UN agencies and international organisations have spent countless hours and billions of dollars on the topics of human trafficking and modern slavery over the last decade.
They’ve adopted treaties and protocols. They’ve published handbooks and reports. They’ve collected data, launched prevention initiatives, and run awareness campaigns. And they’ve dispatched experts to verify what countries do in practice.
But has all this helped them form a united voice and demonstrate leadership on the issue? Has significant progress been achieved? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that the results are mixed, but at the very least some lessons have been learned along the way.
Who has been doing what?
After the United Nations’ trafficking protocol was agreed in 2000, UN agencies stood at the forefront in the fight against human trafficking. Since 2014, those organisations have continued to play a role in supporting anti-trafficking efforts, but in a less prominent way.
It was obvious during the first few years that they were squabbling about which agency should take the largest amounts of money. This was clarified in 2010 when the UN adopted a ‘Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons’, drafted principally by Belarus.
The Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), awarded priority status in 2010 and the official custodian of the trafficking protocol, has lead responsibility on human trafficking among UN agencies. Its main activity is to publish findings from its global monitoring every two years, but these are primarily based on data provided by governments about their criminal justice systems’ activities. As such, UNODC reports tell us more about changes in law enforcement priorities and the way forms of exploitation are categorised than they do about the ‘realities’ of trafficking.
The UNODC has published guidelines on ‘difficult’ provisions of the trafficking protocol (such as ‘what constitutes an “abuse of a position of vulnerability”’) and legal guides suggesting specific provisions that countries should include in their anti-trafficking legislation. Occasional publications have criticised the decisions taken by a particular country.
UNODC is the secretariat for the annual sessions of the countries that have ratified the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols (including the trafficking protocol). A decade ago, these sessions discussed a proposal to create an independent monitoring body to check whether countries were doing enough to implement the protocol. This was rejected.
Over the past decades, two different UN funds have also provided small amounts of assistance to people who had been trafficked. One was established in the 1990s on ‘contemporary forms of slavery’, managed by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Rather than building on this, the UNODC initiated a new fund in 2010.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has been the main international agency with an operational role. In the early 2000s it focused on providing mental health care to trafficked women, particularly those repatriated to their countries of origin before they had received adequate healthcare (e.g., to Moldova). It shared the expertise it gained with others.
It also performed a key role, from the perspective of the governments of countries where foreigners were found to have been trafficked, by organising their return home. Nominally this was always ‘voluntary’, though in practice those concerned usually had no choice. By the time IOM formally became part of the UN in 2016, its main focus was repatriating irregular migrants in general, only a small proportion of whom were known to have been trafficked.
UNICEF, the UN agency focusing on children, documented patterns of child trafficking and published guidelines for governments on how they should care for trafficked children. These were largely disregarded by officials initially, though in recent years there has been movement towards implementing some recommendations (such as the appointment of a guardian for every unaccompanied child suspected of being trafficked).
ICAT’s rhetoric was impressive. But it was not necessarily reflected in the actions of its members, let alone in those of governments
After almost ten years of competition between agencies, a coordination mechanism was formed in 2010: the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons (ICAT). It began by issuing a series of common position papers. By 2020, ICAT had 25 member organisations and a plan of action to address six common priorities:
- building an evidence base
- addressing core drivers
- ensuring a rights-based approach
- implementing existing measures and holding traffickers accountable
- discouraging demand
- and systematising cooperation and multi-stakeholder partnerships
ICAT’s rhetoric was impressive. It made a commitment to mainstream human rights, as well as gender transformative, child sensitive, and victim and survivor-led approaches. But its rhetoric was not necessarily reflected in the actions of its members, let alone in those of governments.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a new treaty on forced labour in 2014, which asked states to make bigger commitments towards preventing forced labour than in the UN Anti-Trafficking Protocol. By 2024, this treaty had been ratified by approximately one third of the ILO’s member states (60 out of 187), but not by the state wielding the most influence over the policies of other countries – the US.
