Underage girls made up nearly 70 per cent of the total number of victims trafficked for sexual exploitation in South-east Asia between 2016 and 2018.
This, and other transnational criminal activities such as drug and wildlife trafficking, is laid out in a new report on transnational organised crime in the region from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Exploiting gaps in enforcement and information sharing, riding on corruption, and laundering money often through casinos, transnational organised crime has expanded "aggressively" in the region and achieved global reach, said the 194-page report, the most comprehensive in five years.
"While law enforcement and border management in the region are robust in some jurisdictions, they are effectively not functioning in others, and limited cross-border cooperation and corruption are serious problems," the report, Transnational Organised Crime in South-east Asia: Evolution, Growth and Impact, says.
"Criminal networks in South-east Asia have achieved global reach, trafficking unfathomable quantities of high-profit methamphetamine, massive consignments of wildlife and forest products, and an increasing range of counterfeit consumer and industrial goods. They also continue to engage in the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons for the purposes of sexual and labour exploitation," it says.
"While transnational organised crime syndicates use their financial muscle to further corrupt and undermine the rule of law, they are also destroying the lives of countless people in South-east Asia," the report concludes.
The region needs a functional strategy to address transnational crime, and national and regional data collection and reporting must be strengthened, it says.
"It is important that countries take steps to increase collaborative intelligence gathering, law enforcement operations and criminal justice responses. This should also include initiatives to support regional networks of law enforcement officials and financial intelligence units."
The threat of transnational organised crime is most vividly illustrated by the unprecedented growth of methamphetamine production and trafficking. The region's illicit methamphetamine market and those of East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Bangladesh are "inter-connected and estimated to be worth between US$30.3 billion and US$61.4 billion (S$41 billion and S$84 billion) annually".
Human trafficking for sexual exploitation accounted for roughly 79 per cent of the total number of cases in Thailand from 2014 through 2017, primarily involving female victims from the Mekong region. The report adds that of the total number of victims trafficked for sexual exploitation, almost 70 per cent were underage girls.
"Most of the trafficking cases reported in Malaysia in recent years have also been related to sexual exploitation, accounting for roughly 60 to 73 per cent from 2016 through 2018," the report says.
Wildlife and timber theft is also rampant. "Multi-tonne ivory seizures, sometimes along with smaller quantities of rhino horn, have been made in Vietnam and Hong Kong, China, but also in mainland China, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand," it says.
The trafficking of African pangolins and their scales to markets in East and South-east Asia has also rapidly emerged as a major problem, following the decimation of the species in Asia.
On fake medicines, the report cites data for its conclusion that consumers in South-east Asia spent between US$520 million and US$2.6 billion on these a year.
