Towards international statistical guidelines on…

Every year, more than 50,000 people are identified as victims of trafficking in persons. Among them, many are supported, but little is known about those who remain in trafficking and exploitative situations, beyond the reach of authorities and protection services. SDG Indicator 16.2.2. on "Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitation" aims at tracking the world's progress in reducing the prevalence of trafficking in persons, but no universal statistical standard yet exists to collect robust and comparable data on the actual scale of the phenomenon. The new STATIP (Standard Tools for Analysis of Trafficking in Persons) project, conducted jointly, at the UN level, by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) aims to close that gap, by creating a statistical framework to define trafficking in persons for prevalence surveys, with submission to the UN Statistical Commission expected in 2026. This framework will facilitate the measurement of prevalence by improving the quality and consistency of local, national, regional and global estimates, and thereby providing reliable evidence to devise more effective and refined anti-trafficking policies.