On a five-degree scale from very high to very low, Croatia is in the middle, as a country of origin, transit and destination in human trafficking.
A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), "Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns", classifies 161 countries according to the level of human trafficking as countries of origin, countries of transit and destination countries. In all three categories Croatia is in the middle.
The report is based on reports on human trafficking from 113 sources, institutions of authority, international organisations, NGOs, research institutes and the media.
According to the report, the victims of human trafficking in Croatia are mostly women and to a smaller extent children, who are used for sexual exploitation. Human trafficking in Croatia goes towards Austria, Italy and Spain. Croatia is a country of transit for victims going from the Balkans to Italy and other Western countries and to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Croatia is the destination country for victims coming from Ukraine.
The UNODC has identified 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries, and 137 destination countries and graded the level of human trafficking in them. Its report shows that global efforts to combat trafficking are being hampered by a lack of accurate data, reflecting the unwillingness of some countries to acknowledge that the problem affects them.