For the third year in a row, the number of identified victims of human trafficking and exploitation is increasing, notes the Equality Ombudsman in its annual report.
In 2024, 430 vulnerable victims were identified, according to the authority. This includes both prostitutes and people exploited as labor in areas such as cleaning, construction, and berry picking. 22 of the victims were children.
"The police are failing"
However, as the number of known victims increases, the number of convictions is decreasing. No one was convicted of human trafficking in Sweden last year, despite 185 reported cases.
Over the past three years, we have only had two convictions. This is incredibly low compared to many other countries. There are shortcomings in the police's work on detecting and reporting this type of crime. It is also very few cases that are investigated, says Sofie Kindahl.
According to the report, there has also been a shift towards milder crime classifications with lower penalties, such as fraud, unlawful threats, or individual sex purchases.
These victims do not get victim status and access to their rights, and you do not get to the organized crime behind human trafficking, says Sofie Kindahl.
One of the reasons is the focus on gang crime and how the police allocate their resources, according to Kindahl.
You may not make the connection that this is also a type of serious organized crime and that human trafficking also occurs in these criminal networks. It is an incredibly lucrative business, she says.
Review the law
The dark figure is assumed to be large. Sofie Kindahl points to a comprehensive mapping of prostitution and human trafficking that the authority made in 2021.
Then, for example, they saw that there were 13,000 advertisements for sexual services openly on escort sites. Compare that to a few hundred identified victims. It says something about how few come to the authorities' attention.
The Equality Ombudsman provides several proposals for measures and highlights two of them.
One is that we need to review the legislation. It is obvious that it is not effective, says Kindahl.
Then we recommend that the police be tasked with reporting on their work against prostitution and human trafficking. They need to describe how they work.
