Some go willingly, but others are coerced into prostitution against their will. Both the convention and the protocol, which should be ready for adoption by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in late 2000, will be key items of discussion at the Tenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and the Treatment of Offenders, to take place in Vienna in April 2000. Trafficking has skyrocketed in recent years because of its huge profits and relatively few risks.
Many nations have no specific laws against trafficking in persons and few on women.
Existing laws may go unenforced and lack of evidence often allows traffickers to escape lightly. Some 40,000 to 50,000 Thai women are illegally working as prostitutes in Japan, states the recently published United Nations Global Report on Crime and Justice. The number of illegal sex workers in the European Union ranges between 200,000 and half a million, with some two thirds coming from Eastern Europe and the other third from developing countries, according to the Global Report. Some 670 women victims of trafficking were registered in Vienna in 1995, about six times more than in 1990. Traffickers earn huge sums for their victims.