The rapid expansion of HIV/AIDS in the Mekong region is the focus of growing concern by international and regional organizations, governments, NGOs and community groups. It is a region which contains zones of high HIV/AIDS infection and transmission, as well as areas vulnerable to an explosive new expansion of the epidemic.

 

Many different ethnic groups live in the Mekong region. These minority people are at risk because of lack of access to education, poverty, lack of culturally-appropriate information in indigenous languages, cultural and social degeneration within traditional communities, non-traditional drug use, and increasing involvement in the sex trade.

 

While ethnic minorities still represent a relatively small percentage of the total population in Thailand, they are overrepresented in the sex industry and particularly vulnerable to exploitation, violence and maltreatment.

 

Due to UNESCO’s special mandate to work with ethnic minorities - under the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity -, the Trafficking and HIV/AIDS project is dedicated to work with these vulnerable groups. In order to implement informed and effective programmes, UNESCO emphasizes the role of research and capacity building to work with ethnic minorities and to support sustainable, locally-managed projects.

 

As part of its mandate to strengthen research, UNESCO is conducting a literature review and meta-analysis of existing statements on trafficking. UNESCO is tracing the origin of numbers cited by various sources, attempting to ascertain the methodology by which these numbers were calculated, and evaluating their validity. The aim is to clarify the bases on which estimates of the numbers of trafficked persons are derived, and to separate trafficking myths from trafficking realities.

When it comes to statistics, trafficking of girls and women is one of several highly emotive issues which seem to overwhelm critical faculties. Numbers take on a life of their own, gaining acceptance through repetition, often with little inquiry into their derivations. Journalists, bowing to the pressures of editors, demand numbers, any number. Organizations feel compelled to supply them, lending false precisions and spurious authority to many reports22