Our Role in the Slave Trade…!
By: Christain Cullen
Australia’s international reputation has taken a hit in a new United Nations report on the illegal global trade in humans.
The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime’s report on human trafficking put Australia in the second highest category of destination countries in the global trade.
Ten countries were ranked as “very high” destinations. Australia was one of the 19 countries ranked as “high” in the index of destinations that ranged from “very high” to “very low”.
Australia had the highest ranking in the Oceanic region, which also includes New Zealand and Fiji.
The report, Trafficking In Persons: Global Patterns, was released yesterday. It said that most of the people smuggled into Australia were young women from Thailand and the Philippines.
The majority were destined to work in the sex industry in Australia.
Other countries of origin were Vietnam, Malaysia and the Democratic People’s Republic of China.
The report said the best way to tackle the global trade in humans was to diminish demand in destination countries through better law enforcement.
But it criticised destination countries for failing to acknowledge that they were a vital part of the illegal global trade.
“Our experience in compiling this report has been that some countries of destination have great difficulty in acknowledging the level of trafficking within and across their borders,” said the executive director of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, Maria Costa said in a statement.
“Efforts to counter trafficking have so far been uncoordinated and inefficient. The lack of systematic reporting by authorities is a real problem. Governments need to try harder.
“Traffickers capitalize on weak law enforcement and poor international cooperation. The low rate of convictions for the perpetrators of human trafficking is a matter of serious concern which needs to be addressed.
“Protecting the victims may sound obvious, but in practice they are all too often treated as criminals who may face charges for violating immigration or anti-prostitution laws. “
The report says that organised criminal gangs behind human trafficking are often multi-national in their membership and operations.
“Governments need to get serious about identifying the full extent of the problem so they can get serious about eliminating it,” Costa said. “The fact that this form of slavery still exists in the twenty-first century shames us all.”
The countries named as “very high” destinations for people traffickers were Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Thailand, Turkey and the USA.
Countries ranked “high” alongside Australia included Canada, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Poland and Saudi Arabia.
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Christain Cullen writes for The Gotcha Network.
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