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Iran wants global front against crime

Iran Materials 19 October 2010 10:43 (UTC +04:00)
An Iranian official has called for the creation of a global front to work for the eradication of the root causes of human trafficking and other forms of organized crime.
Iran wants global front against crime

An Iranian official has called for the creation of a global front to work for the eradication of the root causes of human trafficking and other forms of organized crime, Press TV reported.

"Combating human trafficking requires collective measures by all countries, and the issue will not fade away while the root causes of the phenomenon remain," IRNA quoted Ali Asghar Soltanieh as saying at the fifth United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conference in Vienna on Monday.

"The Islamic Republic has done all it takes to fight such crime and is geared up to cooperate with its neighbors and regional countries on the issue," added Soltanieh, who is Iran's representative to the conference and the country's ambassador to International Atomic Energy Agency.

He also stated out that Iran has been on the "frontline" of fighting organized crime and has achieved much despite receiving "very little" international assistance.

According to the UNODC, human and drug trafficking and smuggling of migrants accounted for annual revenues of an estimated 115 billion dollars.

"Organized crime has ballooned to global proportions," UNODC chief Yury Fedotov said on Monday.

He estimated that human trafficking of mostly women and children to Europe for sexual exploitation brought in $3 billion each year while smuggling of migrants from Latin America to North America earned $6.6 billion.

Fedotov called for better use of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, a pact adopted in Palermo, Italy 10 years ago, which he said was a major landmark in international law providing a basis for extraditions, intelligence-sharing, and joint investigations.

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