Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni used her appearance at the United Nations General Assembly on Monday to talk about child slavery and human trafficking and how it has become a phenomenon and scourge around the world. Meloni urged the UN to pay more than lip service to the job of combating and eradicating this crime Gateway Hispanic noted.

“The United Nations must do more because these criminal organizations are recreating, in new forms, a type of slavery—the commodification of human beings—that this Assembly once played a key role in eradicating. We cannot go backward,” she told the assembly.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated the total number of indentured people to have been 49.6 million in 2021, with 12 million of these to be children, Gateway noted. The children are usually victims of sexual exploitation, either being pimped out or sold in sexual slavery. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that human trafficking is almost as profitable as drugs and produces around $150 billion annually. Children account for about a quarter of this figure but that is rising.

Meloni emphasized the direct link between human trafficking and illegal immigration. The Italian PM has been hugely successful in stemming the latter problem, cutting the number of illegals entering and staying in Italy by 64 percent. This criminal activity is especially obvious and urgent at the United States southern border where cartels have used the open border policies of the Biden-Harris administration to promote an explosion of child trafficking.

“Our goal, in the face of tens of thousands of people embarking on dangerous journeys to enter Europe illegally, is to first ensure their right not to have to emigrate—to not be forced to uproot themselves simply because they have no other choice. This desperation is being exploited by increasingly powerful and far-reaching organizations of unscrupulous criminals.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has admitted that under the Biden-Harris administration it has been unable to track the fate of 300,000 children. Numerous reports suggest these children are being sold into sex slavery or used as free or cheap labor.

Meloni has spoken about human trafficking from the UN podium before and has used her profile as one of the world’s most popular leaders to press an issue is often ignored by voters and politicians alike because it is so distasteful and so gut-wrenching.

“There is a red thread that links the organizations exploiting human trafficking in Africa with those managing drug trafficking in Latin America, and with those who kidnap children to turn them into sexual slaves for unscrupulous elites, robbing them of both their present and their future,” she said.