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	Human trafficking: All-out assault on rights, safety and dignity by UN News, OHCHR, UNHCR, IOM, agencies   Human trafficking is a horrific crime and “an all-out assault on people’s rights, safety and dignity,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on the eve of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.   “Tragically, it is also a problem that is growing worse – especially for women and girls, who represent the majority of detected trafficked persons globally”.   Conflicts, forced displacement, climate change, inequality and poverty, have left tens of millions of people around the world destitute, isolated and vulnerable. And the COVID-19 pandemic has separated children and young people in general from their friends and peers, pushing them into spending more time alone and online.   “Human traffickers are taking advantage of these vulnerabilities, using sophisticated technology to identify, track, control and exploit victims”.   The Secretary-General underlined the need for governments, businesses and civil society to invest in policies, laws and technology-based solutions that can identify and support victims, locate and punish perpetrators, and ensure a safe, open and secure internet.   The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Ghada Waly, said whilst digital technology has been “a vital lifeline” for many during pandemic restrictions, she warned that they are “being increasingly exploited by criminals”.   The borderless nature of information and communications technologies (ICT) enable traffickers to expand their reach and profits with even greater impunity.   Sadly, more than 60 per cent of known human trafficking victims over the last 15 years have been women and girls, most of them trafficked for sexual exploitation. And as conflicts and crises increase misery, countless others are in danger of being targeted with false promises of opportunities, jobs, and a better life.   UN human rights experts say the international community must “strengthen prevention and accountability for trafficking in persons in conflict situations”.   Women and girls, particularly those who are displaced, are disproportionately affected by trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced and child marriage, forced labour and domestic servitude.   “These risks of exploitation, occurring in times of crisis, are not new. They are linked to and stem from existing, structural inequalities, often based on intersectional identities, gender-based discrimination and violence, racism, poverty and weaknesses in child protection systems,” the experts said.   Refugees, migrants, internally displaced and Stateless persons are particularly at risk of attacks and abductions that lead to trafficking. And the dangers are increased by continued restrictions on protection and assistance, limited resettlement and family reunification, inadequate labour safeguards and restrictive migration policies.   “Such structural inequalities are exacerbated in the periods before, during and after conflicts, and disproportionately affect children”, they added.   Despite links between armed group activities and human trafficking – particularly targeting children – accountability “remains low and prevention is weak,” according to the UN experts.   Child trafficking – with schools often targeted – is “linked to the grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict, including recruitment and use, abductions and sexual violence,” they said.   “Sexual violence against children persists, and often leads to trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and forced marriage, as well as forced labour and domestic servitude”.   The experts also highlighted that in conflict situations, organ harvesting trafficking is another concern, along with law enforcement’s inability to regulate and control armed groups and others traffickers’ finances – domestically and across borders.   The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned on Friday that protection services for refugees and migrants making perilous journeys from the Sahel and Horn of Africa towards North Africa and Europe, including survivors of human trafficking, are “severely lacking”.   http://news.un.org/en/story/2022/07/11236 http://www.iom.int/world-day-against-trafficking-persons-2022 http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/endht/index.html http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/07/trafficking-persons-conflict-situations-world-must-strengthen-prevention-and   To support trafficking victims, UNHCR urges more protection services in Africa   Protection services are severely lacking for refugees and migrants making perilous journeys from the Sahel and Horn of Africa towards North Africa and Europe, including survivors of human trafficking, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency warned today.   In a new report released on the eve of World Day against Trafficking in Persons, UNHCR mapped protection services available to asylum-seekers, refugees, and migrants as they travel along these routes.   Some victims are left to die in the desert, others suffer repeated sexual and gender-based violence, kidnappings for ransom, torture, and many forms of physical and psychological abuse.   