Human trafficking helps spread HIV/AIDS in Asia - U.N.

By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Trafficking of an estimated 300,000 women and children across Asia each year, many forced into prostitution, is helping spread HIV/AIDS, the United Nations said on Wednesday, urging the region to tackle the root causes.

Women and children are most vulnerable to trafficking because of poverty, gender inequality and rights imbalances, said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, HIV/AIDs regional coordinator Asia and Pacific for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

"Both human trafficking and HIV greatly threaten human development and security, she told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific being hosted in the Sri Lankan capital.

"Trafficking ... also contributes to the spread of HIV by significantly increasing the vulnerability of trafficked persons to infection," she added, publishing a UNDP report on human trafficking and HIV that focuses on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

"The link between human trafficking and HIV/AIDS has only been identified fairly recently. Neither HIV/AIDS nor human trafficking have been integrated or mainstreamed adequately, either at policy or programmatic level," Wiesen-Antin said.

Major human trafficking routes run between Nepal and India and between Thailand and neighbours like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Many of the victims are young teenage girls.

UNAIDS estimates 5.4 million people were living with HIV in the Asia Pacific region in 2006, with anywhere between 140,000 and 610,000 people dying from AIDS-related illnesses.

That makes it the world's second largest number of people living with HIV after sub-Saharan Africa, where 25.8 million people are infected with the virus.

Conference host Sri Lanka has one of the lowest rates of HIV in Asia, with an estimated 5,000 infected people out of a population of around 20 million.

Neighbouring India, by comparison, has the world's third highest HIV caseload after South Africa and Nigeria, with around 2.5 million people living with the virus.