The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) predicts a 5% increase in detected Ukrainian human trafficking victims in 2023 and 5.6 million Ukrainian asylum applications in Europe, according to a new report.

Displaced populations such as Ukrainian refugees are a known cause for spikes in human trafficking cases, according to the 2022 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, published on Tuesday (24 January).

“Analysis shows a relationship between the people forced to flee Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 as a result of the conflict in the eastern part of the country, and increased detection of trafficking in persons from Ukraine to Western and Central Europe in the following years,” said UNODC, adding that a similar trend is expected to occur following the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

“After 2014, after a year or so there’s been this spike in the number of Ukrainian victims in Europe and so the worry here is that we may face the same [spike] with millions of particularly women and children going outside of Ukraine,” said UNODC chief of research and trend analysis Angela Me during a press conference.

Around 4.9 million Ukrainians registered under the EU’s Temporary Protection scheme or similar schemes in other European countries following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February.

The same report also estimated that 18 million Ukrainians are in urgent need of humanitarian support inside the country, and an additional 4 million people could enter the EU this year.

War and conflict key drivers

Wars and conflicts increase the possibility of trafficking in and outside of conflict areas, and displaced populations are often in economic need and are vulnerable to human trafficking.

“With the regular migration scheme offered by the EU to Ukrainian citizens in the current conflict, the vulnerability to trafficking may be reduced compared to 2014. Nonetheless, the risk that the current conflict in Ukraine could generate an unprecedented number of victims remains if mitigation measures are not put in place,” said UNODC.

UNODC’s Me also warned of the increased risk of trafficking for Ukrainians, explaining that “Ukrainian victims were the most detected victims [in Europe]” in 2022.

The UN also reported that roughly a quarter of detected trafficking victims in Western and Southern Europe were found to be citizens of countries from Central or Eastern Europe and out of those detected victims 35% were victims of domestic trafficking.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Globally, nearly three-quarters of human trafficking victims come from conflict states and Sub-Saharan Africa, the report found.

In conflict areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, children, especially young male victims, are often trafficked by armed groups and are used to carry dangerous materials such as explosives for troops or to carry out acts of armed violence, including terrorism and war crimes, according to the UN’s 2022 report.

An increase in detected male victims was reported by the UN, with a rise of 10% in men and 14% in boys from 2004 to 2020.

Other forms of human trafficking found in conflict areas include forced marriages and the sexual slavery of children, often perpetrated by people in the armed forces.

The report found that since 2019 detected human trafficking victims for the purpose of sexual exploitation decreased by 24% in lower and middle-income countries, mainly due to the pandemic’s strain on the countries’ justice, social and health systems.

It was also reported that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a decrease in the number of convictions for trafficking in persons. This trend which started in 2017 has been decreasing yearly and dropped in 2020 “by an alarming 27% over the previous year,” said UNODC.