CAPE TOWN (Reuters) — Religious organisations that helped bring down apartheid have a critical role to play in abolishing the multi-billion dollar crime of human trafficking, South Africa's Anglican archbishop said on Thursday.Cape Town Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane met with Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to discuss mobilising religious and faith-based organisations in a global fight to eradicate human trafficking.

"Faith communities have played a significant role in many ways ... in the fight against apartheid (and) Jubilee 2000 where we mobilised worldwide for debt cancellation, and look where we are now," Ndungane told reporters after the meeting.

Ndungane is expected to spearhead a gathering of world religious leaders in Cape Town in September or October to support the anti-trafficking drive ahead of a November meeting in Austria where a pledge and special purpose fund to combat human trafficking are expected to be signed.

This pledge, still under discussion, as well as the fund were expected to result in a plan of action to stop what Maria Costas on Thursday called a "tragedy of humanity".

"It involves millions of people being trafficked yearly. It involves tens of millions of them already in bondage and forms of modern slavery," Maria Costas said.

Human trafficking affects virtually every region of the world and UN estimates say the trade could be worth some $32 billion if both "sales" of individuals and the value of their exploited labour is taken into account.

The traffic sees the young and vulnerable, particularly in developing regions such as Africa, are sold into sexual servitude, child soldiers are drugged and forced into combat and women enslaved as indentured labour.

Maria Costas said religion was a powerful motivation in human beings, and while in some countries there has been a drifting away from religion, in others there has been a strengthening.

"I am strongly supportive of seeing the role that religious leaders can play," he said.