Your Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honoured to participate in this distinguished gathering on
an issue so vital to human rights and dignity of migrants.

Let me at the outset thank the President of the General Assembly
and the Permanent Mission of Belarus for the kind invitation to
take part in this important forum, made possible by the generous
assistance of The UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Introduction

As some of you will recall, IOM started working in the area of
counter-trafficking when we encountered migrants, for the first
time, living in slave-like conditions in South Eastern Europe in
the mid-1990’s. At that time little was known about this
modern-day form of slavery. The actors were few; funding was
slight; and the initiatives were modest. It was a field of work
that nevertheless demanded comprehensive interventions: public
awareness, prosecution, victim protection, institutional capacity
building, and research.

As a response to the growing need the initial pilot activities
led to larger country projects and regional programmes that now
extend to more than 100 countries.

During the past 15 years, IOM – and many of our partners
who are here today – have implemented hundreds of projects,
trained tens of thousands of public and private representatives,
and protected and assisted more than 25,000 victims of
trafficking.

We are conscious, however, that the litmus test of our
collective efforts to combat human trafficking has to be measured
by the answer to a simple question: Since the advent of the
Trafficking Protocol, have we significantly decreased the scale of
the problem?

The question is difficult to answer. We still do not know, for
example, how many people are trafficked every year. Moreover, we
have no reason to believe, or even suspect, that human trafficking
is any less prevalent than it was when we began our work nearly two
decades ago.

The scale of the current global economic crisis should also give
us pause, because it has undoubtedly exacerbated the already
formidable challenge before us. With increased economic pressure,
migrant workers quickly become the most vulnerable category of the
working population.

They are more likely to be subjected to non-payment of wages,
they are less likely to be unionized, and they are overrepresented
in jobs that are dirty, dangerous, and difficult. Female migrant
workers are disproportionately affected by all of these
realities.

These factors, when coupled with larger pools of desperate
people, more limited legal migration channels, increased
xenophobia, and cost-sensitive consumers and businesses, make our
goal of eradicating trafficking more difficult, not less so.

With this in mind, I would like to highlight three areas where,
from IOM’s perspective, a more concerted effort is
required.

I. Improving Protection

First, we need to improve the level of protection. In many
countries, registered victims now have access to temporary
residence, safe accommodation, medical and psychosocial support, as
well as voluntary return and reintegration opportunities.

This is a marked improvement from the past. We know, however,
that the number of beneficiaries remains miniscule in proportion to
the hundreds of thousands of people who are thought to be
trafficked annually.

One reason for this disparity is the challenge of
identification. We know that globally, there are 1 billion migrants
on the move: 215 million international migrants and more than 750
million internal migrants – one seventh of humanity.

How many of these individuals are being trafficked? How many
smuggled? These are questions for which there is no simple
answer.

In most cases, the answer comes too late for migrants who must
survive uncertain, hazardous journeys and often exploitative
conditions before being lucky enough to encounter an official who
has the knowledge to make a positive determination, the legal
obligation to assist, and the good will to do so.

The challenge of distinguishing trafficked persons from smuggled
or exploited migrants is one that is faced daily by IOM’s
counter-trafficking staff around the world.

It has been the experience of this Organization that the line
that separates a trafficked person from an exploited, or, abused
migrant, is blurred at best, and that this line becomes all the
more difficult to draw when we are confronted with real people with
real needs.

But a migrant – especially if he is young, male and
working illegally and therefore doesn’t fit our stereotype of
a victim -- is unlikely even to be screened for possible
trafficking and/or exploitation.

There is no quick or easy solution to strengthen our ability to
identify trafficked persons, but a greater commitment to protecting
all migrants may well be a precondition.

Therefore, IOM case workers respond to the specific needs of
individual migrants, regardless of whether information is available
to categorize them as trafficking victims.

II. Private Sector Involvement

This brings me to my second point: the need for greater private
sector involvement.

