The United Nations proposed a new global fund Monday to fight international human trafficking and forced labor, a problem that it said had grown to epidemic proportions and was rarely effectively prosecuted by governments.
"Slavery is a booming international trade that involves several million people a year being trafficked in bondage," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office of Drug and Crime, who announced the new initiative on trafficking in London.
"There is finally a growing awareness of a huge problem in terms of size, money and the human costs in terms of suffering," Costa added.
The UN estimates that 2.5 million people are trafficked and enslaved, although the crime is frequently unreported and many estimates are far higher. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 12.3 million people across the globe in forced work. The U.S. government say that up to 800,000 people are shipped like commodities across international borders to serve as cheap labor.
About 50 percent of people smuggled and sold into forced work are minors and 80 percent are women and girls, according to a 2006 State Department study. Most end up working in the sex trade.
In China, for example, they are often lured from poor villages with promises of factory jobs in coastal boomtowns, only to discover themselves destitute and sold into prostitution. During the World Cup in Germany last summer, international women's groups estimated that thousands of trafficked women were brought into the country, where prostitution is legal, although German investigators denied the validity of such numbers.
But there are increasing reports of men being trafficked for labor as well. Last summer, Italian police in the southern region of Puglia freed nearly 100 Polish workers who said they were working as virtual slaves, picking tomatoes.
A recent UN report listed Germany, Italy, Belgium and Greece as the most common destinations for slave labor in Europe, with former East Bloc countries like Bulgaria, Albania and Belarus the most common sources. While such laborers are sometimes paid a minimal wage, it is not enough to fill basic needs - or to return home - and they are often effectively prisoners of their employers.
The trade in humans is now a market worth $30 billion to $40 billion, often with links to organized crime, Costa said.
The rapid rise in trafficking is largely a result of globalization, experts say. Better communications makes it easier to lure poor people with unrealistic promises. Open borders in Europe make it easier to send them to wealthier countries, as they are often transported claiming to be students or people with legitimate work.
The UN Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons, which was ratified in 2003 and has been signed by 117 countries, makes trafficking an international crime. "But law enforcement in countries is weak and punishment tends to be light," Costa said.
The German authorities place the number of victims trafficked into that country at between 2,000 and 20,000 each year, but in 2004 only 972 victims were registered.