N Ireland warned about increase in human trafficking
A Northern Ireland council has warned about increased human trafficking into the country.
The Cookstown council was one of just two local authorities in Northern Ireland to voice concerns over potential human trafficking victims.
Forty-five potential trafficking victims were discovered in Northern Ireland last year.
They claimed they were subjected to domestic servitude, labour or sexual exploitation, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
At least one case involved a girl from outside the UK who alleged she was sexually exploited, the local daily Mid-Ulster Mail reported Monday.
Now Arzu Merali, Head of Research at Islamic Human Rights Commission in London (IHRC) says: “The government is very keen on showing that it’s doing something about trafficking and trafficking in particular to do with sexual exploitation. However, when you actually look at the kind of measures that they are committed to, they’re really only able to have legislated or seem to be looking at individuals working within the criminal networks who may be involved in this and that.”
Merali told Press TV’s UK Desk that the government does not really address “the roots of the problem... And as I have mentioned many times before, this is a distraction really it’s symbolic, its gesture politics.”
An NCA report - National Referral Mechanism Statistics End of Year Summary 2014 - disclosed that last year, 45 referrals were made for potential victims of trafficking first encountered in Northern Ireland.
That represented a 10% increase on the previous year and 2% of the UK total.
A total of 37 referrals were for adults and eight for minors.
Half the victims came from Romania, 10 from China and others from Albania, Vietnam and Lithuania.
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