Human trafficking rivals drug trade as world's most profitable criminal activity says
Vatican official
1st. Nov.2013: Human trafficking today threatens to overtake the drug trade as the
most profitable criminal activity in the world, a top Vatican official said on Thursday.
Introducing plans at a31 Oct. press conference for a weekend seminar on human trafficking,
the chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences said that human trafficking
is “a shocking offense against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental
human rights.” Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez-Sorondo noted that the UN estimates over
20 million people have been exploited as forced labourers in the past decade. Along
with virtual slavery, human trafficking also produces victims for sexual exploitation
and for the harvesting of organs, he said. The November 1-2 seminar at the Vatican,
co-sponsored by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences with the World Federation of
Catholic Medical Associations, will seek to establish the real state of this phenomenon
and an agenda to combat this heinous crime.