Men Make Up 70% of Convicted Traffickers as UN Warns Abusers Can Be Partners or Parents

Men account for about 70% of people convicted of human trafficking in the data compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The agency's research also identifies trafficking committed by victims' partners, parents and acquaintances.

The findings appear in UNODC's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024, which covers 156 countries. Its conviction figures describe recorded offenders, while its victim statistics concern people detected by authorities and not the full, unknown population affected by trafficking.

Partners and Parents Among Traffickers

UNODC describes offenders ranging from organised criminal groups to individuals acting alone. Traffickers can include relatives, intimate partners and acquaintances, as well as people previously unknown to the victim.

The report identifies different gender patterns within family relationships. In the court cases reviewed, offenders who were the victim's intimate partner were more likely to be men, while women were more likely to be the offender when a parent carried out the trafficking.

Those findings concern the cases available for analysis. They do not establish that trafficking by relatives is as common as trafficking by organised networks, or that one type of relationship necessarily presents a greater risk.

The agency also urges governments to include families in anti-trafficking frameworks because of their role in preventing child trafficking.

Women Among Recorded Trafficking Offenders

UNODC reviewed 942 court-case summaries involving 3,121 convicted traffickers. Within that sample, 74% operated in business-type or governance-type criminal groups.

Most of the organised cases involved men and women working together, according to the report. Across the national data on investigations, prosecutions and convictions, women accounted for approximately 25–30% of recorded offenders.

The court-case sample and national criminal-justice statistics are separate datasets. The findings about group structures should therefore not be treated as a direct measure of how every trafficking operation works.

Women and girls accounted for 61% of detected victims in 2022. That figure describes the people identified by authorities, rather than an estimate of all victims worldwide.

Victim Identification Remains a Challenge

UNODC says victims may face threats, blackmail or the confiscation of passports. Fear of reprisals can prevent them from approaching authorities, particularly when the person controlling them is someone they know.

An agency explainer published in May 2024 describes victims reporting their own exploitation and police identifying cases through proactive investigations. Because that explainer predates the December release of the 2024 global report, its findings should not be presented as statistics newly produced by that edition.

The global report also found that most convicted traffickers were nationals of the country where they were convicted. The finding concerns offenders' nationality; it does not establish whether they knew their victims beforehand.

In the report's preface, then executive director Ghada Waly wrote that 'attitudes that blame and punish victims must end'.

Forced labour accounted for 42% of detected victims in 2022, compared with 36% for sexual exploitation. Forced labour was therefore the largest recorded category in that year, although the figures do not capture every undetected case.

Scam Operations Draw UN Warning

In a message for World Day Against Trafficking in Persons in July 2026, UNODC Executive Director Monica Juma estimated that more than 220,000 people had been trafficked into scam operations in Southeast Asia.

She said criminal networks deceived and recruited victims, then subjected them to threats, abuse and violence while forcing them to carry out online fraud.

The warning concerns trafficking for forced criminal activity. It is separate from the report's conviction statistics and should not be added to the detected-victim totals as though the figures measure the same population or period.