Increase in human trafficking observed in Bangladesh after natural disasters: UN
"Climate change is increasing vulnerability to trafficking," United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said
An increase in cases of human trafficking has been observed in Bangladesh and the Philippines after devastating cyclones and typhoons displaced millions, said the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Tuesday.
"Climate change is increasing vulnerability to trafficking," the UNODC report, titled, "Global Trafficking in Persons Report 2022" said, adding that evidence is emerging that climate-related disasters are becoming a cause of human trafficking as criminal gangs exploit a growing number of uprooted people.
The report is based on data from 141 countries collected from 2017 to 2020, and the analysis of 800 court cases. The impact of climate change "disproportionately" affected poor farming, fishing and other communities mainly relying on the extraction of natural resources for their livelihoods, the report said.
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Fabrizio Sarrica, the report's main author, during a press briefing, said that "deprived of their means of subsistence and forced to flee their community," people were becoming easy prey for traffickers, reports the AFP.
In 2021 alone, climate-related disasters internally displaced more than 23.7 million people, while many others fled their countries altogether, the UN agency said, adding that as entire regions of the world are at risk of becoming "increasingly uninhabitable," millions will face "high risk of exploitation along migration routes."
"While a systematic global analysis of the impact of climate change in trafficking in persons is missing, community level studies in different parts of the world point at weather-induced disasters as root causes for trafficking in persons," the UN report said.
The continuing war in Ukraine is also another risk factor for increased human trafficking, it furthered.
UNODC states that most of the victims of trafficking resulting from conflicts originated from Africa and the Middle East, a potentially "dangerous" situation is simultaneously building up in Ukraine as millions flee the war-torn country.
For the first time since data collection began in 2003, the number of victims detected worldwide fell in 2020, dropping by eleven percent compared to 2019, the Vienna-based organisation said.
