Malaysia leading country in US$13billion human trafficking
In disclosing this to several participants at a human trafficking seminar here, Tenaganita consultant manager Aegile Fernandez said human trafficking is the fastest growing international crime with 2.4 million people falling prey to traffickers every year.
“Of the 2.4 million people trafficked every year, 1.2 million are children who could be trafficked for sex, labour or organs.
“The global black market in human trafficking is constantly increasing and is worth about US$13 billion a year,” she said at the seminar in St Joseph’s Parish.
She said although Malaysia was primarily a destination, transit and source of human trafficking activities, an increasing number of internal trafficking was also taking place.
“In 2008, 982 of our children went missing and 500 of them are still missing,” she said. Of this number, she said, 225,000 victims came from Southeast Asia and 15,000 from South Asia.
Fernandez said that there were many cases of Sarawak women who were promised jobs in West Malaysia only to find out that they were deceived.
They were made sex workers after they could not get the promised jobs and neither could they fight against these violent and highly dangerous traffickers.