The ILO also released general principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment in 2016. These arguably had more impact than the treaty, influencing practices in the recruitment industry around the world. The key message guiding the principles echoed other ILO standards by stating that workers and job seekers should not be made to pay recruitment costs.
The ILO has also tried to fill the data gap by producing global and regional estimates on the number of people subjected to trafficking for forced labour. From 2017 onwards, they shared this role with a new NGO, Walk Free, which was set up in 2011 by the Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest.
In 2012, the ILO estimated the global total in forced labour at 20.9 million people. Five years later that figure doubled, when the ILO and Walk Free jointly claimed that on any given day in 2016, 40 million people were victims of modern slavery. But there was no suggestion that the actual number involved had increased so dramatically. Far more likely was that the methods for counting them had changed.
Amidst this struggle for reliable data at the UN level, the US government’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports have taken the crown as the go-to source for information about country-specific issues and anti-trafficking measures, even though the reports are clearly drafted to support US political objectives.
The special rapporteurs issued numerous reports and lists of recommendations, but the governments they were intended to influence rarely heeded the advice
Numerous other UN organisations also publish advice and engage in monitoring. There are three special rapporteurs appointed by the UN Human Rights Council with mandates covering human trafficking: one on human trafficking itself, one on ‘contemporary forms of slavery’, and a third focusing on the exploitation of children.
Nine individuals were elected to fill these mandates between 2014 and 2024, each with different perspectives and priorities. These experts issued numerous reports and lists of recommendations, but the governments they were intended to influence rarely heeded the advice.
Intergovernmental organisations at the regional level have organised similar anti-trafficking programmes, sometimes taking the lead. The prime example of this was the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE; its 57 countries include all those in Europe and also Canada and the US), and particularly its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
This office set out the parameters for ‘national referral mechanisms’ in 2004, outlining procedures for identifying and supporting people who had been trafficked. This filled a vital hole left by the trafficking protocol as far as protection and assistance were concerned. ODIHR published a more detailed guide about referral mechanisms in 2022, but by this time its influence had waned.
Only one regional anti-trafficking convention has established a strong treaty-monitoring body. The Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) has made a name for itself as a fact-finding body, concluding recently that too little was being done to stop migrants being “trafficked for labour exploitation”. This resulted in the Council of Europe issuing detailed recommendations to its 46 states in 2022.
Sometimes projects have come to grief, such as the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP). This regional UN organisation was specifically mandated to offer technical support, conduct research, and monitor southeast Asian governments’ progress in stopping human trafficking. It published its own research findings on each of the six countries involved and also issued the first Guide to Ethics and Human Rights in Counter-Trafficking in 2008.
However, in 2010 it came under fire from Thailand for reporting the number of trafficking victims in Thailand to be much higher than estimated by the authorities. After a critical evaluation, UNIAP was wound up and replaced until 2018 by a smaller regional anti-trafficking entity, UN-ACT. UNIAP’s experience demonstrates the challenges for any intergovernmental entity engaging in fact-finding at the same time as providing technical assistance.
‘Modern slavery’ vs trafficking and exploitation
The past decade also saw a concerted effort to replace the terms ‘trafficking in persons’ and ‘trafficking in human beings’ with ‘modern slavery’. This initiative received support from the UK and Australian governments, and in 2015 the new phrase was incorporated into both the UK’s Modern Slavery Act and Target 8.7 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Seeking to portray itself as a leader on this issue, the UK launched an International Call to Action to end forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking at the UN General Assembly in 2017. More than 90 countries signed the call, but an official evaluation in 2020 noted little evidence of any impact at country level.
