THE UN: Human-trafficking in south-eastern Europe for the sex trade and forced labour is still rife despite government action plans, police crackdowns and private aid efforts, a UN report has found.
The report, which is co-sponsored by the 55-nation Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), called on governments to go beyond clampdowns by police and immigration authorities by granting legal rights and protection for trafficked women and children.
There are no up-to-date statistics for the size of the problem. But the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration has estimated that 120,000 women and children were trafficked into the European Union each year, most of them through the Balkans.
In a grim assessment at the end of a year in which the OSCE pledged that it would do more to combat trafficking, the report said there had been no substantial increase in the prosecution of traffickers in south-eastern Europe.
"It is a paradoxical situation where, on the one hand, we can note great progress in the creation and development of anti-trafficking measures in the region, but on the other hand little progress in implementing these measures to support the victims of trafficking," the trafficking study said.
The report examines the situation in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro including the UN-administered province of Kosovo, Moldova and Romania from November 2002 to April 2003.
This second annual study of the situation said authorities had identified and assisted fewer victims than during the same period a year ago, even though there had been no decrease in the scale of trafficking.
One reason it cited was a shift in strategy among criminals in answer to the standard police response to trafficking, namely repeated raids on night-clubs and bars suspected of hosting forced prostitution.
"Traffickers and bar-owners are simply moving victims of trafficking from bars to other, non-accessible places (such as rented apartments), driving the business of trafficking more underground and making access to the victims more difficult," the UN/OSCE report said.
Paradoxically, it said, the increased police focus on traffickers had led to better treatment for the women themselves, prompting pimps and bar-owners to pay them more and reducing the level of violence against them.
"As a result, the women usually do not consider themselves as victims of trafficking, especially when the police can offer them no real alternative," it said.
According to the UN treaty against trafficking, people are victims even if they move voluntarily from one country to another, provided some element of deception or fraud was involved. - (Reuters)