Asian crisis leaves women, kids vulnerable to trafficking
Asian crisis leaves women, kids vulnerable to trafficking
BANGKOK (AP): Asia's economic crisis has left women
and children seeking work outside their own countries more
vulnerable than ever to prostitution and human-trafficking gangs,
experts said on Thursday.
Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai urged a conference on illegal
migration to draft a framework for better international
cooperation, reflecting the era of the globalized economy, to
control undocumented workers and the criminals who prey on them.
"They are, in reality, also victims," Chuan said of illegal
migrants. "We should not lose sight of the fact that all migrants
are human beings -- as such, their rights and dignity should be
protected."
The three-day International Symposium on Migration, jointly
sponsored by Thailand and the Geneva-based International
Organization for Migration, brought together representatives from
30 countries and dozens of non-governmental organizations.
Delegates from Europe, the Americas and Africa were invited to
share their experiences with Asia on coping with illegal
immigration.
Before recession struck much of Asia in 1997, countries with
booming economies like Thailand attracted floods of workers from
their poorer neighbors. They were in demand with employers
because they worked for cheaper wages and had no social
protections.
They were less welcome with governments when times grew tough,
however, leading to violence in Malaysia and Singapore against
poor Indonesian migrants and mass expulsions of Myanmar people
from Thailand last year.
Many have gone home as jobs dried up, but others have been
driven further underground, where they are increasingly
vulnerable to abuse.
"Common sense tells you that when the economy turns bad,
people look for other sources of income and trafficking in
prostitution goes up," Brunson McKinley, director general of the
IOM, told reporters.
IOM officials said it was difficult to estimate how many
undocumented migrants were traveling between countries at any
time, but more than half are women. Many are vulnerable to
prostitution gangs.
Philip Ruddock, Australia's minister for immigration, said
that there were increasing cases of women being lured to
Australia with the promise of jobs and ending up in brothels.
Austria and Italy have been pushing for an international
convention that would make trafficking in people a worldwide
crime. No such convention exists.
McKinley called the lack of such a convention "one of the last
unfinished bits of the human-rights agenda."