Date : 09/07/2007
TOKYO, July 9 (KUNA) -- Human trafficking today is a multi-billion dollar
industry that requires international effort to eradicate, a press release by
Asian Development Bank (ADB) quoted an expert as saying on Monday.
"The US Justice Department ranks human trafficking as the third largest
criminal enterprise worldwide, generating an estimated USD 9.5 billion per
year in terms of profit," Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the United
Nations Development Fund for Women, said during a lecture hosted by the ADB,
the Manila-based multilateral development finance institution.
"Globalization has obviously opened up new opportunities for those with
skills, with capital, but at the same time, it has also shut down employment
and livelihood options for those without them, especially in some of the
poorer countries and in the rural areas that have failed to compete in the
global marketplace," said Heyzer.
She pointed out that the Asia Pacific region includes countries with some
of the world's highest growth and some of the worst poverty, the highest human
development with some of the deepest and greatest exploitation and deprivation.
While the number of people in the region who live on less than USD 1 a day
had fallen from 31 percent to 20 percent from 1990 to 2001, the decline masks
significant difference among subregions and in the local setting.
"China and India account for much of the region's economic expansion, but
they also harbor deep pockets of poverty and regional differences," she noted.
Trafficking of persons includes prostitution, debt bondage, forced labor
and slavery, and exploitation of children as workers, soldiers or sex slaves,
said Heyzer. Data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) show that
the migrant population currently stands at 120 million, of which around 12.3
million are enslaved in forced or bonded labor or sexual servitude at any one
time.
She also proposed several measures to help mitigate human trafficking. One
is to make it difficult for traffickers to operate with impunity by raising
their cost to operate, and another measure is to raise public awareness of
this form of human rights violation and create public outrage. (end)
mk.rk
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