The report is the second of its kind and highlights the gaps in available protection services, notably in shelter, access to justice, identification of survivors and the provision of responses to gender-based violence, trafficking, and for unaccompanied and separated children. It covers 12 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Somalia, and Sudan.   “I am appalled by the abuses that refugees and migrants face as they travel through the Sahel and the East and Horn of Africa towards North Africa, and sometimes on to Europe,” said UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central and Western Mediterranean Situation, Vincent Cochetel. “Too many lives have been lost or broken on these routes.”   Cochetel stressed the urgent need for more funding to implement better services for preventing human trafficking, identifying and supporting survivors, ensuring access to asylum for victims and those at risk of trafficking who need international protection, as well as bringing perpetrators to justice.   He also cited the need for States, UN bodies, civil society and NGOs to redouble efforts to implement existing international frameworks like the UN Palermo Protocols on human trafficking and smuggling as the best collective means to save lives and combat these crimes.   Given the global expansion in the use of technology and online platforms enabling traffickers and smugglers to advertise their services and lure unsuspecting victims, part of the new effort, he added, must also involve collaboration among States and the private sector to crack down on the use of the Internet by traffickers to identify, groom and recruit victims, including children. Digital technologies can also be leveraged, however, to provide communities with trustworthy information on the risks of irregular journeys, including trafficking, and empower them with tips and information on safe options. All measures to respond to human trafficking and smuggling, including online, must be compliant with international law and human rights standards.   The report, ‘Mapping of Protection Services for Vulnerable People on the Move, Including Victims of Trafficking,’ provides tailored information for refugees and migrants on services that are currently available on the different routes. It also serves as a reference for donors to target investments in resources where they are most needed, and to the actors best placed to provide these essential services.   To support and assist survivors, it urges the introduction of community-based shelters and safe spaces, better access to legal services; and differentiated services for children and female survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence.   It also identifies critical locations on the routes that serve as “last stops” before refugees and migrants embark on further journeys across the Sahara. Failing to plug service gaps in such locations misses an opportunity to help people to access protection and safety rather than forge ahead with life-threatening onward travel.   * Globally, UNHCR works with multiple UN agencies, particularly IOM and UNODC, as well as regional and national partners, to develop initiatives to address human trafficking. UNHCR calls on all States to ratify and apply all the international standards relevant to prevention, protection and prosecution in the context of human trafficking.   http://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2022/7/62e3cc514/support-victims-trafficking-unhcr-urges-protection-services-along-routes.html   July 2022 (OHCHR)   Slavery, including in its contemporary forms, and trafficking in persons are crimes prohibited under international human rights law. Yet millions of people around the world remain forced into servitude and other contemporary forms of slavery.   Millions are also trafficked worldwide for the purpose of exploitation, including sexual and labour exploitation, organ removal, forced marriage or forced criminality.   This exploitation persists, even as we approach 100 years since the adoption of the Slavery Convention of 1926.   UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): Human Trafficking   Human Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit. Men, women and children of all ages and from all backgrounds can become victims of this crime, which occurs in every region of the world.   Anti-Slavery International: Human Trafficking   Human trafficking is the process of trapping people through the use of violence, deception or coercion and exploiting them for financial or personal gain.   What trafficking can mean is girls forced into sexual exploitation; men tricked into accepting risky job offers and trapped in forced labour in building sites, farms or factories; women recruited to work in private homes only to be trapped, exploited and abused behind closed doors with no way out.   People don’t have to be transported across borders for trafficking to take place. In fact, transporting or moving the victim doesn’t define trafficking – it can take place within a single country, or even within a single community.   People can be trafficked and exploited in many forms, including being forced into sexual exploitation, forced labour, crime, domestic servitude, marriage or organ removal.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/trafficking-in-persons http://www.ohchr.org/en/topic/slavery-and-trafficking http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-slavery/annual-thematic-reports http://www.coe.int/en/web/anti-human-trafficking http://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/   * Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, on contemporary forms of slavery affecting persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities: http://bit.ly/3POkwRb Visit the related web page
