South-East Europe faces 'disturbing' rise in human trafficking

Government officials and NGO's this week warned against a 'disturbing' rise in human trafficking in South-East Europe with minors increasingly becoming a target for criminals. "We see an increase of human trafficking in South-Eastern Europe for different purposes, not only for sexual exploitation", the OSCE Special Representative for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Maria-Grazia Giammarinaro, told a conference organised in Bucharest by France and Romania. More and more young children and teenagers from Ukraine, Moldova and the Balkan countries are being forced to work like slaves, to beg or to prostitute themselves. In Romania, most of the women identified as victims of human trafficking last year were aged 16, according to official figures. "The exploitation of minors is on the rise and this is a very disturbing trend", Eric Panloup, a French government advisor on human trafficking in Southeastern Europe, told AFP. "Traffickers are targeting the most vulnerable persons and of course minors are among them", adds Panloup who is closely working with NGOs, police and justice officials accross 16 countries of the region. Besides prostitution, minors are also forced to commit theft or burglary as they face lesser sentences if caught, experts stressed. Reliable figures on the number of victims are hard to gather due to the illegal character of the trade and to diverging statistical methods. But social workers, police officers and government officials who gathered in Bucharest from Ukraine, Serbia, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey all agree: human trafficking is on the rise as the economic crisis is biting. For years, most of the victims from South-East Europe were smuggled to Western Europe. But today, Russia, Turkey, Cyprus are also "countries of destination". "In 2011, Ukrainian victims were mainly found in Russia and Poland", Yelizaveta Stepanuk who works for a women's rights group said. As far as sexual exploitation is concerned, sea-side resorts along the Black Sea as well as in Montenegro and Croatia have also become magnets for criminal networks. To combat this plague, investigators from Eastern and Western Europe try to increase their cooperation. France and Romania have set up joint police teams to bust criminal rings using children as beggars or thieves. "But if we want to fight efficiently, we cannot only focus on repression. We need to work hand in hand with NGOs to improve the assistance given to the victims", Panloup, a military police officer, insists. "NGOss can build a relationship of trust with the victims and that's the first step to put an end to exploitation", Patrick Hauvuy, the director of a French network of shelters said. In many countries of Eastern Europe where governements are unable to offer basic services to their citizens, charities have become the only ones helping the victims to rebuild their self-esteem and reintegrate society. "Victim will testify only if they feel protected", Panloup stresses. Preventing people from falling into "too-good-to-be-true" promises of jobs abroad is also a key element in order to avoid ending up in a brothel in Northern Europe or in a backbreaking job on a Russian construction site. But that is no easy tasks as many countries in South-East Europe are struggling with high poverty rates and unequal access to education and jobs. "There is also a lack of democratic culture in some of our countries", Romanian junior minister for Internal affairs Marian Tutilescu told the audience. The severe economic crisis accross Europe has also made things worse. "We fear that some of our citizens working in Western Europe will lose their job and fall a prey to traffickers", Ecaterina Berejan who works for the National Committee against human trafficking in Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, told AFP. "Posters warning of the dangers of human trafficking are nice but they are not enough. What do we do in ghettos when a family is earning 50 euros a month and a girl can make up to 200 euros a day by being a prostitute?", Valeriu Nicolae, a Romanian working on private social projects in one of the poorest districts of Bucharest, asks. "How can we fight human trafficking when nothing is done to create jobs in these areas?".