UN: Child Trafficking on the Rise

United Nations (UN) report said Monday that one of three victims of human trafficking worldwide is a child, many of them subject to sexual exploitation or forced labor.

The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said overall, child trafficking has increased five percent since 2010, with girls and women accounting for 70 percent of the overall number of victims worldwide.

UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said there is no place in the world where children, women and men are safe from human trafficking.

The report, also published in GMA News Online, said the global figures represented only “the tip of the iceberg,” and that impunity remained a serious problem.

Fedotov said the report indicates very clear that the scale of modern-day slavery is far worse.

Report added that women and girls are often trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor, while children are also forced into combat or to take part in petty crime.

In 2003-2006, about 20 percent of human trafficking victims were children, the report said, indicating how much the problem has increased over the past few years.

It added that children alone represent around 60 percent of victims in regions such as Africa and the Middle East.

The report also highlighted that the number of convictions remain low despite initiatives to combat trafficking.

“Forty percent of countries recorded few or no convictions, and over the past 10 years there has been no discernible increase in the global criminal justice response to this crime, leaving a significant portion of the population vulnerable to offenders,” the report said.

About 15 percent of the 128 countries covered by the report did not record a single conviction, report said.

Source: GMA News Online