More than 30 million women and children throughout Asia and the Pacific have been trafficked over the past 30 years, said a top UNICEF official today, calling the trade the "largest slave trade in history."

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kul Gautam told delegates at a two-day child trafficking symposium, which opened today in Tokyo, that an estimated 1.2 million children are traded by smuggling and prostitution rings each year.  Gautam warned that the number of victims is on the rise and that the Internet has helped foster the multibillion-dollar trade (Associated Press/Yahoo! News, Feb. 20).

About 100 representatives from government and nongovernmental organizations are at the symposium, a follow-up to the 2001 World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Yokohama, Japan.  Participants are urging greater coordination in efforts to stop the trade and calling education and public awareness campaigns, including efforts to reach potential perpetrators, vital in stemming the practice (Hiroshi Hiyama, Agence France-Presse, Feb. 20).

UNICEF pointed to poverty, gender discrimination, war, organized crime, globalization, traditions and beliefs, dysfunctional families and the drug trade as causes of child exploitation.  It said most trafficking victims are children from minority groups or are refugees, orphans, abandoned or poor (AP/Yahoo! News).