For the past decade, the fight against trafficking in persons
has been waged for the most part by governments, intergovernmental
actors, and NGOs.

Perhaps this was a natural consequence of our intense focus on
trafficking for purposes of prostitution, and the fact that
prostitution is an activity that was already prohibited in many
countries.

But with the steady rise in the number of cases of labour
trafficking, we need the proactive involvement of individual
private companies, and particularly those in sectors known to be
vulnerable to the exploitation of migrant workers:

• agriculture,
• construction,
• fisheries,
• textiles, and
• domestic service.

There are many ways that private companies can be involved. In
South Asia, for example, IOM has successfully worked with a range
of private companies, including Tata, Taj Hotel Group, and Lanco to
provide trafficked persons with skills training (including training
in business planning and administration), work opportunities, and
financial support.

IOM is working directly with private recruitment agencies,
employers and migrant workers associations to establish standards
that prevent abuse at all stages of the migration cycle.

At the same time, better informed consumers can help drive the
change. We must know enough about the products we purchase to be
able to make the ethical choice. In times of economic uncertainty,
when consumers and businesses alike necessarily prioritize costs
savings, initiatives of this sort become even more crucial to our
fight against trafficking.

III. More Effective Prosecution

We can all agree that considerable progress has been made on the
legislative front in combating trafficking in persons.

In 2000, at the time of the Palermo Protocol, very few countries
had specific counter-trafficking legislation. Of those that did,
the crime was often defined differently between them.

Some focused solely on the exploitation of women in
prostitution, while others contemplated trafficking of male victims
and allowed for additional forms of exploitation. This definitional
incompatibility created serious obstacles for criminal justice
actors when attempting to cooperate across borders.

Twelve years on and the situation is very different. At last
count, 147 countries are now party to the Palermo Protocol, and
well over half of these have criminalized trafficking in persons in
national law. Although some governments continue to work with a
narrower definition of the crime, they are, in the main, working to
correct this.

This dramatic increase in criminalization has strengthened
efforts to investigate, prosecute, and sentence traffickers –
with a discernible increase in success rates over the last 3 years.
According to the 2011 TIP Report, produced by the US Department of
State, 6,017 prosecutions were effected globally in 2010, with
3,619 resulting in conviction – an increase from the 2,983
convictions achieved in 2008.

While we can be positive about this upward trend, we must weigh
these statistics against the fact that trafficking in persons
remains the World’s 3rd most profitable criminal activity,
wreaking incalculable damage on victims and their families,
communities, and countries.

Most of the courtroom successes concern sex trafficking.
Investigating and prosecuting labour trafficking may be the greater
challenge because it is so easily disguised within legitimate
commercial activity.

It is a challenge of which we are very much aware. Since 2010,
statistics from IOM’s own Global Trafficking Database
indicate that the Organization now assists more victims of labour
trafficking than sex trafficking. We are working hard to strengthen
the capacity of governments to investigate and prosecute sex and
labour traffickers with:

• technical expertise in developing and improving
  legislation;
• training of criminal justice officials;
• support in building national referral systems to promote
  efficient coordination between the relevant actors; and,
• facilitating inter-state cooperation to investigate the crime
  and fight corruption. Criminalization is an important first step,
  but the harder task remains.

Conclusion

Let me conclude today by saying that we have only just started,
and that whatever our achievements, they are modest and negligible
in the face of the challenges that lie ahead.

I have shared some of IOM's experiences, and have identified
areas we consider key priorities as we move forward.

I would like to conclude by reiterating the call that I'm
certain will be made by all concerned: the need to continue
improving cooperation in this fight against trafficking in
persons.

All of us here – international organizations like IOM,
developing and developed states, private sector companies large and
small, civil society, and private citizens – have our roles
to play, and we must unify our efforts and resources to eliminate
this heinous crime.

I look forward to your comments and reflections on these
matters.