Japan needs to make greater efforts to stop being a destination for human-trafficking and swiftly ratify the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which outlaws the practice as well as migrant-smuggling, visiting U.N. Special Rapporteur Joy Ngozi Ezeilo said Friday.
At a news conference in Tokyo, Ezeilo said the vast majority of cases discovered in Japan involve prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, while there is also trafficking to exploit labor. She declined, however, to provide specifics.
Ezeilo, special rapporteur of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Trafficking in Persons, said there should be better protection of people under age 18 from prostitution and pornography, because the issue has not been sufficiently addressed.