UN: Urges Action on 'Scary' Levels of Trafficking in Southern Africa

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA -- UN agencies urged governments in southern Africa on Monday to draw up legislation to combat frightening levels of human trafficking, saying action was vital ahead of the upcoming football World Cup.

"None of the countries in southern Africa has specific anti-human trafficking legislation in place," Thomas Zindl-Cronin of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told reporters in Johannesburg.

Specific legislation to tackle the issue was needed to help the law enforcement agencies get to grips with the situation.

"South Africa and Mozambique are more advanced than the rest of the region, but the capacity of the police and the judiciary to deal with the problem is low."

With South Africa due to become the first country on the continent to host the World Cup in 2010, fears were expressed during the joint press conference about the numbers of foreign women who could be coerced into prostitution...

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