Mapping the inhuman trade: preliminary findings of the database on trafficking in human beings

This essay examines the qualitative information in the database of the Global Programme against Trafficking in Human Beings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The database includes information about all aspects of such trafficking, and the data collected are comparable between countries and regions and are divided into three main sections: country reports, characteristics of the victims of such trafficking, and the traffickers and trafficking routes. Overall, trafficking in human beings is a gender-specific phenomenon about which little is known--a manifestation of the rampant violence against women and girls. Although there are a number of difficulties in collecting and analyzing data on this phenomenon, the first results of this database are encouraging. The systematic documentation of open-source data was able to yield information of importance for both policy purposes and theory formation. Many of the results confirmed some of the well-known wisdom on human trafficking. For example, persons were typically recruited from poorer countries, transported through countries that provided geographically expedient and relatively safe routes, and faced exploitation in more affluent parts of the world. New insights have also been gained, such as that Central and Eastern Europe currently acts mainly as a transit area for trafficked persons and that Asia, even excluding Japan, is now as much a source as a destination region. These results can be used to set priorities for international cooperation. In particular, special attention is due to countries that featured high in the rankings and where domestic capacity is still underdeveloped. In the future, more data will also be added to the database, thus allowing more detailed analysis of different aspects of human trafficking.