So I finished yesterday’s post about a U.N. report on trafficking (large pdf) feeling a bit like I should have been wearing a tinfoil hat.

My basic concern is that the U.N. document says sex-trafficking is disproportionately intercepted, prosecuted, and reported. Reporters, however, are turning the figure of 79% of reported cases being sex trafficking into 79% of all cases being sex trafficking. Which I’m afraid will get translated into pressure to divert even more resources away from all other forms of human trafficking.

My feeling is that people are repeating the 79% figure as fact because a) it fits their preconceived notions and b) it fits their moral priorities. I might add that, in too much of the world authorities prefer an emphasis on sex trafficking because (as in, say, Brazil, India and Pakistan, much of the Caribbean, parts of Asia and Africa) economies benefit tremendously from slave labor and therefore have a direct interest in seeing that ignored. (See forced male labor on sugar plantations, forced child labor in textile and carpet industries, and forced female labor in Asia and, um, too many U.S. territories and protectorates.)

So let’s try a different approach at forcing a closer look at that UNODC report (emphasis mine.)

Victims of human trafficking were identified through the criminal justice process and through victims’ assistance organizations. Over 21,400 victims were identified in 2006 among the 111 countries reporting victim data for that year.

UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, pg. 11 (large pdf)

If you’re willing to accept that there were scarcely more than twenty thousand victims of human trafficking last year I’m willing to accept that 79% of them were sex-trafficking cases. M’kay?

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Of course I’m not willing to accept either figure and neither should anyone else. Even after distinguishing smuggling of voluntary migrants from the trafficking of victims of involuntary debt peonage and outright enslavement (as the UNODC document recommends) I wouldn’t be surprised if the number wasn’t off by one or more orders of magnitude.

However (*also* as made clear in the report) since many of those 111 countries have radically different definitions of what constitutes trafficking. For instance some countries define only sex trafficking but no child trafficking. Others define child trafficking but no sex trafficking. A few others… last year almost including the United States… inflate some numbers by defining all sex work as human trafficking while severely deprecating other forms by… shifting resources away from other forms in order to further emphasize sex trafficking. Scarcely any countries define selling women into marriage as trafficking. In all countries both law enforcement and non-profit organizations actively seek out sex-workers (trafficked or otherwise) whereas very few countries actively seek out trafficked labor. And virtually no one pays attention to, let alone formally tracks, the non-commercial sexual coercion imposed on male, female, and child victims of non-sex trafficking.

In other words the numbers reported are bogus and therefore the percentages based on those numbers are bogus. Which would be why… the authors of the document stress the need for more and especially more accurate information before conclusions are drawn.