The January earthquake that devastated Haiti put women and girls in the poorest country in the hemisphere at an increased risk of falling prey to people trafficking, activists and experts warn.

“The phenomenon has become much more visible since the earthquake, with the increase in the forced displacement of persons,” said Bridget Wooding, a researcher who specialises in immigration at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

“There is huge vulnerability to a rise in human trafficking and smuggling,” she told IPS.

The Dominican Republic and the United States are the main destinations for Haitian migrants. The figures vary, but there are between 500,000 and 800,000 Haitians and people of Haitian descent in the US and between one and two million in the Dominican Republic.

Women in Haiti “are exposed to forced prostitution, rape, abandonment and pornography,” Mesadieu Guylande, a Haitian expert with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-Latin America and the Caribbean, said.

The situation in Haiti was one of the issues discussed by representatives of NGOs, experts and academics from the region at the Second Latin American Conference on Human Smuggling and Trafficking which took place last week in Mexico.