United Nations Anti-drug and Crime Agency has called on the international community to step up efforts to eradicate human trafficking that has worsened amid conflicts, poverty and break down of law and order in fragile states.

Ahead of the World Day against Trafficking in Persons on July thirty, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, said nearly every country in the world is affected by human trafficking and hundreds of thousands of victims have been forced into exploitative situations every day.

Its Regional Representative for Eastern Africa, Amado Andres said globally, twenty-seven million people were said to be in modern-day slavery, saying about eight hundred thousand people were trafficked across international borders annually.

Andres said about one million children were exploited by the commercial sex industry every year, eighty per cent of
victims being women and girls while seventy percent of female victims were trafficked for sexual exploitation.

According to Andres, human trafficking and smuggling of persons was a series global challenge which affects lives of people globally, driving billions of dollars to criminal organisations, saying this was no different for Eastern Africa, as trafficking in persons continue to pose serious threats to Eastern Africa, therefore, effective criminal justice responses and a strong regional cooperation was crucial.

Andres said while the best-known form of human trafficking is for sexual exploitation, millions of women, men and children are trafficked for the purpose of forced labour, domestic servitude, child begging or removal of their organs.

He said following the Kenyan example, they had the means to overcome those challenges in their region by establishing efficient and fully-operational anti-human trafficking units combined with a strong inter-regional cooperation to investigate and prosecute those responsible for such crimes.

According to him, criminal gangs have exploited political and social upheavals as well as weak border patrols in low income countries to smuggle vulnerable citizens into foreign lands where they provide unpaid labour or forced into prostitution, saying human trafficking was being tackled through a variety of national and international means.

He said UNODC was implementing program activities as part of the ‘Better Migration Management Programme, which was aimed at improving migration management in the region, and in particular at addressing the trafficking and smuggling of migrants within, and from the Horn of Africa.

The Regional Representative for Eastern Africa, said for UNODC, this included assisting countries to draft policy and legislation to criminalise trafficking in line with international treaty obligations, to ensure effective criminal justice capacity building, and to promote international cooperation in criminal matters.