Human Slavery Is Thriving in the Shadows

By Mirela Xanthaki, IPS News. Posted February 23, 2009.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 -- "Dora", a young Mexican woman, was helped by another Mexican woman to cross the U.S. border in the promise of a good job there. She ended up in Texas, working in a sweatshop and not allowed to go out or even take a shower.

"Sandra" was sold as a child for 400 dollars to a pedophile, who repeatedly raped her for four years.

Both were victims of a global trafficking network that has ensnared an estimated 10 million people, although hard data about the underworld of human slavery remains elusive -- partly because of the reluctance of some countries to cooperate with investigations.

"We have a big picture, but it is impressionistic and lacks depth," admitted Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which just released its annual Global Report on Trafficking in Persons on Thursday.

"Although we can talk with specific numbers about drug trafficking, for example, we do not have an estimate for this area of crime [human trafficking]," Costa said.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates 2 million as the yearly net addition to the total number of slaves worldwide. Subtracting the number of people rescued or who die annually, the total number is thought to be over 10 million.

However, the actual number of known trafficking victims is only 22,500.

"We are not able to segment today's slave markets into their components. We must -- but cannot -- catalogue different types of slavery. Exploitation through child-begging in Europe is different from what goes on in a brothel, or in a street corner in Australia," Costa noted.

"Preventive measures must also be adapted to take into account that an Asian father sells his underage daughter under circumstances different than what pushes an illegal immigrant at a sweatshop in the Americas," he explained. "If we do not overcome this knowledge crisis, we will be fighting the problem blindfolded."

The report is based on data gathered from 155 countries. Of these, 125 have signed the U.N. Protocol against Trafficking in Persons. However, not all of those who ratified it are enforcing the provisions of the treaty -- 40 percent of the countries in the sample did not convict anyone for trafficking in the past year.

Overall, the number of convictions for human trafficking is growing, says the report, notably in a handful of countries, but it is still much lower than the estimated number of victims.

Many large countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran remain uncooperative and provided no data.

The most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation (79 percent) followed by forced labor (18 percent). Forced labor is detected and reported less because it is frequently goes unnoticed, especially in big cities.

Nearly four in five victims are women and girls. Including boys, 20 percent of all trafficking victims in the world are children, but in some parts of Africa and Asia's Mekong region, children are the majority.

The report also reveals that intra-regional and domestic trafficking are the major forms of trafficking in persons. "Criminals prey on their own kin, something even animals don't do," Costa said.

The report shatters some illusions about victims and victimizer. Although generally speaking, most crimes are committed by young men, when it comes to trafficking, women perpetrators play an important role. In 30 percent of the countries that provided evidence on the gender of traffickers, women make up the largest proportion.

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