RIYADH: A US official has commended Saudi Arabia’s efforts on tackling human trafficking. Chargé d’affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy Susan Ziadeh was speaking after figures from the US State Department had ranked the Kingdom among the worst in maintaining human trafficking controls three years in a row.
Ziadeh commended a Kingdom law to combat human trafficking at a ceremony marking the completion of a series of workshops on the subject. President of the Human Rights Commission (HRC), Bandar Al-Iban, said that although the Kingdom welcomes criticism it had always been focused on fighting human trafficking.
“We in the Kingdom do not work according to outside criticism, as breaches and violations exist in every society. We work within the framework of Islamic law, which embraces all human rights and prohibits human trafficking in the first place.”
Al-Iban pointed out that the country had issued a law to combat human trafficking last year and created a permanent committee under the umbrella of the HRC consisting of representatives from various ministries. However, all government departments are responsible for tackling human trafficking.
The workshops, organized by Naïf Arab University for Security Sciences in cooperation with the American Ministry of Homeland Security, took place Dec. 14-16.
They aimed to introduce the problem of human trafficking as a global one and equip participants with necessary skills to address it.
Specialists from the ministries of Interior, Justice and Social Affairs, research centers and other relevant organizations from Arab countries carried out the workshops that were attended by delegates from the Kingdom, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and Sudan.
