Women and girls make up 71% of trafficked people worldwide – UNODC
Women and girls make up 71 per cent of all victims of human trafficking around the world, a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report released Thursday December 22, 2016 says.
Children, the report says, make up almost a third of all victims, it adds.
According to the UNODC the report found that while women and girls tend to be trafficked for marriages and sexual slavery, men and boys are typically exploited for forced labour in the mining sector, as porters, soldiers and slaves.
“While 28 per cent of detected trafficking victims worldwide are children, in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America and the Caribbean children comprise 62 and 64 per cent of victims, respectively,” it says.
It notes that the report is produced every two years. This year’s report includes a thematic chapter focusing on the connections between trafficking in persons, migration and conflict.
The UNODC states that the report also includes information on the multitude of trafficking flows, including within countries, between neighbouring countries or even across different continents. More than 500 different examples of these flows were detected between 2012 and 2014.
“Mention is made, for example, on trafficking victims from countries in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, who are trafficked to a wide range of destinations. A total of 69 countries were reported to have detected victims from sub-Saharan Africa in this same period,” it adds.
Commenting on the report, UNODC Executive Director, Yury Fedotov, said,”People escaping from war and persecution are particularly vulnerable to becoming victims of trafficking,” adding, “The urgency of their situation might lead them to make dangerous migration decisions. The rapid increase in the number of Syrian victims of trafficking in persons following the start of the conflict there, for instance, seems to be one example of how these vulnerabilities play out.”
The crime of human trafficking generates several hundred billion dollars for traffickers, making the offence a high priority area for governments and civil society organisations.
The recruitment and/or movement of someone within or across borders, through the abuse of power/position with the intention of forced exploitation, commercial or otherwise, generates an amount of $150 billion every year for traffickers, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
Copyright © 2016 by Creative Imaginations Publicity
All rights reserved. This news item or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in reviews.