Just numbers and maps? The importance of monitoring trafficking in human beings for the development of evidence based policies

The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the “Trafficking Protocol” (2000), marks the beginning of a harmonized definition of Trafficking in Human Beings (THB), later on consolidated by the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (2005) and, more recently, by the Directive 2011/36 of the European Parliament and of the Council on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, transposed into the Portuguese legislation in August 2013 and thus revising several internal laws, namely the Article 160 of the Penal Code (Trafficking in Persons).