Twelve million worldwide stuck in forced labour

GENEVA - Globalisation and demand for cheap labour has helped force at least 12.3 million people, half of them children, into slave-like work worldwide and create a huge human trafficking industry, according to a new UN study.

The United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO) said the vast majority of them were in Asia and Latin America, many working in agriculture or imprisoned in forced labour camps.

Children account for 40-50 per cent of those in forced labour, the ILO noted in a study that presents the first global picture of forced labour and human trafficking.

"Women and children can be especially prone to be trapped in exploitative living and working situations from which they have great difficulty escaping," the ILO said in the report.

Sex workers in Western countries, recruited and shipped there against their wills, comprised the single biggest money makers in the human trafficking industry, which generates US$32 billion ($44.25 billion) annually in profits. About US$28 billion of that is in the sex trade.

While forced labour -- defined as work extracted under threat and against a person's will -- has traditionally been fuelled by class or race discrimination, economic globalisation now plays a key role, Patrick Belser, the ILO's anti-forced labour coordinator, told a news conference.

Globalisation has placed extreme price pressures on producers and that has led some contractors to employ forced labour to supply Western companies, the ILO said.

"We have identified sectors where there is cause for concern that forced labour can be penetrating the supply chain of private companies, including quite major companies," said Roger Plant, director of the ILO anti-forced labour programme.

Some of them may not even be aware that their subcontractors have used slave labour, he said, declining to give names.

Economic migrants from developing countries seeking higher wages in industrialised nations are open to exploitation, with many forced to undertake undesirable and dangerous tasks, the ILO said. This was highlighted by the 2004 deaths of 21 Chinese immigrants in Britain, drowned gathering shellfish on a beach.

The ILO report said 9.8 million of those in forced labour served the private sector with 2.5 million forced to work by governments or military groups.

Myanmar, singled out by the ILO, and North Korea have come under UN and Western pressure to dissolve forced-labour camps.

The Asia and Pacific region had 9.5 million in forced labour, followed by Latin America with 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa with 660,000 and Europe and the US with 360,000.

- REUTERS