The World Bank 
The Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migration

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6c889575-2e83-51c8-911a-24958d9427c1/content

Every year, mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide are traf­ficked, which has a pro­found impact on devel­op­ment and vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions. Human traf­fick­ing vio­lates the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human rights that are linked to a range of core devel­op­ment issues, includ­ing pover­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, gen­der and racial inequal­i­ty, and gen­der-based vio­lence. The Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals include a tar­get to end mod­ern slav­ery and human traf­fick­ing by the year 2030. Gov­ern­ments are increas­ing­ly con­cerned about human traf­fick­ing but under­stand rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle about who is involved, how it oper­ates, and what enables or con­strains it. The illegal—and thus less vis­i­ble— nature of the prac­tice makes it dif­fi­cult to inves­ti­gate. One of the main rea­sons for the gap in knowl­edge is the lack of micro-lev­el data on human traf­fick­ing. These knowl­edge gaps make it hard­er for gov­ern­ments in ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion coun­tries to adopt effec­tive poli­cies to reduce human traf­fick­ing. They also lim­it the abil­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, and donors to help gov­ern­ments mit­i­gate the risks of human trafficking.

The World Bank and the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion (IOM) place impor­tance on advanc­ing an under­stand­ing of the dri­vers of human traf­fick­ing (Box E.1). To begin address­ing some knowl­edge gaps, this joint report ana­lyzes a unique micro-lev­el traf­ficked vic­tims’ data­base com­piled and updat­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion (IOM) to answer two key ana­lyt­i­cal ques­tions. First, do eco­nom­ic shocks increase the num­ber of detect­ed human traf­fick­ing cas­es from and with­in coun­tries of ori­gin? Sec­ond, can good institutions—ones that can enable adher­ence to the rule of law and the pro­vi­sion of access to jus­tice or anti-traf­fick­ing poli­cies in particular—and social assis­tance mod­er­ate the pos­si­ble neg­a­tive effects of eco­nom­ic shocks on traf­fick­ing cas­es in ori­gin countries?

Through its sup­port to vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, IOM has devel­oped the largest data­base of human traf­fick­ing cas­es in the world. In line with the grow­ing recog­ni­tion that traf­fick­ing is a domes­tic prob­lem as well as a transna­tion­al crime (Cortés‑McPherson 2020), rough­ly 20 per­cent of traf­fick­ing cas­es in the Vic­tims of Human Traf­fick­ing data­base for which the des­ti­na­tion infor­ma­tion is avail­able took place with­in a country’s borders.1 IOM’s data­base does not rep­re­sent the entire uni­verse of human traf­fick­ing vic­tims. It only cov­ers coun­tries with an IOM pres­ence on the ground (which varies across space and over time) and only cap­tures traf­fick­ing vic­tims who are being assist­ed by IOM (includ­ing those ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied by IOM part­ners who are lat­er referred to IOM).

The report’s analy­sis focus­es on a key sup­ply-side risk fac­tor that is expect­ed to increase vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to human traf­fick­ing from and with­in ori­gin countries—economic shocks, defined as large, dis­crete changes to com­mod­i­ty prices and GDP. It also explores the role of gov­er­nance. Accord­ing to UNODC (2020), 65 per­cent of vic­tims were traf­ficked with­in their own coun­tries. IOM’s data con­tains infor­ma­tion on the coun­try of exploita­tion for 70 per­cent of cas­es, of which about 20 per­cent are traf­ficked inter­nal­ly. insti­tu­tions, such as the rule of law, access to jus­tice, and anti-traf­fick­ing poli­cies, act as pro­tec­tive fac­tors that could weak­en the link between eco­nom­ic shocks and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to traf­fick­ing in coun­tries of ori­gin. the main find­ing is that eco­nom­ic shocks are sig­nif­i­cant risk fac­tors that increase vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to human traf­fick­ing. in ori­gin coun­tries, eco­nom­ic vulnerabilities—especially those caused by glob­al com­mod­i­ty price shocks—are strong­ly pos­i­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the num­ber of observed cas­es of traf­fick­ing. unusu­al­ly large shocks to eco­nom­ic growth have a sim­i­lar effect. yet, the analy­sis sug­gests that good gov­er­nance insti­tu­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly a com­mit­ment to the rule of law and access to jus­tice), stricter anti-traf­fick­ing poli­cies, and social assis­tance can have a lim­it­ing effect on the num­ber of observed cas­es of traf­fick­ing fol­low­ing eco­nom­ic shocks. as one of the most com­pre­hen­sive empir­i­cal analy­ses of human traf­fick­ing cas­es to date, this study enhances under­stand­ing of the deter­mi­nants and pat­terns of human traf­fick­ing. it is the first to empir­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment the rela­tion­ship between eco­nom­ic shocks and human trafficking.

The find­ings sug­gest that cOviD-19-induced eco­nom­ic shocks are like­ly to increase vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to human traf­fick­ing (see uNODc 2021). Gov­ern­ments have been forced to shut down eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties and close bor­ders to curb the trans­mis­sion of the virus. Bor­der clo­sures in the midst of an eco­nom­ic shock could make migrants in some con­texts more like­ly to seek irreg­u­lar migra­tion routes, which are like­ly to increase vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to traf­fick­ing. Human traf­fick­ing will remain a major risk after cOviD-19 is brought under con­trol, which mer­its high lev­els of pol­i­cy atten­tion and resources.