13th June, 2005

Up to 800,000 people are illegally trafficked across international borders every year, according to a new report from the US State Department.

The recently released report estimates that 80 per cent of these people are female and up to 50 per cent are children and that the majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.

It also found that millions more victims are trafficked within their own country’s borders and cited figures from the International Labor Organisation showing that an estimated 12.3 million people are enslaved in forced labor, bonded labor, child labor, sexual servitude or involuntary servitude at any given time around the world .

The report ranks countries according to their efforts and willingness to combat the problem of human trafficking. Among those countries ranked as “tier 3” - where governments do not comply with US-set minimum anti-trafficking standards and where there are no significant efforts to do so - the US has included Bolivia, Burma, Cambodia, Cuba, Ecuador, Jamaica, Kuwait, North Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Togo, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Speaking at the release of the report, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said trafficking in human beings “is nothing less than a modern form of slavery”.

“Victims of trafficking, most of them women and children, are forced, defrauded or coerced into inhumane conditions,” she said.

“They are made to toil on farms and in work camps, in brothels and sweatshops. Children are even forced to become soldiers. Whatever cruel form of servitude they may take, trafficking victims live in fear and misery.”

Ms Rice called on all states to work together to end what US President George W Bush has called a “terrible tragedy”.

- DAVID ADAMS