It takes an emphatic and continuous cooperation among Greater Mekong
Subregional (GMS) nations to tackle the problem of human trafficking,
Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng has declared.
Addressing the opening ceremony of the GMS Ministerial Meeting on
April 30 in Phnom Penh, the Deputy PM, who is also Cambodia’s Minister
of Internal Affairs, made it clear that human trafficking is a big
burden affecting all the region’s nations and governments.
He stressed the need for a commitment, jointly made by stakeholders,
to act against human trafficking. The ministerial event presents the
perfect opportunity for involved nations to work together and crackdown
on the problem, he added.
One of the event’s
objectives is to approve the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative
against Trafficking (COMMIT) for the 2015-2018 period.
The third COMMIT communiqué is also expected to be signed during the
event, authorising the use of wider approaches and resources to
eliminate human trafficking in the region.
According to a survey conducted by the International Labour Organisation
(ILO), some 20.9 million people across the world have suffered from
forced labour, with nearly 20 percent of them being children. A majority
of them are from the GMS.
The GMS cooperation
programme consists of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and
China’s Yunnan and Guangxi provinces.-VNA