INTRODUCTION

AS PART OF long-standing congressional interest in global human trafficking, some Members have consistently sought greater fidelity in quantifying human trafficking's prevalence. In September, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the advocacy organization Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization of Migration (IOM), released anew report on the global prevalence of modem slavery (including forced marriage) and forced labor (including sex trafficking and government-imposed forced labor). The report estimated that 40.3 million people were victims of modem slavery in 2016—including 24.9 million people in forced labor and 15.4 million people in forced marriage (see Figure 1).

The estimate was based on a new methodology, derived from multiple data sources, household surveys, probabilistic modeling, and analytic reviews of secondary sources. Using 2012—2016 as the reference period for the study, it concluded that some 89 million people had experienced modem slavery in the past five years. The report additionally stressed that its estimates are conservative, noting the lack of data due to underreporting—particularly in conflict zones (estimates of child soldiers, for example, were not included).

GLOBAL ESTIMATES IN CONTEXT

Estimates of human trafficking victims have varied widely and are a topic of ongoing debate. One of the earliest estimates prepared by the U.S. government in 1997 indicated that there might be some 700,000 victims worldwide. In 2005, ILO published its first global estimate of forced labor, which found that a minimum of 12.3 million people were in forced labor at any point during the time period between 1995 and 2004. The ILO revised its methodology to produce an updated global estimate in 2012, which found that 20.9 million people were in forced labor at any point during the time period between 2002 and 2011. Before the 2017 findings, the advocacy organization Free the Slaves had long estimated that some 27 million slaves worldwide. In 2016, the Walk Free Foundation estimated that 45.8 million people were held in slavery. Notwithstanding ongoing differences among various estimates, if the generally upward trend over the past two decades can be assumed to be correct, the latest figures may reinforce longstanding criticism of global efforts to identify victims and ultimately prosecute and convict their traffickers (see Figure 2). In 2016, governments around the world were able to officially identify 66,520 actual victims of human trafficking.