The lead inves­ti­ga­tor on human traf­fick­ing to the United Nations says that traf­fick­ing is likely to increase due to the global eco­nomic reces­sion. The report given to the U.N. gen­eral assem­bly says this is because the root causes of traf­fick­ing has esca­lated as well. Poverty, unem­ploy­ment, and inequal­ity are said to be the root causes.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press story that we found at the Miami Her­ald, writer Edith Led­erer details the report.

In a report to the Gen­eral Assem­bly, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo expressed con­cern that traf­fick­ing “con­tin­ues to thrive” because these root causes are not being suf­fi­ciently addressed and “poten­tial vic­tims become more des­per­ate to escape their unfa­vor­able situations.”

Ezeilo, a human rights lawyer and pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Nige­ria who was appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Coun­cil job in August 2008, also expressed con­cern that traf­fick­ing vic­tims are some­times deported “with­out a suf­fi­cient period for recov­ery and reflection.”

Peo­ple who are traf­ficked should not be detained, charged, pros­e­cuted or sum­mar­ily deported, she stressed.

“Often, vic­tims of traf­fick­ing … have suf­fered severe trauma of a phys­i­cal, sex­ual or psy­cho­log­i­cal nature and require an enabling envi­ron­ment and the spe­cial­ized ser­vices pro­vided by trained per­son­nel to trust, feel safe to talk about their vic­tim­iza­tion to, and assist law enforce­ment offi­cials,” Ezeilo said.

She expressed con­cern that gov­ern­ments are not pay­ing ade­quate atten­tion to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of women, chil­dren and men traf­ficked for sex­ual exploita­tion and cheap labor, and to mea­sures to pro­tect and assist them.

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