"The fact that this form of slavery still exists in the 21st century shames us
all," announced UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa on the
organization's Web site. "Governments need to get serious about identifying the
full extent of the problem so they can get serious about eliminating it."
In Israel, Haifa feminist center Isha L'Isha, one of the human rights
organizations active in the fight against the trafficking of women, welcomed
the report's findings and was hopeful that it would force the government and
relevant authorities to take more action against this crime.
Tal Eisenberg, the organization's legal advisor and coordinator for the
center's Fighting Against Trafficking in Women project told The Jerusalem Post,
"It is excellent that the United Nations has recognized that there is such a
problem in Israel. I hope that we can learn from the report and that the
government will now take more notice of the problem." She said that many
countries did not even know that trafficking takes place within their borders
and that Israeli rights organizations had made great progress in combating the
problem.
Executive Director of Amnesty International Israel, Amnon Vidan said that the
Israeli authorities had to deal with the problem before it happened, by
stopping the transit of women across the border with Egypt.
The UNODC report identified 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and
137 destination countries. It stated that the vast majority of human
trafficking was in women and was for the purpose of sexual exploitation, with
roughly 20 percent of the trade being in forced labor.
The report, which was based on 113 individual sources such as government
documents, research by national criminal justice organizations, Interpol,
research institutes and news agencies, suggested that, "the best way of
addressing the demand side of trafficking human beings is to demolish the
markets generating profits to the criminals. This would require identification
of traffickers in order to be able to investigate trafficking cases, and
prosecute and convict offenders. Unfortunately, relatively few cases are
prosecuted successfully resulting in a very small number of convictions."
