Human Trafficking Statistics: What the Numbers Actually Say
Authorities around the world detected about 70,000 trafficking victims in 2022. The ILO estimates 27.6 million people were living in forced labour that same year. The distance between what is found and what exists is the problem this page is about.
38%
of detected trafficking victims worldwide are children, up from 32% in 2019
UNODC Global Report, 2024
82%
of detected victims in Eastern Europe are women and girls; 84% were trafficked for sexual exploitation, more than double the global share
UNODC, 2024 (430 detected victims across six countries, indicative rather than precise)
58%
of detected victims never crossed a border; in Eastern Europe and Central Asia it is 99%
UNODC, 2024
US$236 billion
in illegal profits from forced labour each year; 73% of it from forced commercial sexual exploitation
ILO Profits and Poverty, 2024
49.6 million
people in modern slavery on any given day; 1.7 million children in forced commercial sexual exploitation
ILO, Walk Free and IOM, 2022
1 in 4
Dutch child sexual exploitation court cases 2015-2019 involved someone with a history of institutional care; researchers call it a lower bound
Lumos Cycles of Exploitation, 2021
Who traffickers look for
The US State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report for Moldova lists children “aging out of” institutions and children “abandoned by parents migrating abroad” among the populations most vulnerable to trafficking.
That is the population The Orphan’s Hands exists for. Family homes at Vatra Village in Moldova take in the teens nobody came for, before anyone else gets to them.
The orphanhood and institutional care numbers behind that sentence are on our orphan statistics page, and what happens when orphans age out describes the day itself.
Sources
- UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 2024 (unodc.org)
- ILO, Walk Free and IOM, Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, 2022 (ilo.org)
- ILO, Profits and Poverty, 2024 (ilo.org)
- US State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report: Moldova, 2025 (state.gov)
- US State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report: Ukraine, 2025 (state.gov)
- Lumos, Cycles of Exploitation, 2021 (wearelumos.org)
Figures carry their source and year because they differ by definition and vintage. Page reviewed August 2026.
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