NZ to host conference on slavery

A major conference on human trafficking will be held in New Zealand next month.

It will be co-hosted by the Salvation Army with the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Pacific Immigration Directors' Conference.

Salvation Army justice advocate Chris Frazer said the recession was feeding the global supply of sex and labour slaves in some countries and New Zealanders were helping drive demand. Deteriorating household living standards in countries where traffickers sourced their victims were making the impoverished more vulnerable to profiteering traffickers.

A recent report released by anti-child sex trafficking network Ecpat and The Body Shop highlighted the increasing vulnerability of children and young people being coerced or conned into prostitution or the production of child pornography.

Ms Frazer said New Zealanders who surfed the internet for porn were likely to be contributing to the misery of those trafficked for the production of pornography.

Most New Zealand homes would contain items or components of products that had been produced by slave labour, she said.

Industries as diverse as clothing, sports shoes, coffee, chocolate, sugar, fireworks, glassware, jewellery and mobile phones and laptops offered products that had been found to have been made with slave labour.

"These are not one-off crimes against mainly children and women - the victims suffer day after day, year after year and the damage to their lives is often permanent," Ms Frazer said.

The three-day Pacific Trafficking in Persons Forum, starting on September 2 in Wellington, will include speakers from government departments and NGOs from the Pacific region as well as UN and law enforcement agencies.

- NZPA