Studie der EU zum Thema Menschenhandel, 15.4.2013 (engl. Originalfassung)
This publication presents the first report at the EU level on statistics on trafficking in human beings. It includes data for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. The EU and its Member States have selected trafficking in human beings as one of the priority areas in the fight against organised crime. This resulted in the adoption by the Council and the European Parliament of Directive 2011/36/EU on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims and the adoption by the Commission on 19 June 2012 of the EU Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings 2012–2016, endorsed via Council Conclusions by the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 25 October 2012.
In order to further develop a coherent and strategic approach in the EU cooperation with third countries and regions, the Justice and Home Affairs Council adopted the so called Acton Oriented Paper on strengthening the external dimensions in actions against trafficking in human beings in 2009. The Second Implementation Report on the Action Oriented Paper of December 2012 includes a list of priority countries and regions with which the EU will establish closer cooperation. The preliminary data collected for the report below has been used together with other sources to define the prioritisation of these countries.
The need to develop comparable and reliable statistics on crime and criminal justice has long been recognised by the European Commission and the EU. This has been further emphasised in the Commission Communication on Measuring Crime in the EU, adopted in January 2012, in which trafficking in human beings was highlighted as one of the priority areas for collecting statistics. In addressing trafficking in human beings, the European Commission and the EU take a human rights based approach that is victim-centred, gender-specific and focuses on the best interest of the child. This approach stresses the importance of multi-disciplinary actions where all relevant actors are involved in working together towards the eradication of trafficking in human beings.
These key elements in trafficking in human beings policy and legislation mentioned above are systematically reflected in this publication on statistics. Thus, this report includes statistics on the total number of victims disaggregated by gender, age and form of exploitation, and also contains statistics on victims' citizenship and type of assistance and protection received. The data have been collected from different authorities working in the field of trafficking in human beings, including civil society organisations. Moreover, the report also includes statistics on suspected, prosecuted and convicted traffickers disaggregated by gender, citizenship and form of exploitation. Although the report focuses on statistical data from the registration systems in the respective organisations, Member States were encouraged to also send in metadata from other sources such as projects, studies and reports.
This first report includes statistical data from all 27 EU Member States, Croatia and the following EU Candidate and EFTA/EEA countries: Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey. The total number and percentages in the report are based on data from the EU Member States. Data from the non-EU countries have been highlighted separately in some sections. It is hereby acknowledged that the current state of the results does not entirely comply with the stringent requirements of the European Statistics Code of Practice and further development is planned to improve data quality in future collections. Nevertheless the political demand for this information is such that it seems opportune to make it available at this stage in the form of a Eurostat Working Paper. This means that figures should be interpreted with caution, taking into consideration the methodological notes and caveats provided in this report. For example, Member States were not able to provide comparable data on the number of victims by country of recruitment, the number of suspected traffickers involved in organised crime, the number of final decisions by public prosecution services or the number of convicted traffickers by form of exploitation.
By drawing conclusions on the findings is this report several issues need to be taken into consideration.
The increase in the number of identified and presumed victims shown in the report could indicate that the phenomenon of trafficking in human beings in EU Member States is on the rise. However, better identification procedures, the involvement of more actors in the identification process, changes in legislation in individual Member States and higher priority in addressing trafficking in human beings can also have an influence on the number of victims.
Identified and Presumed Victims
Member States have reported that the principal source of information on victims is the police. However information from NGOs, immigration authorities, border guards and other sources has been included as well. In 2010 Member States reported a total number of 9 528 identified and presumed victims and the subset of Member States which provided data for all three reference years showed an increase of 18 % between 2008 and 2010. The number of identified victims in 2010 in the 24 Member States that were able to provide this information is 5 535.
The percentage of child victims of trafficking in human beings is close to 15 % across the three reference years. The vast majority of all victims (80 %) are female, and 20 % of the victims are male. This percentage does not change significantly over the three reference years.
Data disaggregated by gender and age over the three years show that women account for 68 %, men for 17 %, girls for 12 % and boys for 3 % of the total number of victims of trafficking in human beings. Women thus remain by far the largest group of victims over the three years.
