The US State Department has included Kazakhstan on the human trafficking control list, total.kz reported Tastemir Abishev, Kazakhstan’s Secretary of the Commission on Human Rights, as saying.

The US said Kazakhstan needs to do more to identify criminal offences related to human trafficking, as well as provide special assistance to victims of human trafficking, the news agency cited Abishev as saying before a meeting of the country’s expert council of the Presidential Human Rights.

Kazakhstan “has ratified 25 international treaties in the field of combating trafficking in persons”. He said this includes the Palermo Protocol – aimed at combatting trafficking in especially women and children, supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, according to the news agency, quoting Abishev. “According to statistics from the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of registered crimes related to human trafficking is falling every year.”