A conference on the international trafficking of women and children has ended in the Philippines capital, Manila, with calls for the trade to be made a crime.

Delegates from twenty-one countries approved a plans to fight trafficking, including laws to punish those involved.

Trafficking in people is said to be the third biggest source of profits for organised criminals -- after drugs and weapons.

But in most countries the traffic in people itself is not against the law. The BBC correspondent in Manila says that each year around a million people are forced or tricked into becoming prostitutes, sweatshop workers or domestic servants in foreign countries.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service