Making Statistics on Human Trafficking Work

An overview is given of available international statistics on victims of human trafficking from official records (UNODC and Eurostat), survey research (Walk Free) and Multiple Systems Estimation. It is argued that official figures should be seen as output indicators of law enforcement and other involved institutions rather than as indicators of prevalence. The author welcomes the Global Slavery Index of Walk Free and Multiple Systems Estimations applied to multi-source datasets on trafficking victims as more credible sources of information on true prevalence. These two data sources should be consolidated into a comprehensive analysis to enhance the overall impact of available datasets on policymaking.