Nick Grono
Another attempt came from the philanthropist behind Walk Free, Andrew Forrest. He proposed the establishment of the Global Fund to End Slavery as a public-private partnership, offering $200 million in startup capital if governments would match his contribution. His initial proposal envisaged “a private-public partnership in which donor governments channel their anti-slavery programmes through agreed national plans in return for leveraged funding from the private sector”.*
The proposal received little support, so the fund renamed itself the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS) and turned itself into a more conventional, Washington D.C.-based donor. GFEMS raised tens of millions of dollars from governments, notably the US, UK and Norway. By the end of 2018, donors had reportedly committed over $110 million to projects in South Asia, Brazil and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the fund was wound up in 2024 for reasons that were not publicly explained. By the time it closed, GFEMS reported it had spent $175 million in 27 countries.
After all this, it can be said that, outside the UK and Australia, the rebranding of human trafficking as ‘modern slavery’ never really took off, despite the political and financial capital expended on it. Governments, particularly ones where the ILO or Walk Free claimed there were large numbers of ‘modern slaves’, such as India, were particularly critical of the shift in language. In the UK itself, an evaluation criticising the UK’s Call to Action noted that “the use of the umbrella term ‘modern slavery’ lacks precision, has negative historical undertones and risks stigmatising survivors as ‘slaves’.”
Outgunned by the US
Some of the weaknesses in the UN’s approach to helping implement the trafficking protocol lie in the provisions of the protocol themselves, and the process followed in the late 1990s for drafting it. Many provisions ended up weak and/or ambiguous. This allowed agencies to interpret them differently, and created a need for commentaries and guidance that continues after two decades.
While UN organisations kept busy spending money and issuing endless advice, in the end their voice had less impact than that of a single superpower – the US.
This one country had exerted its influence during the drafting of the protocol, notably arguing for a measure to ‘discourage demand’ (the only significant prevention measure specified in a protocol which focuses mainly on detecting and punishing criminals).
The political dangers of individual countries becoming dependent on a single powerful donor such as the US were always apparent
The US then jumped the gun by adopting its own anti-trafficking law a month before the UN protocol was adopted. In doing so, it gave itself a unilateral mandate to assess whether other countries were meeting a set of standards that the US decided were essential, but which differed from those in the UN protocol.
By publishing comments each year on the anti-trafficking efforts of other countries and offering to fund efforts to implement the measures suggested in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, the US wielded more influence over most governments than intergovernmental organisations. The exception was a few areas not dependent on US finance, such as Western Europe.
The US was also a major donor for most UN agencies and wielded direct influence over what they could do. When UN agencies stepped out of line from the US point of view, as the ILO did until about 2010, the US did not hesitate to apply pressure to bring them back into the fold (for example to ensure that the ILO accepted the US’s interpretation that a person could be trafficked even if they never moved from one place to another).
The political dangers of individual countries becoming dependent on a single powerful donor such as the US were always apparent. By 2025, most other international donors had reduced their spending on support for anti-trafficking efforts in other countries. The impact of letting one donor develop a virtual monopoly – and then withdraw all its support, as President Trump decided to do in early 2025 – remains to be seen. It is inconceivable that another donor will step in to fill the gap.
(Self-)undermined from the start
The lack of cooperation between intergovernmental organisations during the first decade after the UN trafficking protocol was adopted was blatant and outrageous. By the time coordination got going, from 2010 onwards, most countries had already developed embryonic anti-trafficking systems, so UN influence was less relevant.
Even with better coordination from 2010 onwards, areas such as Europe have still suffered from ‘too many cooks’. It’s visited occasionally by an OSCE Special Representative on trafficking, by a team from GRETA every few years, and has to regularly report to the European Commission. UN special rapporteurs drop by and US embassies also ask for data for upcoming TIP reports. In a few cases, regional intergovernmental organisations have promoted cross-border coordination on trafficking-related issues – but such cooperation remains surprisingly poor.
Undoubtedly, the lack of a single voice from the UN was not the main reason that the various forms of exploitation associated with human trafficking have continued to flourish. But it did ensure that criticisms made by one voice could be played off against praise from another. This dynamic undermined the effectiveness of international monitoring, as well as of pressure on governments to act more diligently to protect migrants and their own nationals from abuse and exploitation.
