On Thursday, a program to prevent traffic in girls and young women, financed by the International Labor Organization (ILO), was inaugurated in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

The provincial program is part of a national initiative against labor exploitation-based abduction and trafficking of girls and young women. Four other provinces are involved in the program involving four-year cooperation between the ILO and the All-China Women's Federation: Anhui, Guangdong, Henan and Hubei.

The Jiangsu provincial committee was set up on the same day to give guidance in executing the program and a fund of US$2.25 million provided by the ILO.

The program is intended to build on the experience of a similar ILO-financed project in Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam carried out between February 2002 and May 2003, according to Bai Zhiying, chairwoman of the Jiangsu Provincial Women's Association.

With migrant females aged between 12 and 24 as the target group, the program aims to involve agencies in mechanisms to prevent the abduction of women and children, and to reduce and eventually wipe out forced labor and trafficking of girls and young women among the migrant population, said Bai.

An affluent region on the coast, Jiangsu is home to 12 million migrant people, 13.5 percent of whom are teenage girls and young women between 12 and 24 years of age.

(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2005)