UN gets new legal tool in fight against human trafficking

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

VIENNA, Austria (AFP): On Wednesday the United Nations will get teeth to fight the international trade in human beings when in a new protocol on trafficking in its convention on organised crime, takes effect.

The text is the UN's first legal tool to fight human trafficking and urges cooperation between member states to "prevent, fight and punish" the practice that sees three to four million women and children sold into forced labour or prostitution every year.

It was adopted in the National Assembly in November 2000 and has been ratified by some 50 countries.

Trafficking has become almost as lucrative as the trade in drugs and arms. The US state department recently estimated that selling women and children as sex workers has become a business worth seven to 10 billion dollars.

And, as with weapons and drugs, the nature of dealing in human beings makes it difficult and expensive to curb. 

Traders profit from loopholes and differences in laws from country to country and a lack of cooperation between national authorities.

Last June, the United States compiled an index of 15 countries implicated in the trade. Among them are five Caribbean nations: Belize, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Surinam.

The other countries are Bosnia, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Burma, North Korea, Sudan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. 

Washington criticised all of these states for not making "significant efforts" to combat human trafficking, in particular that of women and children forced into slavery, drafted into armies against their will and sold into prostitution.

To fight this trend, the countries that have signed the UN protocol have entered human trafficking as a crime in their penal codes and agreed to work together to combat money laundering of the profit made from it. 

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