Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/UNITED NATIONS: A United Nations (UN) report has said that women continue to comprise the largest share of trafficking victims in South Asia.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that, in 2020, more men were detected as victims of trafficking in the region compared to previous years.
The ‘International Report on Trafficking in Persons 2022’ also showed a decline in trafficking, even though crises and pandemics raised the vulnerabilities of communities against trafficking.
Internationally, the number of victims fell by 11 percent in 2020 compared to a year ago.
The number of convictions for women trafficking offenses fell by 27pc over the same period, further augmenting the trend registered by UNODC since 2017.
Reduced were registered in South Asia (56pc), South America (46pc), Central America, and the Caribbean (54pc).
United Nations stance on human trafficking
The UN report said that in South Asia, both women and men were trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation, and to a lesser degree, for forced marriage.
South Asia is also experiencing a decline in detected cross-border trafficking, although victims from the region continue to be detected throughout the rest of the globe.
“Countries in South Asia are convicting fewer traffickers and detecting fewer victims than the rest of the world,” the report warned.
The report blamed weak criminal justice response for “[incentivizing] traffickers to operate nationally and transnationally” from the region.
More children from South Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean were detected to be driven into forced labour, with more girls than boys.
Another sizable global trafficking flow involved victims trafficked from South Asia to destinations in Western Europe, East Asia, and the Pacific, with fewer victims to the Middle East and the Americas.
