Rise in Human Trafficking Victims
The number of human trafficking victims identified in the UK has more than doubled since 2010, according to a United Nations (UN) report.
There were 660 human trafficking victims identified in the UK in 2013, a 20% rise from 522 the previous year and more than twice the 297 identified in 2010, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.
Among victims identified in the UK in 2013 were 135 children, compared to 130 girls and boys identified the previous year and 80 in 2010.
UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov said the report shows there is no place in the world where people are safe from human trafficking.
There were also 148 men and women convicted of human trafficking in England and Wales in 2013, a 43% rise from 103 the previous year and a more than three-fold increase from 43 in 2010.
The UNODC Global Report on Trafficking In Persons has identified 510 trafficking routes worldwide - that is flows connecting the origin country and destination country of at least five detected victims.
One in three known victims of human trafficking was a child in 2010 to 2013, the report claims, which is a 5% increase compared to the 2007-2010 period.
UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov said:
"Unfortunately, the report shows there is no place in the world where children, women and men are safe from human trafficking.
"Official data reported to UNODC by national authorities represent only what has been detected. It is very clear that the scale of modern-day slavery is far worse."
The number of cases of trafficking that reached a first hearing in a magistrate court in England and Wales surged to 860 in 2013 from 374 in the previous year and 136 cases in 2010, the report said.
Some 784 identified victims between 2010 and 2013 were trafficked for s exual e xploitation, while 875 were put in to forced labour.
Two victims were trafficked for illegal organ harvesting.
There were 112 British victims of trafficking within the UK in the three year period, while 557 came from "other Central Europe".
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Number of Women Convicted for Human Trafficking "Exceptionally High" -UN
26 November 2014
By Kieran Guilbert
LONDON, Nov 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Nearly three in 10 convicted human traffickers worldwide are female, according to a U.N. report on Monday which found that women play a bigger role in trafficking than other major crimes such as murder or robbery.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that 28 percent of convicted traffickers between 2010-2012 were women, many of them acting as guards, recruiters and money collectors, to gain the trust of female victims.
In contrast, between 10 percent and 15 percent of the total number of people convicted of serious crimes were female, the report said.
Kristiina Kangaspunta, chief of the UNODC's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons Unit, said the number of women convicted for human trafficking was "exceptionally high", adding that some of them were forced to recruit others by trafficking rings.
"Women involved in human trafficking operations are often in close contact with the victims, whether it is recruiting them, deceiving them or transporting them," Kangaspunta told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Geneva.
"Given that many human trafficking investigations are based on victims' testimonies, these low-ranking female traffickers are most likely to be identified and convicted, while the men at the top of the chain are rarely seen or known by the victims."
The report also said that 33 percent of detected victims of human trafficking are children with girls accounting for two out of every three of them.
Earlier this month the 2014 Global Slavery Index estimated that almost 36 million people around the world are in some form of slavery. The figure includes people who have been trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labour.
VICTIMS TURN PERPETRATORS
UNODC said women were more likely to be convicted of human trafficking alongside their partner or family members than men.
More than 100 cases across 30 countries involved female traffickers who had worked with their husband, mother, daughter or siblings to traffic victims, mainly for sexual exploitation and forced labour, UNODC said.
In one case outlined in the report, a woman and her husband were jailed for five years for trafficking six women from Belarus into another European country, where they were sold to nightclub owners.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, more women than men were convicted of human trafficking between 2010-2012, while in North and South America, nearly 40 percent of traffickers were women, according to the report.
The proportion of convicted female offenders in South and East Asia, Africa and the Middle East was around 30 percent, while the rate in Western and Central Europe stood at just over 20 percent.
The report said that in countries with high numbers of female human traffickers, there were often many girl victims.
"For some women and girls, brutalised by their own experience of trafficking, the option of becoming a trafficker themselves can present itself as a path out of exploitation," said Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International.
"It is a sad human truth that where violence is concerned, as it is with trafficking, victims can often become perpetrators," McQuade told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
China Seizes 31 trafficking Suspects Holding Myanmar Women
By AP, 24 November 2014
BEIJING, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities in the northern region of Inner Mongolia arrested 31 people on suspicion of trafficking women because they had held 14 people, 11 of them from Myanmar, state media said on Monday.
Five of the non-Chinese victims were younger than 18 and were handed to Myanmar police after a three-month investigation into the gang, which ensnared the women by offering them tours and jobs, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The victims were then sold as wives in rural China for as little as 50,000 yuan ($8,142)
China's gender imbalance, the result of its one-child policy and illicit abortion of girl babies because of a traditional preference for boys, has led to a huge surplus of single men. The latest census showed 118 newborn males for every 100 females.
In September, state media reported that Chinese police would clamp down on websites that sell group tours to enable men to meet "foreign brides" in Southeast Asian countries, as the practice leads to human trafficking and prostitution.
Last year, a U.S. State Department report cited Russia and China as being among the world's worst offenders in fighting forced labor and sex trafficking. ($1=6.1412 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Niger Baby-Trafficking Trial Due 'Shortly', Minister says
By AP, 26 November 2014
The trial of 22 people charged in a Niger-based baby trafficking case, including the wife of a fugitive political figure, is to open soon, Justice Minister Marou Amadou said Wednesday.
Amadou told a news conference that an inquiry into the highly controversial affair is almost complete "and will go to trial shortly", but he gave no date.
He said 22 people had been charged and detained for questioning since June and that six remained in custody pending trial, including the main suspect.
Hama Amadou (C), head of Nigers' parliament has fled the country amid accusations his wife is involved in a baby-traficking case ŠIssouf Sanogo (AFP)
One of those also still behind bars is one of the wives of ex parliament speaker Hama Amadou.
Amadou has fled the country and sought refuge in France, saying he was embroiled in the case as part of a plot by President Mahmadou Issoufou to smear his name before the next presidential election in 2016.
He was this week replaced as speaker by a former opposition member turned presidential backer.
The suspects have been accused of forging and altering birth certificates to switch the names of mothers in the trafficking between Nigeria, Benin and Niger.
The vast desert nation of Niger, one of the world's poorest, has the globe's highest birth rate, with an average of 7.6 children per woman.