Human trafficking conference begins

An Iraqi girl holds a sign reading 'UN is responsible for the loss of life of our family members' at the U.N. refugee agency in Jakarta

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (CNN) -- When Iraqi children asked 43-year-old Amal Hussan what she knew about Australia, she told them it was beautiful and it was a place they could go to school every day.

Days later more than a hundred children perished off the Indonesian coast as Hussan clung to a piece of wood after the rickety boat they were in, bound for the Australian territory of Christmas Island, broke apart in the Java Sea.

The plight of Hussan and others like her, who pay thousands of dollars to gangsters and often end up on floating deathtraps, is at the center of a people smuggling conference in the Indonesian island of Bali this week.

In a gathering Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer called the biggest and highest-level of its kind, representatives from more than 30 countries have come together to discuss methods of clamping down on this lucrative and highly organized trade.

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The regional conference opens Tuesday, co-hosted by Pacific neighbors Indonesia and Australia.

It comes at a time the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates as many as two million women and children are trafficked around the world each year, in a dirty business worth $10 billion.

Smuggling within Asia makes up much of that, with U.S. State Department figures showing 225,000 victims a year emanate from South East Asia and over 150,000 from South Asia.

This populous and diverse region boasts what the UNHCR calls the largest caseload in the world -- some 6.2 million Afghan refugees. It also includes the stepping stones of Malaysia and Indonesia, serving as transit points for Australia-bound asylum seekers.

Australia has been criticized for its newly-adopted "zero-tolerance" stance on boat people. Since the infamous Tampa freighter standoff, Canberra has turned away all boats it suspects of carrying illegal human cargo, causing tension with some of its neighbors.

Australian Immigration Department spokesperson, Steve Ingram has defended his country's stance, saying all people who arrive by boats are smuggled in.

Regional problem

While the influx of boat people along the pipeline from the Indonesian archipelago to Australia's coast has taken center stage in recent months, other countries in Asia are not immune to the trade.

United States state department figures estimate 375,000 illegal immigrants are smuggled through Asia each year

Chinese economic migrants have fallen into the hands of ruthless gangs known as "snakeheads" who operate from the Fujian province of China, while the Mekong Delta is also notorious for its trafficking, particularly of women and children feeding the sex trade.

Pacific Island nations, such as Nauru, have also joined the fray. Australia has brokered deals with Nauru and other nations to process some of the asylum seekers it has turned away.

Most of these countries are sending ministers to the conference, organizers say, with a smattering of representatives from the European Union and global groups.

Already, the United Nations has identified people smuggling as the "world's fastest growing criminal business," with links to an underworld of sex and drug crimes.

Buy-in

Key to the Bali conference, organizers say, is integrated political involvement. Momentum is needed to tackle this problem together, says Richard Danziger from the IOM in Jakarta.

Because people are being smuggled across borders, and the problem is "transnational," it can only really be tackled in an interrelated crackdown -- police have to stamp out fake passports and visas along the major smuggling routes and tighten slack borders, foreign ministers say.

"It is an international problem," says Dr. Hassan Wirajuda, Indonesia's minister for foreign affairs.

Mideast countries, along with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran also need to take part, experts say, as most asylum-seekers come from there.

While it is unclear whether any concrete measures will emerge, it is clear that governments are no longer willing to stand by while smugglers pass them by.

"They have to come through the door and not the window," says Ingram.