NANJING, Feb. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- A new program to prevent the kidnapping of Chinese girls and young women, with financing from the International Labor Organization (ILO), was inaugurated in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, on Thursday.

    A provincial committee was set up on the same day to give guidance in executing the program, called "The China program on prevention of kidnapping female children and young women with the purpose of exploitation in labor."

    The new program, with 2.25 million US dollars in financing from the representative office to China of ILO's international development department in Britain, is a four-year scheme developed by ILO in cooperation with 11 Chinese organizations, including the All-China Women's Federation.

    The new program is intended to spread the experience gained in another similar ILO-financed project designed to fight human trafficking 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 between 12 and 24 as the target group, thenew program is aimed at building a cooperation mechanism with a diverse participation on prevention of kidnapping women and children via comprehensive measures and actions, and to reduce and eventually wipe out cases of forced labor or kidnapping of girls and young women among the migrant population, said Bai.

    As an economically developed region on east China coast, Jiangsu is one of the main recipients of China's migrant population and is home to 12 million migrant people, 1.25 million of whom are teenage girls and young women between 12 and 24.

    According Bai, in addition to Jiangsu, the new program will also cover Guangdong, Hunan, Henan and Anhui, four other populous Chinese provinces. Enditem