The seminar will highlight the contributions of Arab countries to the UN efforts to combat human trafficking and white slavery, the statement said.
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The Arab League will host on Sunday a seminar on ways to support the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, launched by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) early in 2008, according to a statement issued here Thursday. The seminar, to be co-organized by the league, the UNODC and the U.S. John Hopkins University, will attract representatives of justice ministries of many Arab countries, the Council of Arab Justice Ministers (CAJM) and the Council of Arab Interior Ministers (CAIM) as well as academic institutions. The seminar will highlight the contributions of Arab countries to the UN efforts to combat human trafficking and white slavery, the statement said.
The participants will exchange experience on combatting this global epidemic and ways to maximize the Arab law against human trafficking, adopted by the CAJM and the CAIM in 2005. The UNODC, together with other United Nations agencies, governments, and NGOs announced the launch of the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking on March 26, 2007. As part of the initiative, a series of events throughout the world will culminate in Vienna with an International Conference against Human Trafficking between November 27 and 29, 2007.
The Arab League secretariat is working out an Arab action plan that will be tabled to the Vienna forum. It urged the Arab Standing Committee on Human Rights to hold an extraordinary session to mull the Arab vision and plan to combating white slavery. In its 23rd session, due here on November 28 and 29, the CAJM will probe this problem.
Some 2.5 million people throughout the world are at any given time recruited, entrapped, transported and exploited in human trafficking - according to estimates of international experts. Trafficking in persons, whether for sexual exploitation or forced labor, affects virtually every region of the world. UNODC reports that persons from 127 countries become exploited in 137 nations. It is a global problem that has reached epidemic proportions over the past decade. No country is immune, whether as a source, a destination or a transit point for victims of human trafficking, UNODC believes. |