Child Human Trafficking on the Increase

[fountainhall]

Yesterday and today, CNN’s Talk Asia programme has featured two members of the super-cute 13-member Korean boy band, Super Junior. Actually, boy band hardly fits the group as the two members interviewed are well into their 20s (one being 27). For pop stars who are a phenomenon around Asia, both were remarkably articulate, poised and gave well-thought out and interesting answers.

As the interviewer pointed out, there is more to the band than just their hit songs, sold-out concerts and dance routines. Following the example of fellow Korean superstar, Rain, they are helping to raise awareness and money for the worldwide campaign to stop human trafficking.

Many threads have been active on this Board about the evils of child prostitution. As far as I can recall, there has been nothing about the equally evil practice of buying and selling human beings around the world, sometimes for sweatshop labour, but much more often for sexual slavery.

A 2007 US State Department Report claims that the number of people then working as slaves around the world varied from a low of 4 million to as high as 27 million (Trafficking in Persons Report: 2007).
http://nhtrc.polarisproject.org/materia ... istics.pdf

A later 2009 Report by the UN estimates that 79% of all human trafficking is for sexual exploitation. Further, that the percentage of boys (as opposed to men, women and girls) trafficked rose from 3% of the total in 2003 to 9% in 2006 (Human Trafficking: A Crime that Shames Us All: 2009).
http://www.unodc.org/documents/Global_Report_on_TIP.pdf

It can therefore surely be presumed from these statistics that the number of children now being trafficked across borders for sexual purposes is horribly significant.

So I applaud Super Junior for their foresight in keeping this ghastly trade in human beings at the forefront of the news.

[fountainhall]

I forgot to mention another reason for the above post was seeing two movies shows this week on UBC - Taken and Trade, both dealing with the ghastly business of human trafficking.