Email this page

News & Updates

Vital Voices Conference in Hong Kong Discusses Labor Trafficking

It is "a disgrace" for Hong Kong to turn a blind eye to human trafficking, which involves millions of people worldwide, a Hong Kong University scholar says.

"Even though [human trafficking] exists here, say, with prostitutes, people are not going to worry about girls elsewhere working as forced labor as a result of poverty," said Richard Welford, a professor specializing in corporate environmental governance and a founding director of Corporate Social Responsibility Asia.

He added there was no way of knowing the real number of sex slaves in the city. Welford estimates 3,600 others are trafficked each day, not only as sex slaves but in other forms of forced labor. As an example, Welford said many Indonesian domestic helpers have to hand over their first seven months' salary to their agents as a commission for facilitating their employment. "The problem is some of them are fired after seven months," he said.

According to Vital Voices, organizer of a summit on human trafficking, some 24 million people worldwide are forced to work in an industry worth an estimated US$32 billion (HK$249.6 billion). The summit, held 19 April 2007 at the Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong, attracted senior executives and officials from global corporations including Microsoft and Manpower and from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and other non-government organizations.

A two-year global initiative against forced labor was launched at the day-long summit to raise corporate awareness on anti-trafficking matters. Part of the initiative involves the signing of the Athens Ethical Principles, set up in January last year as part of the End Human Trafficking Now campaign launched by corporations and NGOs.

Businesses signing the principles pledge "zero tolerance" to working with companies or organizations involved in human trafficking. David Arkless, senior vice president of corporate affairs at Manpower, said 146 global corporations had joined the anti-trafficking movement by January this year.

But Arkless said the antitrafficking fight faced a long journey. "Getting companies to put their signatures on a convention is one step - ensuring their prolonged cooperation is another," Arkless said.

Adapted from: "Apathy to forced labor `a disgrace'" The Standard. 20 April 2007.