VIENNA, Feb 15: The human trafficking industry is a beast of unknown size whose extent must be determined, a senior UN official said on Friday at the close of an international forum on the racket.

“We need to move into a better knowledge of the problem,” Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

“It’s a beast of which we only know the footprints but don’t know the size of it.” Costa was talking to journalists at the end of the three-day forum in Vienna sponsored by UN.GIFT (the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking), an offshoot of the UNODC funded by the United Arab Emirates.

British actress Emma Thompson, Latino pop star Ricky Martin and Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak were among those who lent their names to an international campaign when the forum opened on Wednesday.

Some 1,200 experts, law enforcement teams, business leaders, NGO representatives and trafficking victims were to draw up strategies for the worldwide fight against human trafficking.

Costa described the event as “a great success ... in terms of awareness of the problem.” What was most important was to understand the scale of the phenomenon, which according to the UN generates some $31 billion annually but only began to be tackled six or seven years ago, Costa said.

“I don’t think we have understood what’s going on in the minds of victims and exploiters,” Costa said, both of whom were tempted by the prospect of gain.

Among other measures, UN.GIFT plans to help poor countries fund programmes to combat the scourge.

“But some governments still show unwillingness to recognize the severeness of the problem,” Costa said.

He welcomed the participation of entertainment stars, hoping that in the future a concert similar to Live Aid might be staged to raise public awareness about the trafficking industry.

According to UN estimates, around 2.5 million people are being trafficked around the world at any given time, and 80 percent of those are women and children.

The estimated global annual profits made from the exploitation of all trafficked force labour are 31.6 billion dollars.—AFP