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Women, children most vulnerable to forced labour.

Article Excerpt
Some 12.3 million people--half of whom are children--are victims of forced labour worldwide. Of the global total, 9.8 million people are exploited by private agents, where more than half (55%) are women and girls.

These figures are part of the findings of an International Labor Organization (ILO) report entitled "A global alliance against forced labour, Global Report Under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work" published in May 2005.

The report also states that, of the global total, more than 2.4 million have been trafficked for various purposes: for commercial sexual exploitation (43%), for economic exploitation (32%) and for undetermined reasons (25%). Annual profits generated from human trafficking worldwide is estimated at US$ 31.6 billion, of which the biggest, amounting to US$15.5 billion, comes from industrialised countries in Europe and the United States.

It is in this form of forced labour that women and children are most vulnerable. "Certainly, there is overwhelming evidence that women, and also children, tend to be most vulnerable to the forced labour outcomes of human trafficking, and that new forms of coercion are being applied by their traffickers," the report confirms.

Human trafficking involves migration from rural to urban areas, and from the poorer to the wealthier countries. It usually requires financial and social capital. Since the trafficked victims do not have access to such capital, they are more vulnerable to criminal groups that exploit their poverty because they have to borrow money from agents, including traffickers, prior to departure....