains the most prominent trans-national flow globally. East Asian victims were found in large numbers in many countries worldwide.
Trafficking is a global phenomenon: people from at least 136 different nationalities were trafficked and then found to be in 118 different countries, but the number of convictions for human trafficking is in general very low. Notably, of the 132 countries covered in the report, 16% did not record a single conviction between 2007 and 2010.
