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Open borders facilitated trafficking: Blackwill

By Our Special Correspondent

MUMBAI Feb. 18. Every year at least one million people are bought, sold, transported and held against their will for sexual abuse and exploitation or forced labour in slave-like conditions, says the United States Ambassador, Robert Blackwill, citing an estimate of the United Nations and other international organisations.

"More open borders and speedier and more accessible computer and communication technologies have greatly facilitated trafficking on a global scale", he said speaking on `Trafficking in Persons' at a gathering hosted by the American Consulate, the Maharashtra State Women's Council and the Women's Institute for Social Education.

Quoting a CIA study, Mr. Blackwill said that there had been reports of trafficking instances in at least 20 different American States, with most cases occurring in New York, California and Florida and the Immigration and Naturalisation Service had discovered over 250 brothels in 26 different American cities involving trafficking victims.

Women had been trafficked to the U.S. primarily for the sex industry, sweatshop labour, domestic servitude and agricultural work. Women had also been trafficked to provide maid services at motels and hotels, peddle trinkets on subways and buses, and beg.

India was initiating steps to prevent, combat and eliminate human trafficking even in the face of domestic statutory, institutional and programmatic obstacles. Several States had created advisory committees to mobilise greater resources for the fight against trafficking and the National Human Rights Commission had begun setting up a network of State liaison officers exclusively dedicated to the monitoring and investigation of human trafficking.

Mr. Blackwill called for a multi-faceted approach to combat the menace and for providing economic assistance to the poor and vulnerable populations, development of awareness of the crime so that community-based monitoring systems could be created to detect when girls went missing or when strangers in the community sought to spirit them away, monitoring of transit locations and a quick responding detection network among several other measures.

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