Trafficking in human beings

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.