UN report says trafficking networks earn $32 billion a year

PanARMENIAN.Net - In a new report, the United Nations reveals the scale of the problems of humans trafficking and sex slavery around the world.

The numbers are grim. Some 2.4 million people are being traded at any one time, the United Nations says. Eighty percent of those people are trafficked for sexual exploitation, while 17 percent are traded to perform forced labor, The Washington Post reported.

Two out of every three victims are women, and only one out of every 100 victims of trafficking is ever rescued.

The operators of the networks, who the UN report says make $32 billion a year, are based around the world - including in the United States.

The U.S.-based Backpage.com has come under fire for human trafficking advertisements in their adult services section.

Village Voice Media, which runs the site, has repeatedly said that it makes every attempt to weed out traffickers and that if traffickers do make it to the site, law enforcement can use the site to find them.

New York Times dubbed the Backpage.com as “the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States”.

It said that “Backpage accounts for about 70 percent of prostitution advertising among five Web sites that carry such ads in the United States, earning more than $22 million annually from prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a media research and consulting company”.

Human trafficking occurs worldwide. The U.S. State Department annual report on trafficking in persons details how bad the problem is in each country.

Estonia, for example, is the only European Union country without a law covering human trafficking.