Once international experts started criticising or identifying weaknesses in what a government was doing, resentment quickly built up
Between 2000 and 2010, governments and their criminal justice systems around the world seemed pleased to welcome experts from intergovernmental organisations to advise them on what they should do to implement the new trafficking protocol. This was technical assistance that was not seen to infringe on a state’s sovereignty.
In contrast, once international experts started criticising or identifying weaknesses in what a government was doing, resentment quickly built up. Sometimes this was expressed by the government (as in the Thailand case mentioned earlier), and sometimes by a specific part of the criminal justice system. This was often the country’s prosecutors, who in many countries proved more resistant to accepting new ways of fighting trafficking-related crime than the police.
As the trafficking protocol was intended to give governments a common understanding of what the crime of human trafficking involves, rather than to protect human rights, states belonging to the Council of Europe prepared an anti-trafficking convention in 2005 that included stronger provisions to protect human rights.
International crime conventions rarely come with built-in monitoring mechanisms, since the 1960s human rights treaties adopted by both the Council of Europe and the UN have mostly had their own ‘treaty-monitoring body’, allowing the record of individual governments to be scrutinised by independent specialists.
While this is done with varying degrees of success, GRETA has so far proved effective at identifying weaknesses in the implementation of anti-trafficking measures at the country level. It routinely tells governments that they are failing to comply with the convention and asking them to take remedial action (and to report back to the Council of Europe on what they have done).
GRETA’s effectiveness has been helped by judgments by Europe’s regional human rights court, which on multiple occasions has required particular countries to implement specific measures in response to trafficking or forced labour. For example, a 2017 judgment against Greece found that it had failed to punish farmers responsible for exploiting irregular Bangladeshi migrants working on strawberry farms.
There is no sign in the 2020s that the international community is ready to amend the trafficking protocol or to adopt a broader treaty to protect migrants and others from the worst forms of exploitation (even though 2026 will mark the centenary of the Slavery Convention and it is clear that targets set for SDG 8.7 are being missed).
As things have not gone well so far, perhaps the withdrawal of US funding might actually have a silver lining. It would allow UN agencies to think for themselves and to develop their own agendas, albeit with drastically reduced budgets to spend.
* Briefing on the Global Fund to End Slavery, 2014. No longer available online. Downloaded 10 Nov 2014 from the Global Fund’s website.
Explore the series so far
- Ten years on, have we moved Beyond Trafficking and Slavery?
Joel Quirk, Cameron Thibos and Ella Cockbain - What helps practitioners listen to their critics?Nick Grono with Joel Quirk
- We know how to identify exploitation. Now we need to stop itKate Roberts
- Labour rights won’t make criminal gangs go away
Marika McAdam - Twenty years of slow progress: Is anti-trafficking changing?Borislav Gerasimov
- Can progressives re-capture anti-trafficking from the right?Dina Haynes
- Why do anti-trafficking donors fund their critics?Ryan Heman
- The UN’s missed chance to lead on anti-traffickingMike Dottridge
- Law enforcement alone will never stop modern slavery
Klára Skřivánková - Mistakes happen in anti-trafficking. We must learn from themErin Williamson
- How US funding built a brittle economy in anti-trafficking
Chris Ash, Sophie Otiende, Allen Kiconco - County lines: an ‘appalling failure of child protection’
SPACE (Stop & Prevent Adolescent Criminal Exploitation) - Global inequality is the World Bank’s elephant in the roomAlf Gunvald Nilsen
- Do forced labour bans protect workers in supply chains?Judy Fudge
- Are grooming gangs the far right’s golden goose?Louise Raw
- We can't keep ignoring human trafficking in warJulia Muraszkiewicz
- Could anti-trafficking survive without victims to rescue?Hannah Lewis
