❙Congratulatory Speech❙
Seoul International Conference against
Human Trafficking in Migrant Women
Good morning. I am Lawmaker Kim Chun-Jin.
I would like to extend my warm gratitude to all the distinguished participants of the Seoul
International Conference against Human Trafficking in Migrant Women.
Also, my special appreciation to Chairperson Hyun Byung-Chul of the National Human
Rights Commission of Korea for hosting this meaningful conference, to Ms. Joy Ngozi
Ezeilo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking of Persons who will give us a keynote
address on the theme of ‘the Status of Human Trafficking of Migrant Women Around the
World and the Role of the International Community’, to Commissioner MA Victoria
Cardona of the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, and to Ms. Amara
Pongsapich, the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand.
I will start by briefing talking about human trafficking. With the end of the cold war era
and the beginning of the global economy, personal exchanges among countries increased
significantly, but on the flip side, human trafficking, an illegal form of exchanges, surfaced
as a serious international problem. Human trafficking is one of the most serious crimes
against humanity that destroys the human dignity itself. The size of the human trafficking
black market is the third largest. And 80% of the victims are women and children.
According to a UNICEF statistics, more than one million children around the world are
put to prostitution due to human trafficking; more than 30 million children for the past 30
years or so have lost their childhood due to sexual exploitation. Many international NGOs
state that international human traffickers earned 28 billion dollars a year from sexual
exploitations on women and children.
On the issue of ‘human trafficking in migrant women’, the theme of the Seoul
International Conference, the NHRCK held a ‘Seoul International Conference on Protection
and Promotion of Human Rights of Migrants in the Multicultural Society’ in 2008 and