Human trafficking - Tackling evil of modern slave trade

The campaign launched yesterday by Justice Minister Michael McDowell on human trafficking underlines an insidious and potentially growing problem facing this country.

Currently, the number of cases here is small but such is the concern behind it that it has already warranted several ongoing garda investigations of allegations that women are being illegally brought into the State for employment in the sex industry.

Flowing from those probes, the gardaí and Justice Department officials have produced a report which was published to coincide with a Crimestoppers poster campaign highlighting this criminal enterprise.

Outside this country, about 100,000 vulnerable women around eastern Europe are lured into the sex trade annually, and Ireland is one of the target destinations of those criminals who get rich on human suffering and depravity.

Frivolous though lap dancing clubs may be considered, what is seen as nothing but innocuous fun may be contributing inadvertently to human trafficking.

Because human trafficking is comparatively recent to Ireland, the system here is ill-equipped to respond adequately to it.

What will improve awareness and may be effective action against it, is the implementation of the 13 recommendations contained in yesterday’s report. Among them is the strengthening of legislation, continuation of special garda operations and increased cross-border cooperation.

The chairman of the Irish Human Rights Commission, Dr Maurice Manning, did not overstate the depravity of human trafficking in saying it constituted one of the most severe violations of human rights in the world today, nor that it had been identified as a contemporary form of slavery.