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Ms. Akullo was speaking in Bangkok recently at a five-day training of trainers for police officers organized by Project Childhood (Protection Pillar), in partnership with UNODC, INTERPOL and World Vision. 
Attended by officers from the four Project Childhood countries who work in crimes against children units, the workshop aimed to improve investigative skills and knowledge on child sexual exploitation cases. The training utilized the newly developed police-training curriculum,Investigating Sexual Exploitation of Children. 
Trainers for the five-day session included Dr. Geeta Sekhon (UNODC expert and trainer on gender), Warren Bulmer (Canada), Bob Shilling (INTERPOL) and Jane Walsh (Australian Federal Police), all of whom are specialists in the area of crimes against children. Facilitation of the training event was provided by the INTERPOL Coordinator, Annethe Ahlenius. 
Mr. Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, highlighted the importance of a cooperative effort and the dissemination of training back to their countries. 
Project Childhood was recently introduced in Lao PDR through a workshop in the capital Vientiane. The 80 participants to the "Workshop on Anti Human Trafficking: Universal Periodic Review Recommendations and Combating Child Sex Tourism" included representatives from Lao PDR government ministries, the international community, international and national governmental organisations and the media. 
At the launch event, Ms. Margaret Akullo, the Project Coordinator for Project Childhood (Protection Pillar), emphasized that the Protection Pillar will significantly expand the intelligence base on the closed community of travelling sex offenders to more effectively prosecute suspects who seek to sexually abuse children. UNODC will provide assistance to the four countries in SE Asia to facilitate ratification and implementation of the relevant international legal instruments. INTERPOL will give operational criminal police support and advanced technological tools to strengthen international criminal police cooperation. 
Project Childhood countries were selected on the basis of a number of factors such as: the volume of reported arrests of alleged travelling child sex offenders; a perceived lack of institutional and legislative capacity to counter the crime, and the degree of participating Government willingness to engage with the international community to take effective action. Protection Pillar activities have already begun in Cambodia and Thailand and will extend to cover Lao PDR and Viet Nam in early 2012. 
A key workshop objective was to present findings from a UNODC legal review that examined current domestic legislative frameworks in Lao PDR as they apply to travelling child sex offenders. The report, an important Protection Pillar activity, determined whether Lao PDR law and legislative frameworks met international standards and obligations and addressed key issues such as child prostitution, sexual abuse of children, child pornography, child trafficking, child protection measures and International cooperation. 
Abbotsford Police Chief Constable Bob Rich and other police chiefs want a national strategy on human trafficking. (Abbotsford Police website)B.C. police chiefs are pushing for a national strategy on human trafficking.
They want better programs created to help rescued victims and to prosecute traffickers.
The BC Association of Chiefs of Police is calling on the federal government to update laws and provide more funding for programs for victims.
Association spokesperson, Abbotsford Police Chief Constable Bob Rich, said the federal government is doing a good thing in allowing trafficking victims to remain in Canada to testify against traffickers, but more needs to be done.
"I am encouraging a more holistic approach where we actually really look after these people's needs because then the chances somebody will come forward as a whistleblower are greatly increased if they really know they're going to be treated fairly and well," Rich said.
Rich also said laws preventing convicted child sex offenders from freely traveling abroad should be vigorously enforced.
Human trafficking involves the illegal movement of people across international borders for the purpose of exploitation, usually in the form of forced labour, prostitution and other forms of servitude, and usually involves threats or the use of force.
According to the federal government, most human trafficking victims are women and children from Asia, who are often forced into the sex trade.
In 2007, B.C. established the Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons with the goal of developing and coordinating the province's strategy to address human trafficking.
Dubious claims about Muslim men grooming white girls hide legitimate worries about a system that fails victims of abuse
The British National party's website, its logo still sporting a seasonal sprig of holly, is understandably triumphalist as it proclaims that the "controlled media" has admitted this week that "Nick Griffin has been right all along about Muslim paedophile gangs".
