Akbar Javanfekr, who is both Ahmadi-nejad’s director of communications and managing director of the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), said his own experiences told him that the rate of trafficking in women and children was very high in Europe.
IRNA reported that Javanfekr said that in meeting last Tuesday with a representative of UNICEF, the UN children’s fund.
Javanfekr said that trafficking in women and children—done largely but not entirely for sexual exploitation—is a worldwide phenomenon, but is far more serious in Europe than elsewhere.
The United States issues an annual report on trafficking in persons. It rates 184 countries in four categories. In the bottom category of countries that are not making any significant effort to fight trafficking are 23 countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. Ten of the 23 are Muslim-majority states; none is European.
The next-to-the-bottom category includes countries that have a severe trafficking problem but have committed themselves to do something about it. That list of 40 countries includes just two European states, Estonia and Cyprus.