Jóvenes participan en 2017 en un acto con motivo del Día Internacional Contra la Trata de personas. Archivo EFE

Vienna / On Monday, the United Nations warned armed groups in conflict zones are increasingly using human trafficking to finance themselves and attract new recruits, all with the promise, for example, of rewarding them with exploited women as sex slaves.

The UN Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2018 published in Vienna has analysed some 24,000 documented cases of human trafficking in 2016 in more than 140 countries.

Sexual exploitation continues to be the most frequent crime of this “21st century slavery”, as the UN calls it, with about 60% of cases, followed by forced labour with a third.

However, these figures analysed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are only “the tip of the iceberg” since many of the victims are not detected or not all countries have the appropriate mechanisms to prosecute this crime.

According to UNODC report, more than 70% of global trafficking victims are girls and women.

In general it’s estimated the total number of victims is up to five times higher than that recorded by the authorities.

While the majority of victims of sexual exploitation are women, men make up the largest group of forced labour cases.

The report also notes that armed groups in conflict zones also use trafficking as a tool to instill terror among the population and thus facilitate their obedience.

While UN doesn’t provide data on the total number of victims in war zones, it claims that militias and criminal groups exploit the population displaced by conflicts in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Burma.

UN recalls that in 2009 only 26 countries had specific institutions that collected data on human trafficking, while now, ten years later, there are 65.

However, UN criticizes the fact that in large parts of Africa and Asia there are hardly any victims detected and no traffickers are sentenced, so it urges those countries and regions to make more efforts to apply international regulations.

From Vienna, Jordi Kuhs, EFE Agency. (January 8, 2019, EFE/Practica Español)

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