	A hunger crisis threatens millions by Gareth Owen Humanitarian director of Save the Children UK   The combined effects of climate change, COVID-19 and the Ukraine war are threatening a global disaster that not nearly enough people are talking about, least of all world leaders.   In just two years, the number of severely food insecure people has doubled from 135 million to 276 million, with almost 50 million on the edge of famine.   Global food commodities and fuel prices are soaring due to the conflict in Ukraine, which, together with Russia, provides huge quantities of the wheat, maize and sunflower oil used to feed populations in places like Somalia, Yemen and Lebanon.   But even before Russia invaded Ukraine, it was clear there could be famines this summer.   A new report, co-authored by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Food Programme, warned humanitarian action is urgently needed in 20 “hunger hotspots”. These are areas where lives and livelihoods are likely to be endangered by “a significant deterioration of acute food insecurity in the coming months”.   Among the hotspots are Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Honduras, the Sudan and the Syrian Arab Republic, while Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen are the four countries most at risk.   The Ukraine crisis will likely be cited as the reason why world leaders have not yet responded to such warnings with an urgently needed global galvanising effort – but it shouldn’t be.   I began my aid career responding to famine in Somalia in 1993. Three decades later, the world has changed and the causes are different, but the obscenity of lives unnecessarily lost to starvation remains tragically the same.   Today, it is estimated that one person is dying from hunger every 48 seconds in drought-ravaged East Africa. Nearly half a million people are facing famine-like conditions across parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, with the lives of 350,000 severely malnourished children hanging in the balance in the latter. In Kenya, 3.5 million people suffer from extreme hunger, while across the three countries, this rises to over 23 million – more than double the number last year.   This desperate situation is far from unique: around four million children aged under five in Africa’s Central Sahel are at risk of starvation in the coming weeks. West Africa is facing its worst food crisis in a decade, with 27 million affected – up from seven million in 2015.   Yet, urgent appeals are woefully underfunded.   On 26 April, world leaders pledged $1.4bn for the East Africa crisis – far less than the United Nations request for $4.4bn. Moreover, not all the donations are new money, some of the amount pledged is funding already allocated. To make matters worse, just 2% ($93.1m) of the current appeal has actually arrived.   In 2017, when 16 million people in East Africa faced severe hunger, the UK provided £861m as part of the timely global response that helped avert widespread famine. Despite a higher number of people affected, over the past year the UK allocated only £219m to the three countries.   The story is no better in places like Yemen and Afghanistan, where less than a third of the humanitarian funds needed in 2022 have been made available, but the needs remain enormous. It’s a story that is repeated in most current humanitarian emergencies, a tale of financial austerity that has been consistently trending downwards in recent years.   Except in Ukraine, where rich nations successfully raised over $16bn in one month to address the terrible crisis. The stark fact is that the massive, abundantly resourced humanitarian response in Ukraine may well come at the expense of lives elsewhere.   A new report, ‘Dangerous Delay 2: The Cost of Inaction’, produced by Save the Children and Oxfam in partnership with the Jameel Observatory, warns that national and global responses largely remain too slow and too limited to prevent a repeat of Somalia’s 2011 famine, which killed more than 260,000 people. Entrenched bureaucracies and political choices continue to curtail a unified global response, despite enhanced government programmes, improved early warning systems and efforts by local organisations.   The clock is ticking. Every minute that passes is a minute closer to starvation and possible death for children. It should be unconscionable that millions of children’s lives are at risk.   But, without political action to tackle inequality and climate change, preventing people from dying of starvation will not stop the cyclical and predictable crises experienced by millions around the world.   