2.4 Million Victims in $32 Billion Human Trafficking Industry: UN
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Human trafficking is an industry worth $32 billion, and at any one time 2.4 million people suffer the misery of this humiliating and degrading crime, with 80 percent of them exploited as sexual slaves, says the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
At a special UN General Assembly meeting on trafficking, the Drugs and Crime office based in Vienna said only one out of every 100 victims is ever rescued, and two out of three victims are women.
Human trafficking is an industry worth $32 billion, and at any one time 2.4 million people suffer the misery of this humiliating and degrading crime, with 80 percent of them exploited as sexual slaves, says the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
At a special UN General Assembly meeting on trafficking, the Drugs and Crime office based in Vienna said only one out of every 100 victims is ever rescued, and two out of three victims are women.
Yuri Fedotov, head of the Drugs and Crime office, said fighting the network of human trafficking ‘is a challenge of extraordinary proportions.’
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Michelle Bachelet, head of UN Women, an agency that promotes women’s rights and gender equality said:
[quote] It’s difficult to think of a crime more hideous and shocking than human trafficking. Yet, it is one of the fastest growing and lucrative crimes. [/quote]
Revealing the impotence in global law enforcement agencies, the 2011 US Trafficking in Persons Report said there were only 6,017 prosecutions and 3,619 convictions for human trafficking in 2010.
Calling for coordinated local, regional and international responses, Fedotov said ‘progressive and proactive law enforcement’ were needed to combat ‘the market forces driving human trafficking in the many destination countries.’
Agreeing, Cherif Bassiouni , emeritus law professor at DePaul University in Chicago said ‘there is no human rights subject on which governments have said so much but done so little.’
Decrying existing legal frameworks, Bassiouni questioned the logic behind criminalizing victims of trafficking but never the perpetrators ‘without whom the crime could not be performed.’
He added that the figure – 2.4 million people trafficked at any time – underplays the scale of human trafficking across the globe, predicting that the actual number of victims at the end of a 10 year period will be significantly higher.
At the same time, UN General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al Nasser and Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon urged UN member nations to pledge more aid for victims of human trafficking.
Fedotov said the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims had around $1 million in pledges but received less than $50,000 in contributions.
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