Climate change fuels human trafficking, warns UN report
Survivors of Cyclone Haiyan, in Tacloban, the Philippines, in 2013. REUTERS / Romeo Ranoco
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In the Philippines, for example, human trafficking surged after the devastating 2013 cyclone Haiyan.
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Climate change is aggravating human trafficking around the world.
This is the conclusion of a
report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) published on Tuesday 23 January.
The agency is based on data collected in 141 countries over the period 2017-2020 and the analysis of 800 court cases
.
The multiplication of meteorological disasters, which pushes millions of people onto the roads, is today one of the "
main causes
" of human trafficking.
easy prey
Over time, "
whole regions will become uninhabitable
", which "
disproportionately affects
" poor communities living mainly from agriculture or fishing.
They find themselves "
deprived of their means of subsistence and forced to flee their community
", becoming easy prey for traffickers, explained Fabrizio Sarrica, main author of the text.
The report cites
devastating typhoons in the Philippines
, or even Bangladesh, which is particularly exposed to cyclones and storms.
In both countries, an increase in cases of trafficking has been observed, with, for example, the organization of “
large recruitment campaigns
” to trap the poorest in forced labour.
“
After the cyclone in the Philippines, the national authorities identified a very large number of victims of trafficking.
An exceptional figure compared to previous years
, underlines Giulia Serio, expert at UNODC.
Our analysis looks a bit at how the affected people had to make very difficult choices to secure their lives and find socio-economic means in other parts of the country.
And in this situation, they found themselves facing the crime of trafficking.
A case that concerns the Philippines is, for example, the case of women who are exploited as domestic workers, who are recruited in the Philippines and then sent to other countries where they have to work as domestic workers, that can be forced prostitution or sexual exploitation.
»
Wars and Covid-19
Ghana, victim of droughts and floods, and the Caribbean region, subject to hurricanes and rising sea levels, are also on the front line.
Another breeding ground for trafficking is armed conflict.
If Africa is by far the most affected continent, the UN body points to a potentially "
dangerous
" situation in Ukraine, while welcoming the measures taken by the countries of the European Union to welcome and protect the millions of refugees.
For the first time since the start of the collection of figures, the number of victims recorded fell in 2020. An effect of the Covid-19 pandemic which made the detection of cases less obvious.
With the closure of places open to the public (bars, nightclubs, etc.) due to health restrictions, certain forms of trafficking, in particular sexual exploitation, have moved to “
less visible and even less safe places
”.
(
And with
AFP)
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