Mass starvation is always a failure of leadership. If we are unable to summon the collective political will to meet the most basic survival needs of millions of people today, then what chance does the human race have of solving the ever graver planetary challenges that inevitably lie ahead?   http://www.icrc.org/en/document/humanitarian-crises-world-cant-ignore-2023 http://unocha.exposure.co/11-crises-to-watch-in-2023 http://humanitarianaction.info/gho2023 http://www.unicef.org/press-releases/urgent-action-needed-acute-malnutrition-threatens-lives-millions-vulnerable-children http://www.unicef.org/emergencies/11-emergencies-need-more-support-2023 http://www.savethechildren.net/news/new-analysis-number-people-facing-extreme-hunger-more-50-3-years-afghanistan-worst-hit http://www.rescue.org/article/top-10-crises-world-cant-ignore-2023 http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/the-hunger-crisis/world-hunger-facts/ http://www.wfp.org/publications/wfp-global-operational-response-plan-update-6-november-2022 http://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/resources/alerts-archive/en/   June 2022   Covid-profiting super rich should fight hunger, says UN food chief. (EU Observer)   Covid-profiting billionaires and Gulf countries currently enjoying high fuel prices need to do more to end global hunger, says the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).   The world's global food crisis is set to only get worse with some 345 million people marching towards starvation, compared to 80 million six years ago, said WFP executive director David Beasley on Thursday (30 June).   "Within that there are 50 million people knocking on famine's door in 45 countries," he said, noting it could also trigger mass migration.   But with a $10bn [€9.6bn] shortfall in WFP funding and Russia's war in Ukraine, the issue of food insecurity may spiral out of control, he warned.   Beasley said immediate action was needed, noting that billionaires during the height of the pandemic had a net worth average increase of $5.2bn per day. "All we're asking for is to give us one to two days worth of your net worth increase," he said.   Oxfam echoed that, saying billionaires during the pandemic saw their fortunes increase by $820bn. Among the profiteers were Tesla's Elon Musk, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, among others.   Beasley also pointed to the Gulf states, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. "Now with oil prices so high, the Gulf states are not stepping up like they should". He said they are projected to have almost $1 trillion of reserves due to increased fuel costs, which should be used to fund humanitarian relief in Yemen, Sudan, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.   He was also alarmed by the possibility of a major rice shortage next year, on top of the already dwindling supply of wheat produced by Ukraine and blocked in its port city of Odessa by Russia. Ukraine, for instance, grows enough food to feed 400 million people. Half of that food is no longer available.   * (On the 1st of August under a UN brokered agreement, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the first Ukrainian shipment of grain left Odessa, followed by 3 further ships a week latter)   "Before Ukraine, we were already facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two," he said. Diminished access to fertilisers produced by Russia and Belarus are also an issue set to impact farms in Africa, he said.   The WFP feeds 65 million people inside Africa, a continent whose population is around 1.4 billion. Smallholder farms in Africa feed around 70 percent of the population, or around 980 million people.   "We're feeding 65 million, we're not feeding the rest," he said. "And so if the smallholder farms reduce their harvest, you're talking about dozens upon dozens of millions of more people coming into emergency food insecurity," he said.   http://euobserver.com/world/155391 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/world-food-program-warns-of-a-looming-global-catastrophe http://reliefweb.int/report/world/crisis-we-can-still-avert-potential-human-cost-agriculture-losses-2022 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/south-sudan-faces-growing-food-crisis-as-millions-go-hungry http://www.dw.com/en/un-record-345-million-people-marching-to-the-brink-of-starvation/a-62389284 http://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-interview/20221003-global-food-security-crisis-famine-in-somalia-on-the-horizon http://blogs.prio.org/2022/09/a-perfect-storm-the-impact-of-the-ukraine-war-on-donor-priorities/   http://www.wfp.org/emergencies/global-food-crisis http://www.wfp.org/publications/war-ukraine-drives-global-food-crisis http://www.savethechildren.net/news/families-resorting-extreme-measures-survive-hunger-crisis-prompts-more-funding-save-children http://www.rescue.org/article/why-millions-people-across-africa-are-facing-extreme-hunger http://bit.ly/3d13stm http://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/watchlist-crisis-alert-unnatural-disaster-east-africa http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/g7-must-pursue-windfall-taxes-excess-corporate-pandemic-profits-and-cancel-poor
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