Sunday, 18 Oct 2020 09:40 AM MYT
The global economic slowdown has left countless people jobless, desperate and at risk of exploitation, while victims of trafficking are less likely to be found or receive help with attention and resources diverted elsewhere, the experts said. “More people are at risk ... especially in the informal economy ... there are opportunities for traffickers to recruit, to exploit, to prey on people's desperation,” Mullally told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of Anti-Slavery Day today.
Many of the world's estimated 164 million migrant workers are stranded abroad and unable to go home or unwilling to seek help due to closed borders and restrictive immigration policies, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers, according to Mullally.Two decades after the adoption of a landmark UN anti-trafficking protocol, Mullally said the issue was still seen mainly as a criminal justice matter, and called for a much broader focus encompassing labour rights and social protection.
Ilias Chatzis, head of the trafficking unit at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime , said his department was still gathering information about the impact of coronavirus on the crime but warned that early evidence showed “worsening horrors.”