Director General/Executive Director
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you for joining this meeting of the Inter-agency Coordination Group Against Trafficking in Persons.
Most countries by now have legislation criminalizing human trafficking. The Protocol against Trafficking in Persons has been a powerful impetus for action and strengthening international cooperation.
But the need to advance and more effectively coordinate global responses remains strong.
The 2017 Political Declaration, adopted at the last appraisal of the General Assembly's Global Plan of Action, called upon ICAT to step up its activities to address this challenge.
Two years on, I am proud to note that ICAT has gone from strength to strength.
Since we held the first ICAT Principals meeting last year, we are honoured to have welcomed new members to ICAT, bringing the total to twenty-four entities from within and outside the UN family as members. I would like to commend here the strong engagement of the 2019 ICAT co-chairs, UN Women and the OSCE.
In 2019, ICAT facilitated and coordinated key policy discussions in Vienna, Geneva and New York, and produced policy briefs on longstanding as well as emerging trafficking challenges.
Following UN Security Council Resolutions 2331 and 2388, ICAT has developed a cooperation initiative with the UN Procurement Network to mitigate the risk of traffickers intervening in our own supply chains.
UNODC is proud to serve as ICAT's Permanent Coordinator, and we remain committed to advancing ICAT's work. To this end, I hope ICAT will come together again in 2020 at the principal level to further our collective efforts to eradicate human trafficking.
I would like to express my appreciation for the support of the UK in providing funding for the ICAT secretariat, and I appeal to our Member State partners to provide similar assistance.
I wish you fruitful discussions. Thank you.