General

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela believes that it is necessary to point out that crimes of human trafficking, violence, sexual abuse and exploitation, modern slavery and forced labour are, from any standpoint, despicable practices that we firmly condemn, in particular because they have proliferated and spread in ongoing situations of armed conflict throughout the world, especially those promoted by terrorist groups and other violent non-State actors operating in the Middle East and North Africa, such as Da’esh, the Al-Nusra Front and Boko Haram. The terrorist actions carried out by these organizations have caused a human tragedy, whose main victims have unfortunately been the most vulnerable — women, girls, boys — who have been caught up in wars that they did not start and have become commodities for these criminal trafficking networks. 

Venezuela will never relent in its demands on the various actors of the international community to put an end to the supply of financial and logistical support and weapons to terrorist groups and other violent non-State actors that promote the crime of trafficking in persons, enslaving men and women and using them as active participants in armed conflicts, exploiting them in numerous ways and exacerbating the cycle of suffering and death. They are the ones who are primarily responsible for the excesses of war, causing the massive flows of refugees, sexual exploitation against civilians, forced labour and modern slavery.