World | WPN World People News

More than 20 million people living today around the world have been trafficked for sexual exploitation, forced labour and other activities across the world, generating a profit of €117 billion a year. It is also a very lucrative crime in Europe. On the occasion of the EU's Anti-Trafficking Day on 18 October, check out the facts in our infographic and discover what the EU and Parliament have been doing to tackle human trafficking.

Culture has the power to make cities more prosperous, safer, and sustainable, according to UNESCO’s Global Report, Culture: Urban Future to be launched in Quito (Ecuador) on 18 October. The Global Report presents evidence on how development policies in line with UNESCO’s conventions on the protection and promotion of culture and heritage can benefit cities.

Governments need targeted policies and investments that focus on agricultural development that is sustainable, raises wages and creates off-farm jobs in rural areas, says a new report to be presented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on Oct 17. Poverty in the Asia and Pacific region is largely a rural phenomenon and economic growth alone is not enough to eliminate it, the report adds.

The development of the first strategic roadmap for investment in smallholder agriculture and rural development in Iraq is the focus of a high-level meeting being held in Amman from 18 to 20 October.

Ahmed, 13, at an unaccompanied minor shelter in Trabia, Italy, on May 19, 2016.

Pupils receive lunch at Bwerangula Primary School in Kitchanga, North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Displaced Iraqi women line up to receive food and water at Debaga camp for internally displaced people in Iraq’s Erbil Governorate.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the opening of the Second World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments, ahead of the UN Conference on Housing Sustainable Urban Development in Quito, Ecuador.

Policies must be developed to address the current decline in fertility, known as the “European demographic winter”, and curb the negative effects of population ageing, as declared on Oct. 14 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), while adopting a resolution on the basis of a report by Kristin Johnsen (Norway, EPP/CD).