No country in southern Africa has any modern law to deal with trafficking in people effectively, a United Nations criminal justice expert said on Monday.

Only two countries in the region -- Botswana and Namibia -- had ratified the UN's Convention on Transnational Organised Crime, Ugljesa Zvekic of the UN's regional office for drug control and crime prevention told Sapa.

The convention deals with trafficking in people.

However, ratifying the convention meant nothing if there was no specific domestic laws to address the problem, he said in Pretoria after the release of the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) report on human trafficking in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

"It is not as yet perceived as a serious problem. There is not enough public awareness about it," Zvekic said.

"Within SADC there is no appropriate structure to address this."

Jonathan Martens, who co-ordinated the study for the IOM, said one problem was that existing legislation did not address the cross-border nature of the crime.

The report describes South Africa as a major destination for victims --mostly women and children -- abducted or lured under false pretences from other countries.

Dr Dudu Khoza, acting deputy director-general in the Department of Foreign Affairs, conceded that South Africa did not have any legislation specifically dealing with trafficking in people.

The SA Law Commission had taken it on board, she said.

The laws South Africa used with regard to trafficking included the acts on aliens control, refugees, prevention of organised crime, child care, sexual offences and domestic violence.

Martens said victims of trafficking were mostly treated as perpetrators themselves, and often summarily deported.

Some countries had legislation to provide temporary residence to victims in exchange for testifying against traffickers. Some states also enabled the victims to institute civil claims against the perpetrators.

"Victims need medical and psychological treatment. They are terribly scarred."

Some shelters turned victims away if they did not have South African identity documents, he said.

According to Martens, the IOM had developed the Southern African Trafficking Assistance Programme.

This included continuing the research done for the report over the past six months, as well as conducting information campaigns among vulnerable communities. Members of such communities might be lured into sex slavery under the pretence of a lucrative job or educational opportunity.

"This should create some suspicion for someone that an offer might not be what it seems."

Training of law enforcement officers and organisations dealing with victims was another pillar of the programme. Such people should know how to treat victims and where to send them for help.

In some cases, victims were made dependent on drugs to give their traffickers better control over them. Provision should be made to rehabilitate such addicts, Martens said.

Victims should also be reintegrated into society and given some skills, so they did not fall in the same trap as they did before.

He said many victims did not trust the police, seeing them as accomplices of the perpetrators.

The report calls for a specialised police unit or task force, rather than the local police force, to deal with trafficking cases.

It urges countries to identify a national government official to serve as a focal point for trafficking matters, and to establish a national task force on human trafficking to co-ordinate policy making and execution among different departments and agencies.

A fund should be established to provide for the voluntary return and reintegration of victims to their countries of origin, the report says - Sapa.