The particular branch of the controlled media the BNP refers to is the Times, which has been running the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of girls in the north of England. Specifically, the Times has marshalled evidence suggesting that these organised crimes are carried out almost exclusively by gangs of Pakistani Muslim origin who target white youngsters; and it quotes both police and agency sources who refer to a "conspiracy of silence" around the open investigation of such cases, amid fears of being branded racist or inflaming ethnic tensions in already precarious local environments.
This is not the first time that anxieties about the ethnic dimension of child sexual exploitation have been aired by the media. In 2004 the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City, which explored claims that Asian men in Bradford were grooming white girls as young as 11, sexually abusing them and passing them on to their friends, was initially withdrawn from the schedules after the BNP described it as "a party political broadcast", and the chief constable of West Yorkshire police warned that it could spark disorder.
Anecdotally, as far back as the mid-90s, local agencies have been aware of the participation of ethnic minority men in some cases of serial abuse. But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested.
The Times investigation is based around 56 men convicted in the Midlands and north of England since 1997, 50 from Muslim backgrounds. Granted, such prosecutions are notoriously difficult to sustain, but, nonetheless, this is a small sample used to evidence the "tidal wave" of offending referred to by unnamed police sources. Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo's, which has run projects in the areas concerned for many years, tells me that, while he is pleased to see open discussion of child sexual exploitation, he worries that "decent Pakistani men will now be looked at as potential child abusers". He insists: "This is not just about Pakistani men, and not just about Asian men. And it is happening all over the country."
While Narey acknowledges that "in the Midlands and north of England there does seem to be an over-representation of minority ethnic men in [offending] groups", he argues strongly that no useful conclusions can be drawn until the government undertakes a serious piece of research into what is a nationwide problem. (Keith Vaz, who chairs the Commons home affairs select committee called for such an inquiry today.) Narey also refutes the allegation that Muslim men are grooming white girls because of cultural assumptions about their sexual availability, as girls from minority backgrounds have been similarly abused.
Thus no official data exists on the ethnic or religious background of perpetrators of this form of child abuse, and local charities have stated publicly that they do not consider it a race issue. But it is worth noting that, when asked by the Times to collate its recent work according to ethnicity, Engage – based in Blackburn and one of the largest multi-agency organisations working on this issue – found that in the past year that 80% of offenders were white.
There is an ignoble tradition of racialising criminality in this country, in particular sexual offences, from the moral panic about West Indian pimps in the 1960s to the statistically dubious coverage of African-Caribbean gang rape in the 90s. But even those who do want further investigation into the apparent preponderance of Asian perpetrators tell me that this is not about cultural expectations regarding the sexual susceptibility of white females but rather about opportunity and vulnerability, especially of young people within the care system. It is certainly admissible to query just how beholden to "the tyranny of custom", as Wednesday's Times leader put it, are these twentysomething males who drive flash cars and ply their victims with alcohol.
Nevertheless, Muslim voices are now being lined up to attest that serial child molestation is not actually sanctioned by the Qur'an. By building an apparent consensus of voices "bravely" speaking out in the face of accusations of racism, it becomes that much harder for a figure from within the Muslim community to offer a more nuanced perspective or indeed state that these allegations are simply not true. The inevitable and distorting consequence of framing the debate around a "conspiracy of silence" is that it effectively shuts down or taints as mealy-mouthed any criticism.
The efforts of the Times to stand up this investigation are certainly considerable: selectively quoting or misquoting some groups, and inventing a category of "on-street grooming" that does not exist in law and was not recognised by any of the agencies I spoke to. It is also worth asking how responsible it is to provide ammunition to the violent racist extremists already active in these areas on such flawed evidence.
Meanwhile, the sunlight of investigative inquiry has yet to shine on our legal system which, all agencies agree, fails to cater to the needs of children who – groomed into acquiescence by practised abusers of all creeds and colours – don't present as the perfect victims our limited version of justice demands.
