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Go_home
Danica Dakić &
Sandra Sterle |
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Trafficking
Lovorka Marinović,
Countertrafficking Focal Interest for Croatia, International
Organization for Migration (IOM)
Trafficking in human beings has been recognized as a major international
problem and one of the most visible and most frequent forms
of this crime is trafficking in women and children for the purpose
of sexual exploitation.
Global
trends of trafficking in human beings are clear:
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• Annually about four million of people are
victims of trafficking, most of them women
• Several
hundred thousand female victims of trafficking enter West
Europe annually
• An estimated annual
profit of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation
is up to 12 billion US$
• Trafficking
in human beings is an international "business"
with huge profits, limited risk and weak punishment. |
Human beings are trafficked for
forced prostitution, pornography, forced labour, illegal work,
false adoption, falsified or forced marriages, sex tourism and
entertainment. Trafficking is one of the biggest crimes
of our times; it is a trade of human beings, which presents
a huge violation of human rights. On an individual level the
following human rights are violated: a person's liberty and
dignity, equality of all human beings, freedom of movement,
right to decide upon own body, right to have choice and make
decisions, right to property. On a societal level trafficking
constitutes a form of slavery, creates an element of instability,
weakens immigration policies, intensifies nationalist sentiments
and ethnic tension and so democratic security is threatened.
Trafficking in human beings occurs when a person is kidnapped,
recruited, sold and moved within national or across international
borders by the mediation of traffickers. Traffickers are those
persons who through the process of trafficking obtain a profit
by means of deception, coercion or other forms of exploitation
under the conditions that violate fundamental human rights.
The traffickers who recruit their victims personally or through
advertisements on the local media very often know the traffickers.
They usually look very professional,
nice and friendly. They offer to cover the travel costs
and to solve all possible problems. Once, at the final destination,
their attitude changes. Victims are kept in an unsafe environment,
their documents are confiscated and they are forced to work
illegally to pay back all expenditures sustained by the traffickers.
Women and children are very often forced into the sex industry.
On their way from country of origin to the final destination
they are usually sold and bought several times and very often
they are raped and forced into prostitution in transit countries
where they might stay up to several months.
Within the framework of Stability Pact Trafficking Task Force
International Organization for Migration (IOM) has implemented
the study of trafficking in women and children in the Balkan
region and neighbouring countries. IOM examined data on trafficking,
which were collected from governmental, non-governmental and
intergovernmental sources in 28 countries. The study shows that
there is still a tremendous lack of reliable data on trafficking
but despite that trafficking in this region is a significant
problem. According to collected data about 6000 women have been
sold last year in West Europe and 1300 of them were from the
Balkan countries. In this study Croatia is mentioned mainly
as a transit country but there are some indicators that Croatia
is also a country of destination. According to official data
of Ministry of Interior, during the three years period (1997,
1998 & 1999) 24 women were smuggled to Croatia and forced
to prostitution. But according to reliable data Croatia is also
a country of origin as some women from Croatia were registered
as victims of trafficking: 3 in Austria, 6 in Germany, 1 in
the Netherlands, 2 in Spain. We do not have official data from
Italy but very often young girls from Croatia are victims of
trafficking in Italy.
Counter-trafficking activities in Croatia over the last two
years have been initiated by international organizations with
intention to target all relevant partners. All respective partners
for solving this problem on national level have to understand
that overall responsibility lies with the individual States
that must ensure that they comply with the international obligations.
In order to speed up the procedure of counter-trafficking activities,
the Republic of Croatia is obliged to develop optimum structure
for solving this phenomenon.
Lovorka
Marinović
Focal Point Trafficking,
International Organization for Migration (IOM), Zagreb
lovorkaM@IOM.int |
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Thnking
in Exile
Suzana Milevska
I live, I dwell means the same as I am... Philosophical
ideas connecting ourselves and our living spaces.
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