Dublin: Human Trafficking Worth €5.6 billion To Smugglers As 40,000 Migrants Die: *UPDATED Link

Human trafficking is the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them.

Smuggling of migrants involves the procurement for financial or other material benefit of illegal entry of a person into a State of which that person is not a national or resident.

*www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/journeys--f-death-boat-people-of-the-southern-mediterranean-1.1950857 

Virtually every country in the world is affected by these crimes.
The challenge for all countries, rich and poor, is to target the criminals who exploit desperate people and to protect and assist victims of trafficking and smuggled migrants, many of whom endure unimaginable hardships in their bid for a better life.

As the only United Nations entity focusing on the criminal justice element of these crimes, the work that UNODC does to combat human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants is underpinned by the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols on trafficking in persons and migrant smuggling.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates some 40,000 migrants have died since 2000

Smugglers rake in $7.0 billion (5.6 billion euros) every year from human trafficking between Africa and Europe and between Latin and North America, even as thousands continue to die in search of a better life, a new UN estimate showed Monday.
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/index.html  

But global revenues were probably "significantly higher," Yury Fedotov, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime told journalists, calling for closer international cooperation to help quash smuggling networks.
www.stopthetraffik.org.uk

 "Terrible tragedies are occurring daily as vulnerable women, children and men, place their trust in criminals to smuggle them across national borders," he said.
Only joint international efforts can help "prevent the smugglers from staying one step ahead of law enforcement," he continued.
The International Organisation for Migration estimates some 40,000 migrants have died since 2000 trying to make their way illegally to a new country, with 3,000 perishing while trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2014 alone.
Last month, as many as 500 migrants drowned in what the IOM called "the worst shipwreck in years," after traffickers reportedly rammed and sank the boat.