Someone holding up hands in front of face.

In 2023, 63.4% of registered victims of trafficking in human beings in the EU were women or girls, a small increase of 0.6 percentage points (pp) compared with 2022 (62.8%). 

The proportion of women among traffickers was much lower compared with the proportion of men. In 2023, among the suspected traffickers, 24.2% were women, up 1.0 pp compared with the previous year (23.2%) while 23.0% of those convicted were also women, an increase of 1.4 pp compared with 2022 (21.6%).

Since 2015, there has been a downward trend in the share of females among persons involved in trafficking of human beings. The most significant decrease was 14.4 pp for female victims (77.8%), followed by a drop of 6.7 pp for convicted traffickers (29.7%), while there was a smaller decline of 1.5 pp in the share of suspected traffickers (25.7%).  

This article is published on the occasion of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, marked every year on 30 July.

Shares of females identified in human trafficking cases in the EU, 2015-2023. Bar chart - Click below to see full dataset.

Source dataset: crim_thb_sex

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Methodological notes

  • Trafficking in human beings, as defined in the article 2 of the Directive 2011/36/EU is a grave violation of human rights, a crime against the person, the goal of which is the exploitation of the person. Trafficking does not require the crossing of borders and can have many exploitative purposes.
  • The number of persons reported to be involved in trafficking in human beings can widely vary across the EU, even relative to population size, due to different approaches to reporting data by the police, prosecutors and court systems, different levels of transposition of the Directive across the EU countries and different criminal justice responses to trafficking in human beings. 
  • Registered victims include persons who have been identified by the relevant formal authority or by other national and non-national authorities.
  • Data on victims, suspected traffickers and convicted traffickers show totals for responding countries. As some EU countries had not reported data for some years, the observed trend must be interpreted with caution.

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