Around the world, traffickers rely on public officials and private actors who collude, accept bribes or simply look the other way. This hidden alliance allows organized crime to flourish, victims to remain trapped and justice to be obstructed.
To understand how these two crimes are connected, we uncover the hidden role corruption plays in enabling human trafficking:
Human trafficking involves the exploitation of people through forced labour, sexual exploitation, organ removal, or coerced criminality. Corruption enables traffickers to operate at scale, providing them with documents, protection and silence. Without corruption, trafficking networks would struggle to move victims, conceal operations or evade justice.
Corrupt officials can facilitate the recruitment, transfer and transportation of victims, issuing documents or ignoring irregularities in exchange for bribes. During transport, bribes and forged papers allow victims to cross borders undetected. Corruption ensures traffickers can move people across jurisdictions with minimal risk.
When officials collude with traffickers, they create an environment where crimes go unpunished. Corrupt officials may ignore illegal operations, falsify inspection outcomes or obstruct investigations and prosecutions, creating a protective bubble around traffickers. This protection helps traffickers operate with impunity and keep victims in exploitation.
Survivors often report that corruption increases their suffering. Many victims encounter police officers and other public officials in the very places where they are being exploited, realizing that that the very persons meant to protect them may ignore – or even take advantage of – their vulnerability.
Corruption is not confined to one place or one level of power – it cuts across borders, sectors and institutions. Corruption can operate at multiple levels, from local police officers to immigration officials, consular staff, labour inspectors, medical professionals, prosecutors, judges and politicians. Private sector actors may also play a role, particularly recruitment agencies, transport operators and employers in high-risk industries.
Whether in agriculture, construction, fisheries or domestic work, corruption enables human trafficking and exploitation to persist.
Corruption can often act as an invisible engine behind human trafficking. Investigations usually stop at traffickers, missing the corrupt officials who enable their action. When officials accept bribes to turn a blind eye, traffickers gain freedom to operate. In return, traffickers use their profits to corrupt more officials.
To disrupt the cycle, several steps are key:
Shield institutions from corruption: put in place strategic, risk-based preventive measures that make it harder for traffickers to infiltrate public systems.
Expand investigations: treat trafficking cases as corruption cases too, using technology and advanced techniques to uncover hidden networks.
Protect victims and whistle-blowers: ensure safe reporting channels, victim-centred justice and strong witness protection so wrongdoing can be exposed and public officials and other individuals are incentivized to report.
Strengthen regional and international cooperation: Share case studies and investigative methods across borders through task forces and networks to dismantle transnational crime.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has launched “Hidden Links: Corruption and Human Trafficking”, a new publication that provides insights into the role public officials may play in facilitating human trafficking and the sectors that are vulnerable to this phenomenon. It also offers countermeasures to address this intersection.
UNODC supports countries in breaking the cycle of corruption and human trafficking, including by ensuring national legislation applies stronger penalties when public officials are involved in trafficking, establishing safe and accessible reporting mechanisms for victims, witnesses and whistle-blowers and training investigators to systematically detect financial transactions and corruption linked to the crime.
The new publication has been developed with the support of the Government of Sweden and is part of the UNODC project “Promoting Action and Cooperation among Countries at Global Level against Trafficking in Human Beings and the Smuggling of Migrants” (PACTS), funded by the European Union.
