Snippets

"snippet" - noun.,
a small piece..., a small bit.., a fragment
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I've finally started reading through the United Nations Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, and over the next few posts, I'll share some of what I read (for those of you who don't want to read all 292 pages yourself). If you have specific questions, post them as comments, and I'll try to find the answers in the report.

For now, I want to share some of the report's opening remarks as written by Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.


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"The term trafficking in persons can be misleading: it places emphasis on the transaction aspects of a crime that is more accurately described as enslavement. Exploitation of people, day after day. For years on end.

After much neglect and indifference, the world is waking up to the reality of a modern form of slavery. The public and the media are becoming aware that humans prey upon humans for money....

Over the past few years, the number of countries that have taken steps to implement the foremost international agreement in this area - the UN Protocol against Trafficking in Persons - has doubled. However, there are still many countries, particularly in Africa, that lack the necessary legal instruments...

... as of 2007/08, two out of every five countries covered by this report had not recorded a single [trafficking] conviction. Either they are blind to the problem, or they are ill-equipped to deal with it...

We still lack a global understanding of the subject, and of how its components interface to make the whole... The crisis we face of fragmented knowledge and disjointed responses intensifies a crime that shames us all."