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 KUNA 091110 Jul 07NNNN