Summary 

• Few­er vic­tims are being iden­ti­fied although crises like the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and con­flicts have increased vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to exploitation 
• The num­ber of detect­ed vic­tims glob­al­ly dropped by 11% between 2019 and 2020.
• The pan­dem­ic low­ered the capac­i­ty of vic­tim detec­tion by law enforce­ment, espe­cial­ly in low- and mid­dle-income countries.
• The num­ber of con­vic­tions glob­al­ly dropped by 27% between 2019 and 2020. This decrease in con­vic­tions con­firms the long-term trend observed since 2017. 
• Wars and con­flicts offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for traf­fick­ers and ele­vates the risk of traf­fick­ing for dis­placed pop­u­la­tions: Most vic­tims result­ing from con­flicts orig­i­nate in and are traf­ficked to coun­tries in Africa and the Mid­dle East.
• Female vic­tims are sub­ject to phys­i­cal or extreme vio­lence at hands of traf­fick­ers at a rate three times high­er than males, and chil­dren are sub­ject­ed almost twice as often as adults.
• Women inves­ti­gat­ed for traf­fick­ing in per­sons are also sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to be con­vict­ed than men.