Every year, millions of Asian men, women, and even children, venture to new pastures—from the village to the city and sometimes to another country. They are driven by poverty, social exclusion or civil unrest. Their goal is to survive and earn money for their families. For many—disproportionately women and children—these journeys end tragically, as they fall into the hands of traffickers. Trafficking in women and children is reported to be on the rise in Asia. Although accurate figures are hard to come by and that any estimates have to be treated with cautions, the United States’ State Department, for example, estimates that between 1 to 2 million people are trafficked worldwide, including 150,000 from South Asia and 225,000 from Southeast Asia. In the scale of organized crime, human trafficking ranks third behind drugs and arms smuggling.
URL : https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/30364/combating-trafficking-south-asia-paper.pdf