On Thursday, a program to prevent traffic in girls and young
women, financed by the International Labor Organization (ILO), was
inaugurated in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu
Province.
The provincial program is part of a national initiative against
labor exploitation-based abduction and trafficking of girls and
young women. Four other provinces are involved in the program
involving four-year cooperation between the ILO and the All-China
Women's Federation: Anhui,
Guangdong,
Henan
and Hubei.
The Jiangsu provincial committee was set up on the same day to
give guidance in executing the program and a fund of US$2.25
million provided by the ILO.
The program is intended to build on the experience of a similar
ILO-financed project in Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam
carried out between February 2002 and May 2003, according to Bai
Zhiying, chairwoman of the Jiangsu Provincial Women's
Association.
With migrant females aged between 12 and 24 as the target group,
the program aims to involve agencies in mechanisms to prevent the
abduction of women and children, and to reduce and eventually wipe
out forced labor and trafficking of girls and young women among the
migrant population, said Bai.
An affluent region on the coast, Jiangsu is home to 12 million
migrant people, 13.5 percent of whom are teenage girls and young
women between 12 and 24 years of age.
(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2005)