Report Says Trafficking Victims Come From Mainstream Society
FrontLines - May 2009
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When USAID’s Albania office began its anti-trafficking program
in 2003, there was little reliable information on how trafficking in
human beings was taking place.
But now, the program has published its fourth annual report
which serves as an almanac for anti-trafficking activists in the country,
presenting information about government, civil society, and
international initiatives underway in Albania.
The latest report, “State of Efforts in Albania to Combat
Trafficking in Persons 2007-08,” includes an extra chapter on trends
in human trafficking based on individual case data provided by antitrafficking
shelters.
It is commonly believed that victims of trafficking are primarily
from minority communities, from outside major urban areas, and
have extremely low levels of education. The data in the report challenges
these assumptions by concluding that:
- Over 90 percent of the victims for sex trafficking in the shelters
come from the general Albanian population; only 9 percent were
from the Roma and Balkan Egyptian minority communities.
- Most were recruited from moderately economically distressed
urban areas.
- The majority were recruited in their home communities by someone
they knew.
- Over half had completed compulsory education.
It is difficult to obtain reliable information about human trafficking
due to the violent criminal nature of the business and the collaboration
of traffickers, their clients, and their business partners. Victims
are reluctant to come forward for fear of life-threatening reprisals
against themselves or their family members.
In addition, some government entities across the globe are under
pressure to demonstrate an increased capacity to combat the phenomenon.
As a result, systemic data gathering is sometimes discouraged,
and authorities are rewarded by decreasing the official numbers of
identified victims. Increased data collection and analysis by independent
governmental agencies and NGOs is essential to combat the problem
of severe exploitation of children and women every year.
A full copy of the report is available online at:
www.caaht.com/reports.htm.
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