RIYADH: Awwad bin Saleh Al-Awwad, president of the Kingdom’s Human Rights Commission (HRC), stressed the importance of concerted efforts between various authorities to combat and eliminate the crime of human trafficking at a meeting of the Committee for Combating Trafficking in Persons, where he praised the electronic link project between different sections of the HRC. Al-Awwad presented the Kingdom’s achievements in this preventing human trafficking through the regulations that it had imposed, international agreements and protocols it had adhered to, and memorandums of understanding (MoU) signed between it and relevant international organizations and bodies. All these, he said, had contributed to building a regulatory and institutional framework ensuring the protection of all persons from human trafficking, and enforced prosecution against perpetrators. During a meeting with the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Judge Hatim Ali, officials from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and a number of government agencies, Al-Awwad noted that the electronic link project was a step in the right direction to combat the crime of human trafficking by aiding coordination between various government authorities. The meeting also tackled measures that will be adopted by the UNODC according to an MoU signed with the HRC to tighten cooperation in combating and preventing trafficking in persons, providing technical and administrative expertise at centers that shelter victims, and establishing appropriate mechanisms to provide legal, financial and moral support.