According to the United Nations, through its Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), it has been noted that the vast majority of victims of human trafficking are women and girls at 72% of the total number of ongoing victims. However, one more disenchanting trend has been the increase in the number of victims being children.
Between 2004 and 2016, the number of child victims, so mostly girls, has more than doubled.
Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stated, “Most detected victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation; victims are also trafficked for forced labour, recruitment as child soldiers and other forms of exploitation and abuse.”
The problems of the world continue to be interlinked. For example, when encountering problems of anthropogenic climate change of human induced global warming, the destruction of the infrastructure and capacities of nation-states to provide for the safety and security of its citizens becomes an issue for refugees, displaced peoples, and migrants.
In other words, and by the way the majority of refugees are women and children, the problems identified by one area of the international community impact another part of the problems facing the world’s citizens, especially those most vulnerable who have been displaced due to climactic megastorms, flooding, and other natural disasters destroying local infrastructure. Nature forces a move from their hometown, even their homeland.
Vulnerable populations can then become subject to being taken advantage of by the traffickers. These are desperate people. Similarly, we can see the same in a Canadian context.
If the individuals in the populations become vulnerable in some manner, then they can be taken into human trafficking networks and trapped. One major mechanism is financial or economic entrapment. In order to continue to live, women and girls, mostly, have to sell themselves as objects of pleasure to the buyers of what the human traffickers are selling.
Everyday news items of the United Nations have immediate applicability here.
The UN concluded, “Globally, countries are identifying and reporting more victims and convicting more traffickers, according to the latest UN Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. Despite some progress, however, ‘victims continue to face significant obstacles in accessing assistance, protection, redress and justice.’”
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Photo credit: Photo by Kate Oseen on Unsplash.
