Increased awareness of human trafficking was necessary to combat the practice ahead of the 2010 World Cup, non-profit organisations said on Friday.

"Awareness is rising steadily, but it's not where it should be... we need to do a lot of work to get where we need to be," Major Marieke Venter from the Salvation Army in South Africa, told a media briefing in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

According to the Salvation Army, 450 000 of the two million people trafficked each year are in Africa.

There was not enough awareness, especially in the rural areas, said Khopotso Nakin, director of the New Life Centre in Berea, Johannesburg, in a telephonic interview.

The centre rescues, shelters and rehabilitates women and child victims of human trafficking.

The phenomenon was on the rise, said Nakin adding: "There is an increase... they come from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and many of them from rural areas within the country, to the cities."

Women were lured with promises of work, education and a better life, but were prostituted when they arrived in the city.

Agreeing that trafficking was on the rise on the continent, Salvation Army international social justice commission director Christine MacMillan said the World Cup and other major sporting events were a major draw-card for traffickers.

"There are large volumes of people coming and they are men. They are away from home and alcohol is flowing and they want sex," she said.

It was a "very lucrative" time for traffickers.

"Traffickers are marketers... they will consider where people are coming from... they will know exactly what will sell the most," she said.

She urged greater awareness of human trafficking not only among police and authorities, but also in the broader community, and said this should extend beyond 2010.

She said trafficking was not limited to sex work, but included debt bondage, labour and organ trafficking.

Rescuing trafficked women was dangerous and extremely difficult.

"You cannot even talk to those girls. Once you identify them, its difficult to access them, someone is watching them all the time," she said.

MacMillan said women were trafficked from, among others, eastern Europe and Thailand.

South Africa had laws against kidnapping and sexual offences but the law against human trafficking was still in the works, she said arguing that legislation targeting trafficking itself was needed.

Advocate Nolwandle Qaba, of the National Prosecuting Authority's Tsireledzani programme co-ordinating unit - which focuses on human trafficking - said the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill had been approved by Cabinet.

"... It is now with the chief state law adviser who must certify it... once that's done it will be tabled before Parliament," she said.

It would ensure that all trafficking — for forced labour, forced marriage, debt bondage, servitude, removal of body parts and sexual exploitation — was outlawed and would provide for the assistance of victims once they had been rescued.

Qaba said South Africa had noted non-governmental organisations' (NGOs) concerns about a possible increase in human trafficking, especially of children, during the World Cup.

"There were the same concerns in Germany [the World Cup hosted by Germany in 2006] but this did not materialise... this could mean that their preventative mechanisms were successful," she said.

South Africa was putting its own mechanisms in place and was currently conducting research into trafficking.

Its response included the training of border officials, social workers, nurses, law enforcement workers, labour inspectors and legal NGOs. Around 1200 officials had been trained since July 2008.

National, local and regional campaigns to educate potential users of trafficked people and raise awareness among traditional leaders would also be conducted, Qaba said.

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