Email this page

Publications

Action to Prevent Child Trafficking in South Eastern Europe: A Preliminary Assessment

Click to view this publication.
(Note: the publication is located on another website.)

Mike Dottridge. Terre des Hommes Foundation together with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). August 2006.

A new report by Terre des hommes Foundation (Lausanne, Switzerland) together with United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) outlines some key findings and recommendations from an assessment of the efforts to prevent child trafficking in South Eastern Europe. Its main purpose is to increase understanding of the work on prevention of child trafficking, by looking at the effectiveness of different approaches and their impacts.

The report argues that piecemeal prevention efforts in South Eastern Europe (SEE) are failing to protect children from falling prey to traffickers and have relied too much on general awareness-raising. It also urges a shift of focus away from prosecution. The report  "Action to Prevent Child Trafficking in South Eastern Europe: A Preliminary Assessment" examines different strategies and initiatives to prevent child trafficking in SEE and it includes the voices of child victims from Albania, Moldova, Romania and the UN Administered Province of Kosovo where the research was carried out.

The report finds that awareness-raising campaigns are often way off the mark, are unfocused and not systematic. Some carry stereotypical images of men lurking in the shadows when traffickers are often family or friends; others ignore trafficking for purposes other than sexual exploitation, for example, domestic work, begging or stealing; that most messages are tailored to adults instead of children and therefore provide little or no information on how children might protect themselves, who to turn to, or where to go for help.

The report calls for the establishment of harmonised, synchronised and seamless systems and services - both internal and cross-border - to protect children. It stresses the obligation in this regard on States and on parents, guardians and professionals who interface with children (customs officers, border guards, police, teachers, social and health workers etc) under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant instruments.

"The focus on awareess-raising and prevention has contributed to the lack of resources available in many countries for data gathering and analyses of patterns and trends," said Christian Hafner, from Terre des hommes. "The point here is that without data, we are working in the dark, and it is difficult to prevent something from happening if you don't know what is out there."