In December 2000, the United Nations adopted the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime that includes a Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. Addressing all forms of trafficking in persons, including for purposes of sexual exploitation, forced labor and organ removal, the Protocol is the most comprehensive international instrument to date.
Despite its restricted applicability to trafficking of a
transnational nature that involves an organized criminal group, it will
be a valuable tool in the campaign against this exploitative practice.
Unfortunately, neither the Convention nor the Protocol is in force. As
of October 2002, only twenty four nations had ratified the Convention
and eighteen nations had ratified the Protocol. Forty ratifications are
needed to bring the Convention into effect.
Other conventions dealing with slavery, slave related
practices, traffic in persons, and the international exploitation of
prostitution have proven inadequate. A telling sign is that only twentyfive
percent of the world's countries have ratified the 1949 Convention
for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of
the Prostitution of Others.
The United Nations, European Union and European
Parliament have expressed concern for human trafficking activity, as
have a number of national governments, which has engendered an
increased interest in combating this worldwide phenomenon. This
attention should incorporate programs to more fully document the
realities of trafficking.
Empirical data will make it impossible for
governments to avoid facing this criminal phenomenon and the terrible
toll it takes on the lives and dignity of the world's most vulnerable
people women and children. Only a surge of public indignation by
civil society can lead to putting an end to this cruel form of modern
human slavery.
Meeting of Experts on Trafficking of Women and Children
for Sexual Exploitation in the Americas
First of all, I would like to thank the Inter-American
Commission of Women, the Inter-American Children's Institute and
DePaul University for inviting me to be here in my position as Vice-
President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. I
welcome and join the initiative to place a fundamental human rights
issue on the table and to also reinforce the importance of that issue: the
trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation in the
Americas.
The Inter-American Commission (IACHR) develops distinct
initiatives aimed at promoting and protecting human rights. I would
like to mention some of them in order to introduce some means of
action into the discussion regarding what can be done when faced with
human rights violations as flagrant as the ones that we deal with at this
meeting today.