A/HRC/10/16 page 6 slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.1 Quality data are scarce in the field of human trafficking. Statistical information available is problematic because it often includes smuggled persons, as well as illegal migrants. Another major reason is that victims, particularly adult victims trafficked for sexual exploitation, rarely report their victimization. Furthermore, in countries where there is no anti-trafficking legislation there can be no registration of victims of a crime that does not legally exist. However, it is widely agreed that most internationally trafficked persons are women and children of low socio-economic status, and the primary trafficking flows are from developing countries to more affluent countries. For internal trafficking, numbers can be even harder to obtain, and it has been suggested that current numbers are greatly underestimated. 8. Trafficking is a complex phenomenon made even more insidious by its clandestine nature and, increasingly, the use of modern information technology as a tool for recruitment. Trafficking within national borders is a large-scale phenomenon. At the same time, intercountry trafficking persists and has attracted greater international concern while presenting constantly changing dimensions. Despite statistical difficulties various organizations or institutions have tried to estimate the magnitude of the problem. The United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs (UNODC) posits that “Some 2.5 million people throughout the world are at any given time recruited, entrapped, transported and exploited - a process called human trafficking ...”. According to the United States Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2007, every year some 800,000 women and children are trafficked across national borders, which does not include the millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 per cent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 per cent are minors. According to the UNICEF Executive Director, globally, an estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year, within countries as well as across borders.2 A report released by the ILO in 2005 places the global minimum estimated number of persons in forced labour as a result of trafficking at 2,450,000. Trafficking represents a significant proportion of forced labour cases, namely about 20 per cent of all forced labour and about one quarter of forced labour cases exacted by private agents.3 It is often assumed that people are mainly trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. However, ILO estimates indicate that 32 per cent of all victims were trafficked into labour exploitation, while 43 per cent were trafficked for sexual exploitation and 25 per cent for a mixture of both.4 9. While these estimates are in themselves conflicting and point to the need for systematic and coordinated data gathering and management in order to provide clarity to the magnitude of the problem, they provide a global consensus on the fact that trafficking in persons is occurring in many different forms all over the world and that it poses a severe violation of human rights as 1 UNODC, Measures to combat trafficking in human beings in Benin, Nigeria and Togo. 2 Similar figures are given by the ILO Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, 2008. 3 Ibid. See also ILO, A Global Alliance Against Forced Labour, 2005, p. 14. 4 Ibid.