Data on identified and presumed victims distinguished by different forms of exploitation for all three reference years showed that the majority (around 62 %), of the victims are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, around 25 % for labour exploitation and around 14 % for the category “other”. The percentage of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation is increasing each year, whereas the percentage reported as victims of trafficking for labour exploitation dropped from 28 % in 2008 to a stable 23 % in 2009 and 2010. The trend in the category “other” is unclear, with a peak in 2009 of 16 %.
Victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly female (96 % in 2010) whereas the majority of victims of labour exploitation are male (77 % in 2010). Female victims have the largest share of victims classified under other forms of exploitation such as forced begging, selling of children etc., and there has been a gradual increase in the number of male victims across the three years.
A clear majority (61 %) of the identified and presumed victims come from EU Member States. The percentage of male EU citizens trafficked within the EU is 74 % and the percentage of female EU citizens trafficked in the EU is 66 %. The percentage of identified and presumed victims from non-EU countries is increasing over the three years, from 12 % in 2008 to 37 % in 2010 for the male victims, and from
18 % to 39 % for the female victims.
Nigeria and China are the main non-EU countries of origin of identified and presumed victims in the EU and Brazil, Russia and Algeria also feature in all three years. There is however a slight change in the pattern: the eastern European countries on the list in 2008 are not present in 2009 or 2010 and Central and South American countries are more prominent in 2010.
The data on assistance and protection of victims of trafficking in human beings shows that in 2010, the number of victims who received assistance in the 15 Member States which could provide the data was 5 086. As per Directive 2004/81/EC on residence permits for victims of trafficking in human beings, the number of victims given a reflection period was 965 in the 18 Member States which were able to provide data in 2010.The number of identified and presumed victims given a residence permit in 2010 in the 19 Member States that could provide the data was 1 196.
Suspected Traffickers
The number of suspected traffickers in EU Member States decreased by 17 % between 2008 and 2010, with around 45 % having EU citizenship. Over the three reference years most suspected traffickers with an EU citizenship are from Bulgaria, Romania, Germany and France. For the 55 % of suspected traffickers with a non-EU citizenship, most are African or Asian. The countries of citizenship were frequently Nigeria, China or Turkey.
Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Slovakia and Latvia reported in at least one of the three reference years that all suspected traffickers had the citizenship of the registering country. Conversely, Belgium, Italy, Sweden and Ireland reported a relatively low percentage (under 20 %) of suspected traffickers holding the citizenship of that country. Suspected traffickers for sexual exploitation represent approximately 84 % of the total number of suspected traffickers over the three reference years.
Prosecuted and Convicted Traffickers
The report shows that in 2008 67 % of the prosecuted traffickers in the EU had citizenship of an EU Member State and this percentage increased to 75 % in 2009 and 76 % in 2010. Albania, Morocco, Russia and Turkey were the most frequent countries of citizenship of the prosecuted non-EU traffickers reported for 2008-2010. The proportion of traffickers prosecuted for sexual exploitation increased from 66% to 70% between 2008 and 2009. In the same period there was a corresponding decrease in the proportion of traffickers prosecuted for labour exploitation. Between 2009 and 2010 there was no significant change in the distribution of prosecuted traffickers by form of exploitation.
In the countries reporting in all three reference years, the number of convicted traffickers decreased by 13% between 2008 and 2010, with Belgium demonstrating the most significant fall. The proportion of convicted traffickers who are male is close to 75 % in each of the three reference years.
The overall conclusion based on the findings of this report is that significant challenges remain in tackling the different aspects of trafficking in human beings. One of the continued challenges is the need for the identification of victims of trafficking in human beings. Once victims have been identified and individual needs and risks have been assessed, victims should be referred to the relevant authorities in order to receive the necessary assistance, support and protection, including the granting of residence permits where appropriate.
Another challenge is the need to strengthen the investigation of trafficking in human beings cases and the prosecution and conviction of human traffickers. The full implementation of the EU Directive, the EU Strategy and the Action Oriented Paper amongst others, provide the necessary legislative and policy tools to end trafficking in human beings.