Sources

Where our figures come from.

Every number on this site traces to one of the 11 datasets below. They are published by the UN, the ILO, the U.S. State Department, the FBI, NCMEC, Polaris and others — not by us. Each entry says who publishes it, what it contains, how often it is updated and under what licence, so you can go and check.

We would rather you checked. A cause like this attracts figures that cannot be sourced, and every one of those makes the ones that can be easier to dismiss.

What we are unsure of

The catalog was last checked against its publishers on 2026-05-14. At that check, several publisher pages had moved or returned errors — those cases are noted on the entries below rather than quietly left out.

A note that reads “update to the latest report” means exactly that: the figure is from a real published source, and a newer edition of that source may exist.

Global · 6

Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC)

Primary dataset
Publisher
IOM, Polaris, Liberty Shared and partners
Contains
200,000+ individual, de-identified trafficking victim records; 180+ nationalities; exploitation type, age band, gender, country of origin, country of exploitation, means of control. Flat CSV.
Updated
Updated as partners contribute.
Licence
Free to use with attribution; k-anonymized to protect victims.

The only large public victim-level dataset, built for visualization, with privacy protection already applied.

Go to the publisher

UNODC — Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (GLOTIP)

Publisher
UN Office on Drugs and Crime
Contains
Detected victims and convictions by country/region, forms of exploitation, age/sex of victims. Annual PDF + country-profile data portal.
Updated
Annual.
Licence
UN material — free to reproduce with attribution.
Go to the publisher

Walk Free — Global Slavery Index

Publisher
Walk Free Foundation / Minderoo Foundation
Contains
Modern-slavery prevalence (count + rate per 1,000) for 160 countries; government-response ratings for 176. Excel/CSV.
Updated
Roughly every 2 years (latest 2023).
Licence
Free with attribution. Verified 2026-05-14.
Go to the publisher

ILO — Global Estimates of Modern Slavery

Publisher
International Labour Organization, Walk Free, IOM
Contains
Global/regional estimates — forced labour, forced commercial sexual exploitation, forced marriage, child shares.
Updated
Periodic (latest 2022).
Licence
Generally CC BY 4.0 — verify on the publication page.

Top-line figure verified via ilo.org 2026-05-14; breakdowns are the established published figures from the 2022 report.

Go to the publisher

U.S. State Department — Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report

Publisher
U.S. Department of State
Contains
Tier ranking (government response, not prevalence) for ~190 countries, plus country narratives.
Updated
Annual, each June.
Licence
U.S. Government work — public domain.

state.gov returned an error on fetch; tier system + 2023 placements verified via secondary summary. Update to the latest report.

Go to the publisher

Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) — Annual Report

Publisher
Internet Watch Foundation (UK)
Contains
Confirmed CSAM URLs, geographic hosting breakdown, age and severity analysis.
Updated
Annual.
Licence
Cite with attribution; do not republish raw URL/hosting lists.
Go to the publisher

United States · 5

Polaris Project — National Human Trafficking Hotline

Publisher
Polaris Project
Contains
Signals, cases, victims by US state / DC / territory, with a year-by-year breakdown (2015-2024 + a 2007-2014 bucket), trafficking-type splits (sex/labor), venue/industry, and demographics (age, sex).
Updated
Annual data releases.
Licence
Free with attribution.
Go to the publisher

NCMEC — CyberTipline Data

Publisher
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Contains
CyberTipline report volume by US state and by country; CSAM file counts.
Updated
Annual.
Licence
Cite with attribution.
Go to the publisher

NCMEC — Missing Children & Impact Data

Publisher
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Contains
Missing-child reports, recovery rates, AMBER Alert outcomes, child sex trafficking support figures.
Updated
Annual. Verified 2026-05-14.
Go to the publisher

FBI — Human Trafficking Offense Data (UCR / NIBRS)

Publisher
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program
Contains
Human trafficking offenses (commercial sex acts, involuntary servitude), arrests, victim/offender demographics — by state and agency, 2013–present.
Updated
Annual.
Licence
U.S. Government work — public domain.
Go to the publisher

Human Trafficking Institute — Federal Human Trafficking Report

Publisher
Human Trafficking Institute
Contains
Every active federal criminal trafficking case — filings, defendants, victims, sentences, by federal district.
Updated
Annual.
Licence
Cite with attribution; verify terms for the full report.
Go to the publisher

What we deliberately left out

A source list is also a set of decisions about what not to use. These were considered and rejected.

IP geolocation databases
contain no trafficking data; cannot be responsibly joined to trafficking cases.
Any victim-identifiable data
out of scope and unsafe. CTDC's k-anonymized dataset is the correct substitute.

This page is generated from the source catalog kept alongside the data itself, so it cannot drift from what we actually hold. 3 further notes record internal processing detail and are not reproduced here. If a figure on this site does not trace back to one of these, we want to know — tell us.