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On the 3rd of January, 2017, the outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called on all countries to investigate and prosecute cases of human trafficking and said the most vulnerable victims are women, children and refugees caught up in conflict areas around the globe.
The Secretary General, addressing the 15-member Security Council during an open debate on human trafficking in conflict zones, said extremist groups from the Islamic State to Boko Haram and al-Shabab traffic in persons, especially women and girls, as a weapon of terror and source of revenue.
“We have to fight trafficking for the sake of the victims,” Mr. Ki-Moon said. “When we do, we will also decrease funding for terrorists — and make everyone safer.”
Mr. Ki-Moon, whose term as top U.N. official ended on the 31st of December, 2016, spoke the same day the Security Council unanimously approved its first-ever draft resolution on human trafficking in conflict situations. (See RENATE website, 6th January, 2017). The resolution seeks to strengthen the United Nation’s ability to counter the phenomenon and bolster the international community’s ability to respond to it.
Yuri Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said the building blocks for fighting international human trafficking can be found in the United Nations’ Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocol on the practice, which was adopted by the General Assembly and went into effect in 2003.
He said trafficking victims have been detected in 106 different countries and territories worldwide. The good news, he said, is that 158 countries have criminalized most forms of the practice in line with the protocol.
To read the full story by Dave Bryan of the Associated Press on ABC News: Click Here
Adapted by Anne Kelleher, RENATE Communications.
Outgoing U.N Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, called on all countries to investigate and prosecute cases of human trafficking.